"Hello Rick,

"I was very fortunate to have been referred to Rick by a close friend and a highly successful health professional who had been working with Rick as his life coach on addressing both professional and personal life issues.

During the past few years, I seemed to have reached a plateau point in my professional career, where I needed to learn and grow to achieve more successful and satisfying results in my working relationships with my superiors and professional colleagues as well as with my own staff that I was supervising as the director of a research institute at a local university in the Boston area. With two Masters degrees and a PhD, I had advanced over 30 years to positions of greater and greater management responsibilities, without ever really knowing or at least acknowledging to myself what my essential strengths and weaknesses were in management and interpersonal interactions with others at all levels.

At some level, I could say I was successful in my job, but inside I knew I wasn’t as fulfilled with my work life and still quite cautious and protective in my work, and fearful of some of those in positions of authority above me. This led me to sometimes avoid certain people and even professional opportunities out of fear of failure or being judged. With my own staff at the institute there were issues of control and micromanaging, and too much talking on my part and without enough listening to those around me. These factors kept me from feeling really good about my position and fully confident about my work and what I had to offer the organization and my colleagues. And in the process, I may have closed off work opportunities and new or better working relationships with those around me.

The life coaching program that Rick introduced to me was highly relevant, useful and practical for me to incorporate into my daily routine from wake-up to bedtime, and gave me a much more positive perspective on myself, a more curious and inquisitive attitude towards others at my work place (at all levels) and a more outgoing and reaching out approach to other professionals at the university and our partnering organizations.

I found it extremely helpful and revealing during Rick’s initial assessment sessions in identifying my PEQ - Personal Essential Qualities, i.e., who I am and what I have to offer as a valuable human being and what passions inspire and motivate me. Rick also worked closely with me to identify some of my negative attitudes and behaviors that may be holding me back from having a more fulfilling and connected professional life and more satisfying personal relationships in the workplace. I am 65 years old, but I think Rick nailed my PEQ on the head, and it has given me more confidence and an enthusiasm about who I am, what I have to offer, and what is possible in terms professional collaborative relationships and the academic research and applied program work I am engaged in with my staff and our partners.

Establishing a matrix of important or potentially important superiors at my workplace and rating the strength and quality of those relationship was a very useful exercise that produced positive results, as I began to reach out to those key persons on the list in a systematic way; as were the daily affirmations, the calming meditation relaxation techniques, the setting daily intentions at the start of each day, and keeping a simple focused daily diary were very helpful and effective practices that Rick introduced me too.

My awareness of what works and what doesn’t work in my daily work life has improved steadily, thanks to the exercises that Rick gave me. With Rick’s encouragement, I was able to take concrete steps to reach out to my colleagues and superiors and build positive and constructive relationships with many of them, including some who I had been avoiding out of competitiveness, fear or insecurity. The tools and exercises Rick offered me were empowering and enlightening.

(The perspectives) that I adopted with Rick’s guidance made my daily work interactions much more enjoyable, open, collaborative and productive compared to those I had experienced previously that were too often driven by self-serving one-way opportunism, the desire to control or protect my “turf”, or by fear-based cautionary or avoidance approaches to superiors and authority figures the I had used in the past.

The exercises were particularly useful in raising my awareness and understanding as well as being calming, I also found that the guidance provided for me to start my days with specific intentions to do positive actions (based on the insights gained from my practices and Rick’s coaching) and to improve my work relationships by reaching out my hand rather than walking away from people and opportunities all produced dramatic positive results that were very satisfying to me.

I finished the 10-week program of working with Rick as my professional life coach in the Spring of 2016. The results achieved were so worth it, and I plan to hire Rick to work with me again in 2017 to further develop and reinforce the positive strategies and behaviors that I was able to implement/engage in last year with his highly professional, compassionate, insightful and non-pressuring support and guidance.

Although there was a wide range of the tools and methods Rick used in his life coaching approach, I found that they were all very practical and doable, and not terribly time-consuming on a daily basis, despite my busy professional and personal life, and the positive results were obvious, measurable and often immediate.

I highly recommend Rick as a life coach to any professional who wishes to discover a more meaningful, effective, and fulfilling professional life.