WHAT IS COACHING?
The International Coach Federation (ICF) defines coaching as ‘partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.’ In this partnership, the coach sees the client as the expert in his or her life. The coach is the expert in the process of creating positive change. The coach’s responsibility is to:
- Discover, clarify and align with what the client wants to achieve
- Encourage client self-discovery
- Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies
- Hold the client responsible and accountable.
This process helps clients dramatically improve their outlook on work and life, while improving their leadership skills and unlocking their potential. For more information, please see www.coachfederation.org
Questions & Answers
Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change. But often we hear the word coaching used in the same breath as other service professions. Here is how the International Coach Federation (ICF) makes the distinction:
Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphases in a coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.
Consulting: Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counselling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.
Training: Training programs are based on objectives set out by the trainer or instructor. Although objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached, with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path that coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum.
Sports Coaching: Although sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from sports coaching. The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behaviour of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but their experience and knowledge of the individual or team determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviours that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.
For further information, see here.
- Provide objective assessment and observations that foster the Coachee’s self-awareness and awareness of others
- Listen closely to fully understand the Coachee’s circumstances
- Act as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making
- Champion opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations
- Foster shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives
- Challenge blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios
- Maintain professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adhere to the coaching profession’s standard of ethics.
For further information, see here.
Coaching is a partnership between the Coach and the Coachee. When you are being coached, in order to ensure success, your role as the Coachee in our Coaching Partnership is to:
- Create the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful goals
- Use the assessments and observations offered to enhance your self-awareness and awareness of others
- Envision your personal and/or organisational success
- Assume full responsibility for personal decisions and actions
- Utilise the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives
- Take courageous action in alignment with your personal goals and aspirations
- Engage in big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills
- Take the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engage in effective forward actions.
For further information, see here.
In line with ICF guidelines, the Coaching Process has the following key elements:
- Personal Consultation – The Coaching Process starts when you contact me to arrange a personal consultation (by telephone), which will last 20-30 minutes. We will use this time to assess your current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action and establish your specific desired outcomes. We will determine whether and how we can work together to achieve your objectives
- Coaching sessions may be conducted in person, over the telephone, or by Skype/video with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one’s personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments or models to support the individual’s or business’ thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on needs and preferences.
- Assessments: A variety of assessments are available to support the coaching process, depending upon the needs and circumstances of the individual or business. Assessments provide objective information that can enhance self-awareness, as well as awareness of others and their circumstances; provide a benchmark for creating coaching goals and actionable strategies; and offer a method for evaluating progress.
- Concepts, models and principles: A variety of concepts, models and principles drawn from the behavioural sciences and management literature, may be incorporated into the coaching conversation to increase self-awareness and awareness of others, foster shifts in perspective, promote fresh insights, provide new frameworks for looking at opportunities and challenges, and energize and inspire forward actions.
- Appreciative approach: Coaching incorporates an appreciative approach, grounded in what’s right, what’s working, what’s wanted and what’s needed to get there. Using an appreciative approach, the coach models constructive communication skills and methods to enhance personal communication effectiveness. He or she incorporates discovery-based inquiry, proactive (as opposed to reactive) ways of managing personal opportunities and challenges, constructive framing of observations and feedback to elicit the most positive responses from others, and visions of success as contrasted with focusing on problems. The appreciative approach is simple to understand and employ, and its reach can be profound, opening up new possibilities and spurring action.
For further information, see here.
I’ve seen throughout my career the transformative effects that good coaching can have on an individual’s confidence and success. Working with a Coach requires you to make a personal commitment of your time and energy, as well as a financial commitment. So, in line with ICF advice, it’s worth asking yourself a few key questions before you start:
- Are you prepared to devote the time and energy to making real change in your life or career?
- Do you value collaboration, different viewpoints and new ideas?
- Do you know broadly what you want to achieve?
- Are you ready to take action?
If the answer is YES to these questions, then it doesn’t matter whether you are a private individual or a corporate employee; or which stage of your life or career you’re at. What matters is that you’re Ready for Coaching.
For more details see here.
I’ve seen throughout my career the transformative effects that good coaching can have on an individual’s confidence and success. Working with a Coach requires you to make a personal commitment of your time and energy, as well as a financial commitment. So it’s worth asking yourself a few key questions before you start:
- Are you prepared to devote the time and energy to making real change in your life or career?
- Do you value collaboration, different viewpoints and new ideas?
- Do you know broadly what you want to achieve?
- Are you ready to take action?
If the answer is YES to these questions, then you are probably at a place in your life when you are Ready for Coaching! It doesn’t matter whether you are a private individual or a corporate employee; or which stage of your life or career you’re at. What matters is that you’re Ready for Coaching.
Of course, many successful people are already using coaches. Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google both believe that ‘everyone needs a coach… ‘whether we are a CEO, leader, teacher, basketball player or bridge player, we all need people who will help us reach our goals and give us feedback’.
For further information, see here.