Coach FEATURE: Nisa Abulhasanova

We continue to meet our fellow coaches, get inspired and build coach community with our "Meet the Coach" features! This month we meet Nisa Abulhasanova, a Career & Life Coach from Azerbaijan.

Interview with Nisa

About Nisa

Lives In: Baku, Azerbaijan

Company: Azerlotereya ASC

Type of Coach: Career & Life Coach.

Describe your coaching business in one sentence: My coaching space is designed for people who want more than quick advice. Through 350+ hours of coaching conversations, I help individuals gain clarity, understand themselves deeper, and make decisions aligned with who they truly are — not only with what the world expects from them.

Meet Nisa

Nisa Abulhasanova believes coaching has the power to help people create a different reality for themselves.

For her, coaching is about creating the space for people to gain clarity, ask themselves better questions, and recognise that they are capable of making different choices.

In a recent conversation with Dr Steve Jeffs, Nisa shared how her experience across HR, career development, project management, and finance has shaped her coaching. Whether working with career coaching or life coaching clients, her focus is helping people reconnect with themselves, understand what truly matters, and move forward with greater confidence and intention.

Coaching That Brings People Closer to Themselves

When asked what she loves most about coaching, Nisa spoke about the moments when clients suddenly see something they had been unable to recognise before.

She described the satisfaction of hearing clients realise they had thought about an issue previously but had never fully understood it in the way they do during coaching.

For Nisa, powerful questions help people gain clarity and recognise they are capable of creating better options for themselves.

She believes coaching is ultimately about helping people become closer to themselves.

It is those moments of awareness and self-discovery that make coaching so rewarding for her.

Supporting Ambitious Professionals

Nisa works with both career coaching and life coaching clients, many of whom are ambitious professionals who have spent years building successful careers.

Often, they arrive having achieved impressive professional positions but feeling disconnected from their confidence, inner peace, or enjoyment of the journey.

Together, they explore the values, goals, and priorities that may have been overlooked while pursuing professional success.

She also works with clients who simply know they feel unhappy without fully understanding why.

Through thoughtful questions and deeper reflection, Nisa helps them uncover what happiness means for them and identify the reasons behind how they are feeling.

A Coaching Approach Shaped by Diverse Experience

Before becoming a coach, Nisa built a career across several different industries.

She worked as a project coordinator, supported sporting events, worked in banking as a financial controller, and spent many years in human resources before becoming an HR Business Partner.

Looking back, she realised the part of every role she enjoyed most was working with people.

Whether helping colleagues, recruiting employees, or supporting organisational stakeholders, she found herself naturally drawn towards conversations that helped people move forward.

Today, she coaches in Azerbaijani, Russian, and English, allowing her to work with clients in all three languages.

Powerful Questions, Strengths, and the Future Self

Although Nisa enjoys using a variety of coaching tools, she believes the most powerful tool is asking the right questions.

Equally important is knowing when not to ask another question, giving clients the space and silence to reflect before answering.

Her coaching regularly explores goals, values, beliefs, and whether the goals clients are pursuing genuinely belong to them.

One exercise she particularly enjoys is inviting clients to imagine advice from their future self, helping them consider the person they want to become and the direction they want their lives to take.

Throughout the conversation, Nisa also returned to the importance of recognising strengths.

Rather than focusing primarily on weaknesses, she believes people grow more effectively by building on what they already do well.

She also regularly uses the Life Wheel to help clients reflect honestly on different areas of their lives and identify where greater attention may be needed.

For Nisa, coaching depends on trust, honesty, and having the courage to talk openly about what is really happening.

Consistency Creates Progress

When discussing books that have influenced her coaching, Nisa described Atomic Habits as one of the first books that inspired her coaching journey.

Its central lesson for her is that while motivation has its place, consistency is what keeps people moving towards their goals.

She believes discipline and consistent action create lasting progress.

She also highlighted Mindset for its insights into how our thinking shapes our behaviour, and Co-Active Coaching for its exploration of coaching conversations and powerful questions.

Rather than reading a book once and moving on, Nisa often returns to books she has already read, finding that each stage of her coaching journey brings new understanding and deeper insight.

In Conclusion: Creating a Different Reality

Nisa Abulhasanova's coaching is centred on helping people see themselves more clearly.

Whether supporting ambitious professionals navigating career decisions or individuals searching for greater fulfilment, she believes meaningful change begins with awareness, honest reflection, and powerful questions.

By helping clients reconnect with their values, recognise their strengths, and create goals that genuinely belong to them, she creates coaching conversations that encourage lasting personal and professional growth.

Because lasting change begins when people become closer to themselves.

LEARN MORE about Nisa here: Follow Nisa on LinkedIn >> Follow Nisa on Instagram >>