Door 0 · Sessions

An hour to think out loud, with a third in the room.

One-to-one coaching for students, staff and faculty at the University of San Diego, on a sliding scale you set yourself. Three kinds of conversation, one method: you do the thinking, I hold the structure.

I’m a graduate student at the Kroc School offering these sessions to the university community while I build hours toward professional credentials. This is my own practice, not a university service.

Format

45 to 60 minutes

In person on campus or on Zoom. Nothing to prepare. One session stands alone; a short series is available for each kind of work.

Cost

$0 to $120

Sliding scale, paid after the first session, by your own judgment. No one is asked their reasons. Offices pay nothing.

Confidentiality

Stays in the room

With the standard exceptions: a risk of serious harm, or a reporting duty under university policy. Sessions are recorded for my training; one recording a semester is reviewed by a credentialed mentor coach, and all are deleted at the end of the semester. If you came through an office, it learns that you came, never what was said.

First step

Book a session

Or write first with a question. Either is fine.

Book →
Three kinds of conversation

Pick the one that fits the week you’re having.

They share one method and differ in what we put on the table. You can start with one and move to another.

Strengths

1–3 sessions
CliftonStrengths assessment first

Your top themes, ranked, and then the real question: how they show up in your work, your studies and your relationships, where each one overreaches, and what you would do differently if you led from them on purpose.

Leadership

4–6 sessions
One goal you set

A transition, a decision, a conversation you are avoiding, a habit you want to change. We work on it over a few weeks with something to do between sessions. You leave with your own plan, in your own words.

Conflict

1–3 sessions
One party, not both

You bring a conflict you are in. You leave able to handle it yourself: what you want, what they might want, what you will say, what you will do if it goes badly. Not mediation, which needs both people in the room.

Sessions with one person about a conflict are coaching, not adjudication. If you need a formal process, I will say so and point you to it.
What this is, and isn’t

Drawing out, not putting in.

The profession’s own bodies — the ICF, EMCC, the Association for Coaching — define coaching as a partnership in which the client is the source and the coach owns the process, not the content. I hold to that. The word’s own history points the other way: a “coach” was a carriage, something you were carried in. The method here is older than the word and takes its model from the midwife: bringing out what is already there, and telling the true birth from the false one.
This isn’t

Counselling

Counselling heals what is hurting and works with a clinical frame. If that is what you need, I will say so, and the Counseling Center is where to go. Coaching looks forward, at what you want to build.

This isn’t

Advising

Advisors know the requirements, the deadlines and the rules, and tell you what to do. I don’t know your degree plan and won’t pretend to. I know how to ask the question that shows you what you already think.

This isn’t

Consulting or mentoring

A consultant brings the answer. A mentor brings the path they walked. Neither is on offer. Nothing arrives at the table that wasn’t already yours.

It is

An hour that is yours.

You set the agenda. I keep the time, ask the questions, notice what you skip, and hold you to what you said you wanted. You leave with your own answer, which is the only kind that lasts.

Who you’d be talking to

A student of the work, and a practitioner of it.

Joshua Beneventi. M.S. candidate in Conflict Management and Resolution at the Kroc School of Peace Studies. Leadership Coaching Certificate candidate at USD’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences, an ICF Level 2 program. Gallup-trained CliftonStrengths coach, certification in progress. Trained restorative-circle facilitator with USD’s Center for Restorative Justice. Before graduate school, fifteen years leading operations and coaching teams in the US, Europe and the Middle East, and an anthropology degree from UC San Diego. I am accumulating client hours toward the International Coaching Federation’s Associate Certified Coach credential, which is why these sessions exist at this price.
For the longer form of the work, for leaders at a threshold, see Inner Architecture. For how the method works, see the maieutic method.
For offices and programs

Three easy ways to work together.

If you run an office, a cohort or a program at USD and want this available to the people you serve, any one of these is enough, and none costs your office anything.
Refer. Mention it to people who might use it and forward this page. Host a slot. A recurring hour in a space you already have, on your calendar, for drop-in strengths conversations. Book a workshop. A 60- to 90-minute strengths or conflict-skills session for a group you already convene, with one-to-one follow-up offered afterward.
Everything in a session stays in the session. Your office learns who came and how many times, so you can see the offer is being used, and nothing else.
Book

A session, or a question first.

Tell me which kind of conversation you have in mind and two or three times that work. If you are not sure which kind, say that; the first session sorts it out.