Even After the Challenge of Going Deaf, Business Coaching Gets Done
**To read the article Australian Women Online wrote about Michele Alexander and her business coaching challenges, click here**
If anyone knows about a business challenge that seems insurmountable, it’s Business Coach Michele Alexander. And not a business challenge for a business coaching client of hers — a challenge for her business coaching sessions. On a Tuesday morning two years ago, she woke up completely deaf.
“I woke up the next morning, ready to get started business coaching, but could hear nothing,” she said. “Actually, I had tinnitus, so I heard heaps – the ringing in my ears seemed so loud against the deafness. It was something like the noise we hear being submerged in water.”
Alexander had actually been deaf out in her left ear for 12 years prior to this incident. She wasn’t bothered because she had perfect hearing in her other ear. But with no hearing at all now, and a job in business coaching, Alexander was in complete shock. Worse, she had a very busy Tuesday business coaching clients that day.
“It was a complete blur,” she said, of business coaching. “How I coached five clients, I do not remember, but I did! I think what helped was every business coaching session was face-to-face in a small office environment with no surrounding noise, and I could already lip read really well.”
Despite going completely deaf, Alexander couldn’t let down all her clients. So she pulled through and went to all of her business coaching sessions, using business coaching tools from ActionCOACH and raised awareness. She had plenty of challenges in business coaching, however – she couldn’t use the telephone, the receptionist had to take detailed messages, and email became her “lifeline” in terms of communicating with her clients.
“After the first few weeks of waking each morning, hoping that my hearing had come back but it never did, and also after all the tests confirmed my hearing wasn’t coming back, my audiologist said I was a good candidate for a cochlear implant,” Alexander said. “My focus was to make it happen – so from being deaf in June, using temporary, almost useless hearing aids up until October, I then had an operation to give me back 60 to 70 percent hearing in my left ear. I coached all my clients Monday through Wednesday, had the operation on Thursday, and was back for her first business coaching session the following Wednesday.”
Besides learning to live with being deaf, she learned a few other things key to business coaching, too. “Being deaf made me use more inventive methods of communication,” Alexander said. “And my deafness has also taught me to ask for help – and that asking for help is not a weakness, and people want to help.”
Alexander has overcome this challenge in her business coaching career and still successfully coaches her clients. Her story should be an inspiration to many. This is just one situation of how far ActionCOACH business coaches go for their business coaching clients. To discover what business coaching can do for you, contact us for your free business coaching session.
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