About Coaching
Coaching creates a huge change in people’s lives. We have seen time and again this personal change played out in the lives of the coaches themselves who often go through a period of intense learning and self-discovery. The Leader that chooses to have a Coaching approach to their style of Management, will greatly impact their working environment and maintain a highly engaged workforce, however, this requires the leader to be in a Coaching relationship in order to transfer the coaching skills in their lives.
Coaching is a confidential, informal, voluntary process whereby the Coach facilitates communication with the client to assist him/her to move from where they are, to where they want to be.
Coaching is a conversation-based approach to moving someone from where they are to where they want to be. Coaching is a unique combination of being solution-focused, action-oriented, future-focused, non-advisory, facilitative, collaborative and non- expertise-driven that makes coaching the thing that it is. It a journey for self-awareness, self-discovery, and reflection combined with action, motivation and goal orientation.
What is coaching?
Coaching is a conversation-based approach to moving someone from where they are to where they want to be.
Along the way, coaching creates clarity of purpose and direction, challenges limiting beliefs and self-talk and encourages the client to move towards a successful resolution of their issues, challenges and opportunities.
Coaching is a journey of reflection, discovery and self-awareness combined with action, motivation and goal orientation.
It is unique in its focus on solutions over problems within the framework of personal discovery. Neither fully reflective nor fully active, it has a rare quality as a pragmatic, results led journey of self-exploration.
What makes coaching different?
Coaching is unique just as any form of personal intervention is unique. It’s essential you understand the difference.
Overleaf is a table showing the fundamental differences between coaching and four areas with which it is often confused. In reality, there is often a crossover between these disciplines and the demarcation is not always so clear.
In summary, we can say that what makes the difference between coaching and other forms is its unique combination of attributes. What coaching shares with one kind of intervention – for instance, it shares a focus on solutions with coaching/consulting – is absent from another area – say counseling. And yet, where coaching shares an area of common focus with another intervention it is also fundamentally different from that intervention on another way – so to continue the comparison, although coaching and consulting share a common focus on solutions, coaching arrives at the solution in a non-advisory way where consulting relies heavily on the expert guidance of the consultant.
So it’s the unique combination of being solutions-focused, action-oriented, future-focused, non-advisory, facilitative, collaborative and non-expertise driven that makes coaching the thing that it is.
What Coaching Achieves
So we now know what coaching is and what it isn’t – so the next question is: what would you use it for?
In a nutshell, we can say you would use coaching to unblock someone’s potential and support them to take the action need to make change happen. The change itself is ultimately down to the client.
So to answer the question “what does coaching achieve?” we can say it achieves “self-initiated change”.
Coaching is all about positive change. Think of it this way, if no change occurred as a result of coaching, then it has not been effective.
Of course, change is not always easy to see or measure. It could be something tangible and measurable but it could equally be an internal change or even a long term change of mindset that has repercussions throughout life.
But positive change is the object of coaching.
Coaching is a journey of reflection, discovery and self-awareness combined with action, motivation and goal orientation. Coaching very often gets confused with mentoring, consultancy, counselling, therapy and training currently. And yet, where coaching shares an area of common focus with another intervention it is also fundamentally different from that intervention on another way – so to continue the comparison, although coaching and consulting share a common focus on solutions, coaching arrives at the solution in a
Thank you Kaphha for your insightful response. I could not agree with you more.
Reflecting on what I have read from this article is that Coaching is a conversation based approach that aims to make a positive change within the client by moving them from where they are currently to where they want to be in the future. Explaining how coaching facilitates the client to self-reflect, rediscover own goals and helps clients act on actions through facilitated questions/conversation for clarity and motivation to achieve those goals. This approach is a solution focused, action orientated, non-advisory, collaborative with facilitated conversations that are also non-expertise driven.
The overall outcome of coaching would be to see a positive change within the client.
Coaching has a different approach to other personal interventions and what makes it unique is that it does not tell the client what to do or how to approach a situation. No training or expert advice are given, rather own solutions to a problem comes directly from the client themselves through the facilitation of coaching conversations. This process is called self-intiated change. However I understand that the change needed is all dependent on the client. In conclusion, coaching is a journey that helps to unblock someone’s potential for growth and supports actions needed to make that change happen.
Could not agree with you more Razaan. Well said.