What is Coaching?
Coaching is a highly tuned and powerful process of communication and
A ‘life coach’ is someone who is trained to help you see clearly where you are today, then find ways to move forward towards your goals. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.
They are a source of motivation and inspiration to help you reach your full potential. They are like personal trainers for your life goals.
They do not tell you what to do, they are a sounding board to help you discover what it is you want to do.
Coaching is about listening and responding. Clients already know the answer, they just need the help of a coach to see their own solutions. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources and creativity that the client already has.
Coaching is a support system that provides the client with:
An accountability partner
Safe opportunities for meaningful dialogue
New perspectives and expanded options
Inspiration and motivation
Potential solutions
Next steps
Coaching can promote BIG shifts in thinking.
This creates forward movement towards goals.
Coaching is an investment in yourself. It shows that you value yourself enough to invest in a process that will help you move forward to become the person that you really want to be.
A coach will:
Ask powerful questions
Listen to their clients’ concerns
Be supportive of their client
Help the client identify obstacles
Assist the client with setting goals, planning and strategizing
Help the client find the tools needed to move forward
Offers perspectives, options and suggestions to raise awareness
Help the client get unstuck
Empower the client to reach their goals
Hold their client accountable
Coaching – vs -Therapy:
The fundamentals of life coaching are what distinguish it from therapy. Life coaches do not diagnose, while therapists determine illnesses and pathologies so they can be clinically treated. Therapists analyze their client’s past as a tool for understanding present behaviors, whereas life coaches simply identify and describe current problematic behaviors so the client can work to modify them. In other words, therapists focus on “why” certain behavioral patterns occur, and coaches work on “how” to work toward a goal.
When you look at a life coach vs. a therapist’s practice, it’s important to know that therapists help clients explore and understand their subconscious and unconscious mind. Their goal in this exploration is deep understanding. Life coaches focus on results and actions. Their goals can be measured with key performance indicators and specific behavioral outcomes and goals.
Coaches and clients work in a less structured environment as a team rather than setting up a “doctor-patient” relationship.
The Difference Between Coaching and Counselling
Coaching
Future-focused
Solution-focused
Works towards outcomes
Does not give advice
Asks the question “How can we change?”
The client has the answers – assisted to find their own solutions
Backtracking – using client language and tone to recap important words or phrases
Counselling
Past-focused
Problem-focused
Works towards emotions
Gives advice and recommendations
Asks the question “Why should we change?”
The counsellor has the answers – gives diagnosis and treatment
Paraphrasing – restatement of a statement or text using other words