About Pete
Learn more about my background, experience and the approach I bring to coaching.
Personal Development Coaching
Online coaching for personal and professional growth
Personal development coaching can help you understand what you want to change or develop, what may be getting in the way and how you want to move forward in your personal or professional life.
Sometimes you know what the next step is.
You may even know that you're capable of taking it.
But knowing that you're capable and actually feeling ready to move forward aren't always the same thing.
You might be considering the next stage of your career but questioning whether you're ready for it. You may have plans to start a business but find yourself held back by self-doubt, lack of confidence or fear of failure.
Or the change may be personal. Perhaps you're considering the next step in an intimate relationship but experiencing doubts or fears that make it difficult to know how you want to proceed.
Personal development coaching gives us space to explore where you want to go, what may be getting in the way and what could help you take the next step.
Book Your Free 20-Minute Discovery CallWhat Can Personal Development Coaching Help With?
Personal development coaching can help when you want to grow or make a change in your life but something is making it difficult to take the next step.
This might include:
Career development — progressing professionally, taking on greater responsibility or considering a significant career change.
Confidence and self-belief — knowing you're capable while finding it difficult to feel confident in your ability to succeed.
Starting a business or project — having the practical pieces in place but experiencing self-doubt, hesitation or fear of failure.
Personal growth — wanting to develop yourself or make changes in how you approach an area of your life.
Relationships and life decisions — considering an important next step while experiencing uncertainty, doubts or competing priorities.
Leadership and professional identity — developing greater confidence in how you lead, communicate and occupy your professional role.
Understanding yourself — becoming clearer about what matters to you, how you experience yourself and who you want to become.
Life transitions — considering what you want from the next stage of your personal or professional life.
You don't need to have a perfectly defined goal before beginning coaching.
Sometimes understanding what you actually want is an important part of the work.
“I Know I'm Capable, But I Don't Feel Capable”
This can paradoxically be a good place to begin.
If you already know what you want, understand what you need to do and recognise intellectually that you're capable of doing it, a significant part of the work may already be done.
The question then becomes:
What is preventing you from feeling as capable as you know yourself to be?
Sometimes your assessment of a new challenge may become heavily weighted towards what could go wrong.
You may recognise intellectually that you have handled difficult situations before, achieved challenging things or successfully navigated uncertainty — while finding it difficult to connect with those experiences when you're considering the challenge in front of you now.
Personal development coaching can help you develop a more balanced understanding of the risks involved and the capabilities, experience and resources you already bring with you.
The aim isn't false confidence or persuading yourself that nothing can go wrong.
It is developing a more grounded sense of what you are capable of so that your decisions aren't being made only from the perspective of what might go wrong.
Sometimes the Block Is Somewhere Else
The thing preventing you from moving towards a goal isn't necessarily the goal itself.
You may come to coaching wanting to progress professionally, launch a business or make another significant change and discover that another area of your life is taking up much of your mental or emotional space.
That doesn't automatically mean we abandon your original goal.
Instead, we can explore how the two areas connect and consider the options together.
We decide the direction of the coaching collaboratively.
Your original goal remains important, while giving us enough flexibility to consider what may actually help you move towards it.
Personal Development & Your Sense of Self
Personal development isn't only about what you want to achieve.
It can also involve who you are, how you experience yourself and who you want to become.
We all occupy different roles within our lives.
You may experience yourself as a partner, parent, son or daughter, sibling, friend, professional, leader, explorer, pioneer, joker or in many other ways.
You can also experience yourself differently depending on where you are and who you are with.
There may be a more public or performative self — the person who goes into the world, works, achieves, interacts with others and occupies the different roles expected of them.
Alongside this can be a more private self, containing aspects of you that may be less visible to other people.
Neither is necessarily more authentic than the other.
But they may not always develop in the same way.
Success in one area of life doesn't necessarily mean feeling successful in another.
You might feel highly capable professionally while experiencing considerable self-doubt in your personal life or relationships.
Alternatively, you may feel secure in who you are privately while finding it difficult to bring that same confidence into your professional life.
Personal development coaching can provide space to explore these different aspects of yourself, where you feel established, where you would like to grow and how you want the different areas of your life to develop.
What Has Brought You to Coaching?
You don't need to be struggling or have a clearly defined problem to come to personal development coaching.
There will usually be something that has prompted you to consider change.
It may come from within.
Perhaps you have been thinking repeatedly about something you want from your life, have a sense that you're ready for something different or recognise an area in which you would like to develop.
Sometimes the prompt comes from someone else.
A partner, friend, colleague or manager may have reflected something back to you — perhaps about how you approach situations, how you come across to others or a capability they recognise in you.
That feedback doesn't automatically have to be right.
But if it has made you think, it gives us useful material to explore.
We can consider what it means to you, whether it connects with something you already recognise and what, if anything, you would like to do with it.
Pete Tobias
Certified Psychodynamic Life Coach
A Different Approach to Personal Development Coaching
As a Certified Psychodynamic Life Coach, I combine a focus on your present and future goals with curiosity about what may be making those goals difficult to achieve.
This means the work isn't simply about setting goals, creating an action plan and holding you accountable for completing it.
Practical strategies can certainly be useful.
But if you already know what you need to do and still aren't doing it, repeatedly telling yourself to take action may not address what is actually keeping you stuck.
We can instead become curious about what happens when you try to move towards the goal.
Depending on what you need, our work may include reflective and imaginative exercises, grounding or breathing techniques, greater awareness of what you notice physically and emotionally, and practical strategies for moving forward.
The purpose remains your personal development.
We use greater self-understanding to help you make choices, take action and move towards the personal or professional changes you want for your life.
What Might You Gain From Personal Development Coaching?
The outcome will depend on what brought you to coaching.
You may achieve the particular goal you originally came with. You may also find that the work gives you something broader.
Personal development coaching can help you develop:
A better understanding of yourself and what matters to you.
A stronger connection to yourself and the direction you want your life to take.
Greater awareness of what may be keeping you stuck.
A more balanced understanding of risk and your existing capabilities.
Greater confidence in making personal and professional decisions.
A clearer understanding of yourself across the different roles in your life.
Greater awareness of the difference between what you know you're capable of and how capable you actually feel.
Greater clarity about what you want to develop next.
Practical strategies for moving towards your goals.
Personal development isn't about creating an idealised version of yourself.
It is about understanding yourself more clearly and using that understanding to help you develop in the direction that matters to you.
Online Personal Development Coaching
I provide online personal development coaching for adults.
You may arrive with a clearly defined professional or personal goal, or simply know that something in your life needs to develop or change.
We begin by understanding what has brought you to coaching and what you would like to be different.
From there, we can establish your goals, explore what may be getting in the way and decide together where it makes most sense to focus.
A free 20-minute discovery call gives us an opportunity to discuss what you're looking for and whether my approach to personal development coaching feels like the right fit.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT COACHING
Frequently Asked Questions
Personal development coaching can begin with a clear goal, a difficult decision or simply a sense that something in your life could be different.
These are some of the questions you may have about what coaching involves, what you can work on and whether it may be right for you.
Questions You May Have
Select any question below to open the answer.
01 What is personal development coaching?
Personal development coaching is a collaborative process that helps you identify how you want to grow or change, understand what may be getting in the way and work towards your personal or professional goals.
You may have a clearly defined goal or simply recognise that there is an area of your life you would like to develop.
02 What can I work on with a personal development coach?
Personal development coaching can focus on career progression, confidence, leadership, starting a business, relationships, important life decisions, self-understanding or other personal and professional goals.
The focus depends on what you want to develop and what has brought you to coaching.
03 Can coaching help if I know what I need to do but can't seem to do it?
Yes. This can be a particularly useful starting point for coaching.
If you already understand what you need to do, we can focus less on identifying the practical solution and more on understanding what may be making it difficult to take that step.
We can then consider what might help you move forward.
04 Can personal development coaching help with confidence?
Yes. Confidence can be an appropriate personal-development coaching goal.
Sometimes you may recognise intellectually that you're capable while not experiencing the same confidence when facing a particular challenge.
Coaching can help you develop a more balanced view of the challenge you're facing and the capabilities and experience you already have.
05 Can personal development coaching help with career progression?
Yes. You may be considering a promotion, leadership role, career change or another professional step but feel uncertain about whether you're ready.
Coaching can help you clarify what you want, explore what may be contributing to the hesitation and develop strategies for moving forward.
06 Can personal development coaching help me start a business?
Yes.
You may already have your idea, business plan and practical preparations in place but find self-doubt, lack of confidence or fear of failure making it difficult to take the next step.
The coaching doesn't replace professional business, financial or legal advice. Its focus is on you, your goals and what may be affecting your ability to move towards them.
07 Do I need to have a specific goal?
No.
There will usually be something that has brought you to coaching, but you don't need to have converted it into a clearly defined goal before your first session.
Clarifying what you want to develop or change can itself become part of the coaching process.
08 Is personal development coaching the same as therapy?
No.
Personal development coaching focuses on your present and future development, the goals you want to work towards and the choices or actions that may help you get there.
We may consider patterns, feelings or previous experiences where they are relevant to a current coaching goal, but the purpose is self-awareness, development, decision-making and movement towards your goals.
Personal development coaching is
not psychotherapy, counselling, diagnosis or
psychological treatment.
09 Is personal development coaching available online?
Yes. I provide online personal development coaching for adults.
Sessions take place online, allowing you to access coaching from a private location that works for you.