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What Is
Coaching?
A coach's job is to focus,
nudge, question, awaken, challenge, cheer, support, encourage and
motivate people so that they can claim the life they want to
live.
"If we did the things we are capable of
doing we would literally astound ourselves." — Thomas A. Edison
The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as an
ongoing partnership that helps clients produce fulfilling results
in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of
coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance,
and enhance their quality of life.
In each meeting, the client chooses the focus of conversation,
while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions.
This interaction creates clarity and moves the client into action.
Coaching accelerates the clients' progress by providing greater
focus, revealing blind spots and creating awareness of choice.
People hire a coach when they are starting a new business, making a
career transition, re-evaluating their life choices, feel out of
balance or simply feeling ready for a personal or professional
breakthrough.
 Coaching concentrates on getting
clients from where they are today to where they want to be
tomorrow.
The key concept of personal
coaching is the individual attention that the coach gives the
client. Together they may focus on long or short-term goals or work
to get through a particularly difficult life transition.
Many highly successful people hire a coach with the goal of gaining
the extra edge that they need to attain success in a competitive
world. They realize that they and their careers are worth the
investment that will help them to be their best. As time goes by
they often find that not only do their careers thrive with
coaching, but their personal lives become better balanced, and they
discover a deeper and more satisfying level of fulfillment.
Beyond the business world, people hire a coach if they want support
to make change in their lives whether it be creating a healthier
balance, increasing fulfillment in life, defining goals and values
or just looking out at the horizon. Imagine the possibilities if
you regularly stopped to focus on what you wanted in life, created
a plan to get it and had the support and encouragement to do
it.
Creating an extraordinary life takes intention, focus, disciplined
action...and support.
What
Coaching Is Not:
There is often confusion
between coaching, counseling, consulting and mentoring; it's
important to understand the distinctions between these four unique
approaches.
Each approach is highly valuable and worthwhile. While they all may
have some common threads each one addresses a different need.
How is coaching different
than counseling or therapy?
Counseling, or therapy, often looks to the past in order to
discover, heal and understand. Coaching, on the other hand, looks
to the future in order to make a good life even better. In
coaching, the starting point is the client's desire for personal
and professional success. Coaching focuses on forwarding all
aspects of the client's life to extraordinary. Coaching is not
about how you came to be who you are; it's about getting you from
where you are now to a future that you want.
How is coaching different than consulting?
A consultant is an expert who dispenses advice and has answers. The
consultant holds the agenda, imparts knowledge and offers
suggestions to improve effectiveness and increase success. Coaching
sees the client as creative, capable, intelligent, and having
answers within themselves or the resources to find them. Coaches
act on the premise that the definitive expert regarding your life
and work is you.
How is coaching different than mentoring?
A mentor often has many more years of experience than the person
being supported. Mentoring is akin to role-modeling where the
client see attributes, qualities or abilities in the mentor that
he/she wishes to learn or emulate. Coaching is a partnering of two
equals which focuses on the unique and intrinsic qualities already
within the client that may not be recognized or appreciated. The
coach helps the client affirm and embrace their own true
self.
Corporations Coaching
is used by many corporations to create a unified vision, better
team collaboration, office harmony and life balance for their
executives. In turn, this investment contributes to the company's
bottom line as the success of the employee is the success of the
company.
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