FAQs About Coaching
What is coaching?
Want to know how you can be better? How you can improve and be the best you can be? Coaching is the answer. Coaching is a facilitated process where the essential components are deep listening, powerful questions, reflection, summarizing, feedback and occasionally providing ideas and resources.
Coaching is not consulting or telling you what to do; it is helping you clarify and control their world. It helps you see what they are doing in light of your goals, dreams, values and intentions. It provides you with new choices and leads to change. Coaching helps to go beyond the mental barriers of what you thought was possible.
Coaching works as a partnership between coach and coachee. We clarify goals, to make them challenging and motivating, then create a path to achieve those goals with the energy that comes from your deepest values and desires.
Coaches are specially trained to work with people in all walks of life to help them achieve their goals, live their values and be the best they can be.
Leadership Coaching is one of the most economical and efficient ways to learn, combining desire for results with a process that helps to overcome obstacles. It works because we leverage your strengths to create your desired results.
What makes a coaching relationship successful?
- A clearly defined action plan that drives the process.
- Confidentiality, communication and commitment.
- A receptive leader who seeks change or growth.
- A strong, co-created partnership between the coach and the coachee.
How is coaching different from consulting, mentoring or counseling?
Consulting usually deals with the whole business, or a specific department or unit. A consultant is paid to come into an organization, analyze the situation and provide a recommendation to solve a problem, improve a process, restructure, etc. He or she is the expert. Coaching may be recommended by a consultant.
Mentoring is an informal relationship, where a senior person (usually in the same organization) guides a less experienced person to increase skill or develop stronger interpersonal relationships within the organization. A mentor must be either a subject matter expert for the mentee or provide some other specific developmental opportunity.
Counseling or therapy are focused on discovering and dealing with a client’s problems. The client comes to therapy or counseling because they feel dissatisfied with their life and want relief from psychological and/or physical symptoms. A counselor or therapist must have specific training, education and credentials to perform their function. In this case, the client wants to eliminate pain or discomfort rather than move towards desired goals. Therapy and counseling often seek to understand the past and what went wrong in order to be better in the present. Coaching is present and future focused.
Training and teaching involve the transfer of skills and knowledge to the learner. The trainer or teacher is the subject matter expert. In coaching, the coach is not the expert, coaching instead asks powerful questions. Coaching explores the present and co-creates the future with the coachee. The coachee learns in the process, but the coach does not teach directly.
How did coaching originate?
The idea was first used in sports for a person who helped an athlete train and improve. All top athletes have a coach. From there, the idea spread to create leadership coaching, relationship coaching, life coaching and more. A significant milestone in this coaching evolution was the publication of Timothy Gallway’s book, ‘The Inner Game of Tennis.’ This book used ideas from sports coaching in a much broader application, and is still read by many coaches today.
What are your coaching ethics?
Please click here to download the full copy of the International Coach Federation Code of Ethics. As an active member, I am bound and honored to uphold these standards.