An Explanation of Leadership Coaching

The owner of SMS Coaching and Health Mate, Inc., in southeast Michigan, Dr. Sandra Schiff offers leadership and executive coaching as well as personal and transitional support. Dr. Sandra Schiff comes to her role having trained and guided leaders in a variety of fields.

Like an athletic coach, a leadership coach helps his or her client to develop and work toward goals. For the business leader, however, this coaching addresses the skills that he or she needs to achieve professional success. Coaches assist clients with interpersonal communication, personal branding, and business acumen, so as to establish a foundation for comprehensive success.

In a leadership coaching session, the coach works closely with the client as a partner and guide. A skilled coach will listen closely to the client and develop an understanding of potential obstacles to success, while collaborating to determine goals and strategies for reaching them. In drawing on client strengths and offering assistance in improving on weaknesses, a coach optimizes a client’s overall leadership capabilities and, in turn, drives value for his or her organization.

Now What? - A 90-Day Program to Help People Live Their Best Lives

A Southeast Michigan-based coaching services professional with over three decades of experience, Dr. Sandra Schiff has served as president of Health Mate, Inc., since 1999. In addition to being a certified Care Transition Coach, Dr. Sandra Schiff is an Authorized Facilitator of the Now What? Program.

Developed by bestselling author and professional coach Laura Berman Fortgang, Now What? is a 90-day program that helps people advance their careers and improve the overall quality of their lives. People can either follow the Now What? curriculum on their own or under the guidance of an Authorized Facilitator who has been trained by Laura Berman Fortgang via several months of in-depth coursework.

The main goal of Now What? is to help people uncover what they want in life and then make the changes to attain it. Fortgang’s program, which is outlined in her book Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction, establishes week-by-week goals and provides tips and exercises to achieve them. Professional coaches trained in the program help clients implement the curriculum through guided questioning and exploration that establishes a strong foundation for ongoing and sustainable life improvement.

WSU School of Social Work: Transition to Independence Program

Dr. Sandra Schiff provides a variety of training, consulting, and coaching services as president of Health Mate Inc. in Southeast, Michigan.The recipient of a PhD in psychology and geropsychology, Dr. Sandra Schiff also holds a master of social work from Wayne State University (WSU), where she currently serves as an adjunct faculty member.

Wayne State University was founded in 1868, and is a highly recognized research institution with an extensive campus in Midtown Detroit. In 2012, the School of Social work became the third-highest ranked program at the university.

Wayne State University’s School of Social Work runs the Transition to Independence Program (TIP), which was designed to offer young adults in foster care better access to college and improve their graduation rates. One of the program’s services is the dissemination of education-related news that affects this population.

TIP recently undertook an analysis of tuition waiver programs, exploring their prevalence across the country and determining areas for improvement. The analysis presented seven areas of comparison between the programs, which exist in 21 states.

All but one of the programs cover the cost of tuition and school fees. One exception, in Connecticut, offers coverage of books and housing only.

In 17 states (81 percent), the programs specify an age at which children must have been in foster care in order to be eligible for coverage, and eight programs require youth to have been in care for a minimum number of years. The majority of states will consider adopted teens for the program.

Academic standing is taken into consideration by 14 of the 21 programs (67 percent). Applicants are required to uphold a minimum GPA or show satisfactory progress. Only a few states require candidates have extra-curricular involvement, such as community service.plea

Phases of Life Transitions Coaching

Dr. Sandra Schiff is the president of Health Mate, Inc., a business in Southeast Michigan that provides individuals with various consulting, training, and coaching services. Dr. Sandra Schiff has personally served as a Life Transitions Coach, a role designed to guide individuals through significant changes in their lives.

Life Transitions Coaching helps people establish and fulfill their life goals in more effective ways. The coaching process consists of three phases: Beginning, Creating, and Maintaining. It requires full commitment from the individuals seeking coaching and the coaches themselves. An individual must fully engage in the process by keeping scheduled appointments with the coach, setting weekly goals, and reporting progress.

Phase 1, the Beginning phase, establishes the transition the individual is currently making, taking into account opportunities, personal strengths, and potential challenges. This phase typically takes one to three sessions to complete and requires the individual to provide the coach with information about the transition, identify needs and values using tools provided by the coach, and establish initial goals pertaining to the transition.

Phase 2 is the Creating phase, which requires the individual to create a vision and plan and then begin carrying it out in daily life. This phase typically lasts one month to six months and asks the individual to explore options for the future, create a vision and mission statement, and come up with specific tasks for achieving the established goal. With the help of the coach, the individual creates both a long-term and a short-term plan for achieving goals during this phase.

The third phase, Maintaining, requires the individual to maintain the plans created in Phase 2. This involves planning tasks to complete between sessions, identifying successful completion of tasks, and planning for any obstacles. This phase lasts from one month to six or more months.

Cooking Vegetarian Meals for Everyone to Enjoy

Dr. Sandra Schiff, president of Health Mate, Inc., a company that provides individuals with various consulting, training, and coaching services, believes strongly in the importance of mental and physical health for all the individuals in a community. In addition to walking and biking regularly, Dr. Sandra Schiff loves to cook and maintains a vegetarian diet filled with creative recipes.

Vegetarian recipes can be satisfying and healthy for all types of eaters. Reducing meat in the diet reduces the consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol, and vegetarian meals often provide a greater amount of dietary fiber and other important vitamins and minerals. Although it may seem challenging to some, a few helpful guidelines can make vegetarian cooking an easy process for any experienced cook.

Balance is an important detail to take into consideration when cooking vegetarian meals. Creating a meal that combines the right amounts of protein and fiber leads to feeling satisfied without overeating. Combining foods of different flavors and textures in a vegetarian dish excites the palate. Another strategy for cooking savory vegetarian meals is adding chewy or crunchy foods like seared tofu or nuts. Because of the extra chewing involved, the meal feels more filling and can even mimic the chewing of meat.

Slow roasting vegetarian food improves the taste and flavor of meatless meals, as it reduces the amount of water in vegetables, which originally consist of 80 to 95 percent water. A vegetarian lasagna sauce made with slow-roasted tomatoes is a savory choice for those accustomed to ground beef lasagna. The inclusion of so-called umami ingredients, which are high in glutamate, also gives vegetarian meals an appealing taste without the use of meat. These ingredients include asparagus, tomatoes, and seaweed as well as soy foods like tofu and edamame.                            

About the Elizabeth N. Brehler Scholars Program

A PhD graduate of Union Institute and College and a member of the International Coaching Federation, Dr. Sandra Schiff has served as the president of Health Mate, Inc., for over 15 years. Additionally, Dr. Sandra Schiff is a part-time adjunct professor at Wayne State University’s School of Social Work.

One of the country’s top schools in its field, the School of Social Work at Wayne State University was established in 1935. Accredited by the Council on Social Work Education and a member of the National Association of Social Workers, the school offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs that meet the five pillars of the field: education, human behavior, policy, practice methods, and research. To help students who participate in its programs, the Wayne State University School of Social Work provides a variety of financial aid and scholarship opportunities, including the Elizabeth N. Brehler Scholars Program.

Overseen by the Brehler Committee, the Elizabeth N. Brehler Scholars Program was created in 1991 to encourage personal and professional development through social work. Open to students who write a manuscript under the supervision of a faculty mentor, the scholarship requires the submission to incorporate at least two focus areas, ranging from diversity and ethical dilemmas to practice decisions and social policies. In addition to the $3,000 top scholarship, participants who follow the guidelines receive a gift card and a certificate.                            

Social Work a Rapidly Growing Field

Sandra Schiff, PhD, has a long and varied career in helping professions. Head of her own consultancy, which focuses on executive and leadership coaching, Dr. Sandra Schiff is also an adjunct professor of social work at Detroit, Michigan’s Wayne State University, where she earned her master of social work (MSW).

According to the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), social workers are highly trained and experienced professionals who have earned social work degrees at the bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral levels and completed a minimum number of hours in supervised fieldwork. US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics projections indicate that social work is among the fastest-growing careers in the United States.

NASW loosely defines social work as psychosocial services and advocacy. Social workers help people restore or enhance their capacity for social functioning, NASW says, as well as help them overcome such challenges as poverty, discrimination, abuse, addiction, illness, divorce, disability, and unemployment.