Coaching Services

Coaching with Ilene Berns-Zare

Ilene Berns-Zare sees coaching as a collaborative relationship through which clients can access their own answers, competencies, and choices. Ilene’s ability to listen deeply and intuitively, ask thought-provoking questions, and help people discover their own voices within the contexts of their lives are hallmarks of her work as a coach.
Ilene is a member of several professional organizations – International Coach FederationAmerican Psychological Association, and Illinois Psychological Association. She is a blogger for Psychology Today and serves as a facilitator for the Wise Aging Project of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Ilene is a contributing writer and coach for the ABD (All But Dissertation) Survival Guide.

Read Ilene’s Biography Here to Learn More

What kind of people work with Ilene?

Ilene’s clients typically share some similar characteristics. If one or more of these strengths sound like you, but you find yourself getting stuck or not moving forward towards your goals, then coaching may be an excellent fit for you:

  • Willing to Work Hard: I work hard on things and am willing to do what it takes to be successful.
  • Enjoy Learning and Growing: I like to gain new information, and skills. I am willing to consider and try new ideas and implement them in my life.
  • Action-Oriented: I feel good when I get started and I like to take action. A coach can help me figure out what actions I want to take and offer support, feedback, and accountability.
  • Higher Purpose: I strive to live so that my beliefs are in sync with my actions and I have existing or emerging beliefs about the big picture of things.
  • Strive for Excellence: I try to approach life with the intention to do my best and achieve with a high level of success.
  • Resourceful: I seek out the resources I need to get things done.

Life & Leadership Coaching for Professionals

In addition to many people seeking to make changes in their lives, lots of professionals work with life & leadership coaches: executives, educators, engineers, health care professionals, media/internet, pharmaceutical. These people are successful in many areas and can include:

  • Professionals seeking greater balance between professional and personal goals.
  • Professionals on the brink of change.
  • Leaders ready to advance in career path or take their careers to the next level.

Learn More About Life Coaching to Flourish at Midlife and Beyond

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” ― Lao Tzu

Ways people can use Life & Leadership Coaching with Ilene for their benefit:

  • Exploring Personal and Professional Objectives
  • Expanding Leadership Skills and Maximizing Potential
  • Life and/or Career Transition
  • Getting Unstuck and Moving Towards What is Important
  • Work and Life Balance – Juggling your Life
  • Answering the Question: What is the Next Step in My Life
  • Living Life with Personal Clarity, Vision, Meaning, and/or Purpose
  • Managing Time and Prioritizing
  • Navigating and Sticking to Wellness Goals
  • Finding and Getting to “Something More for Me”
  • Solving Problems
  • Managing or Creating Change in Life Direction
  • Doing Things Successfully /Focusing on a Specific Goal
3 Powerful Steps To Reflect - IBZ Coaching

Ilene Welcomes Your Questions About Coaching!

Why Choose Coaching?

  • Are you ready to gain clarity and move forward on your strengths as a positive, mindful leader in your life and leadership?
  • Are you looking for greater life-work balance?
  • Have your kids left home and you’re ready for your own prime time?
  • Are you looking toward a thriving, fulfilling retirement?
  • Do you want to connect to your purpose or calling in life?
  • Are you thinking of making a major change in your life?
  • Are you ready to do something about your “what if’s” and move toward who you can become?
4 leadership strategies for everyone IBZ Coaching

Subscribe to Ilene’s Monthly Newsletter

Ilene is a Blogger for Psychology Today

Working with Ilene

  • Ilene empowers clients to listen to their inner voice and heart, clarify goals, and focus on positive steps to reach their vision and life objectives.
  • Ilene supports clients to create their own plan and hold to it, so it doesn’t get lost in the day to day of life.
  • Ilene can help clients move towards their personal and/or professional best.

Ilene’s Qualifications:

Frequently Asked Questions

The coaching process is based on the premise that YOU are the expert on your life. Together, we would co-create a coaching process designed to help you move from ideas to action, prioritizing your goals, clarifying your strengths, and empowering yourself toward greater fulfillment, balance, and effectiveness. We would help you explore your strengths, resources, and creativity to discover solutions and move towards your personal and professional best. Coaching helps you design actions and uses accountability strategies to help you stay on track to create the actions you desire. No two people are the same, and everyone’s coaching journey is different. The Awareness, Choices, and Actions are yours. Learning to listen to yourself and make better decisions that fit with your goals, you can learn to be your own coach!

Coaching is NOT mentoring, consulting, or psychotherapy. It is an educational and personal/professional development process for people who are already functional and want to move forward in their lives. Coaches help people build on information, strengths and skills they already have, develop their vision, and implement an action plan to realize their goals. A successful coaching relationship is a process in which coach and client co-create an alliance in which the client can discover and build on her/his own strengths.

Anyone can say they are a coach because coaching is not currently regulated by the government. The International Coaching Federation represents the highest quality in professional coaching with standards of practice, core competencies, and specific education requirements to credential coaches.

You can be in any location you choose during your coaching meetings. Most clients prefer meeting by phone, but other options are available. We typically meet one-to-one weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly, usually for 45 minutes.

I welcome your questions about coaching and offer a free 30-minute consultation to discuss what matters to you, your goals, current life circumstances, and any obstacles you’ve been facing as you strive to reach your most important goals. During this conversation, we can become acquainted, and mutually establish if we could be a good fit as a coaching team. To explore whether coaching is a good choice for you, please click here.

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” ― Louis Pasteur

Hear From Ilene’s Clients

“At year’s end, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your wonderful newsletters. Just now I listened to your podcast. From that 15 minutes, I have gained some motivation to review the notes from your seminar. In turn, that will give me an extra boost that I need right now. As you can see, your wisdom keeps extending itself to me! Thank you for all you have done for me. I am wishing you all the best!”

Renee
Northwest Suburban, IL

“Thank you so much for today – it was a wonderful webinar. Very insightful, very calming and reassuring. You always have so much to offer, and I’m truly grateful for your willingness to share your time and talent with us.”

Lynndah Easterwood Lahey, Wheeling Township
Arlington Heights, IL

“As a library program coordinator, I greatly appreciated Dr. Berns-Zare’s willingness and enthusiasm to try an online webinar format in response to our need to cancel in-person events at this time. She did an excellent job adjusting her presentation to this format and kept it engaging.

Our patrons also gave positive feedback, stating that they enjoyed the “Hitting Your Stride at Midlife and Beyond” program and felt they walked away with concrete suggestions for ways to enhance their lives, especially during this difficult time. I think so many of the topics that Dr. Berns-Zare speaks on are especially relevant right now and would recommend them to other program coordinators, whether in-person or virtual.”

Stavroula Harissis, Indian Trails Public Library
Wheeling, Illinois

“I’ll admit I had my doubts about coaching before working with Ilene. As a high-performing “Type A” personality, I had never thought of myself as someone who needed coaching. Wasn’t that just for people who weren’t cutting it? I knew my craft as a marketer and had plenty of job-specific training under my belt. How could a coach who has never worked in my field help?

I’m glad I took the plunge. You are in charge with Ilene. Her structured coaching process forced my thinking into new areas of opportunity, and helped me see key areas of my business that I was ignoring. Even though I was already making progress towards my goals, I feel even more certain that I am on the right path today. I highly recommend Ilene to anyone interested in maximizing the contribution they make to their business.”

Rich Delaney, Rich Delaney Marketing
Oak Park, IL

“I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Ilene Berns-Zare on a presentation that she gave for the Community Parent Network of Stevenson High School. Ilene was thorough and worked hard to understand what our committee was looking for, while also offering her own ideas. Her approach to the topic of mindfulness was flexible and she was willing to meet our community needs. Ilene was warmly received by the community while speaking in a knowledgeable and engaging manner. Everyone left the presentation feeling like they learned something valuable.”

Mara Heichman (CPC, ELI-MP)