what's coaching?
Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.
Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.
is coaching for you?
Personal coaching, like fitness training, is not something you can be forced to do. You have to want to submit yourself to a kind of discipline, even though you yourself will define the workings of that discipline. There's no point in paying for life coaching, for example, if you don't want to follow up on the assignments you've given yourself, or continuously sabotage your own efforts. It is about progress, not perfection, but you need be willing to make a commitment and participate fully.
difference between coaching and therapy
If life is a ball of yarn, therapy helps you unravel the tangles.
Coaching helps you knit a sweater.
~ Nancy Gerber
Let’s say you wanted to learn to drive a car. If you hired a:
Therapist, the therapist would help you find out what might be holding you back from driving the car. He would delve into your past to discover what kinds of experience you have had with automobiles.
Consultant, the consultant would bring you an owner’s manual and tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the workings of a car. The consultant would then leave you. She might return six months later to see how you had managed the actual driving part.
Mentor, the mentor would share her experiences of driving cars and the wisdom and lessons she had learned in her more rich experience with the matter.
Coach, the coach would seat you in the car, place himself in the passenger seat, and encourage, endorse, acknowledge and support you until you felt comfortable enough to go it alone.
| Therapy | Coaching | |
| Focuses on healing and understanding | Focuses on evolving and manifesting potential; healing is a side-effect | |
| Emphasizes past and present | Emphasizes present and future | |
| Is insight-oriented | Is action and ‘being’ oriented | |
| Is problem-oriented | Is solutions-oriented | |
| Explores genesis of behaviors that create low self-esteem | Explores actions and behaviors that manifest high self-esteem | |
| Asks “why?” and “from where?” | Asks “what’s next / what now?” | |
| Works mainly with internal issues | Works mainly with external issues | |
| Accountability is not commonly expected | Accountability is commonly expected | |
| Uses therapy techniques | Uses coaching skills |
I.C.F.
The International Coach Federation (ICF) is the largest worldwide resource for business and personal coaches. The ICF is a nonprofit, individual membership organization formed by professionals worldwide who practice business and personal coaching.The ICF is the leader in developing a definition and philosophy of coaching, as well as, establishing a set of ethical standards that ICF members pledge to uphold. Click here to view ICF's CODE of ETHICS.