What Is Coaching?
In Short…
A coach is a thinking partner that provides support and evokes self-awareness to help you move beyond assumptions and obstacles and gain new perspectives. Coaches ask questions that encourage your own reflection and exploration that will help you discover new solutions and new ways forward to reach your goals.
Coaching is not the same as consulting, mentoring or counseling. A mentor or consultant guides you with their own experience and wisdom and gives you direction. Counseling or therapy deals with identifying and healing deeper inner-struggles. While coaching can be therapeutic, it is not therapy.
A coach encourages you to draw on your own experiences and wisdom to discover new ways forward and reach new levels.
Coaching is for leaders, ministers, business owners, those facing transition or anyone else wanting to accelerate growth, create margin in their life, increase leadership skills or set and reach important goals.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires a person to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.
Understanding Your Role In Coaching
There is a lot of confusion about what is actual coaching. One major piece is always true. Coaching is all about you, the client. A coach helps you focus and on reaching your goals and helps you be accountable to yourself.
Coaching is a Partnership
As your coaching journey begins, you and your coach will establish a coaching agreement, laying a foundation for this partnership and the work you will do together. This agreement will define roles, responsibilities and rights of all parties involved. This agreement will also establish the length of the agreement, as well as the frequency and duration of your sessions.
The Coach’s Role
A coach will help you discover and align with what you want to achieve. You and your coach will co-create a safe space, encouraging your creativity and self-discovery. To help facilitate this, your coach may use powerful questions, as well as tools like personality or gifts assessments to help you explore and and brainstorm possibilities that you can use to create your own solutions. You’ll take one-dimensional ideas or issues and make them multi-dimensional. Rather than simply solve problems, we help you see the situations in a clearer fashion. Then, the resolution of your roadblocks or setbacks often seems obvious.
Your coach may sometimes give you homework between sessions to help you keep up the momentum of your discovery and progress.
Your Role
You are creative, capable and whole. You are also the foremost expert in your own life. You should expect to work hard, be honest with yourself and be willing to explore things that make you feel uncomfortable. Because you and your coach have established a safe place, you can ask yourself questions and discover answers. When stuck, explore what you need to learn or uncover to move forward. Then, take action to align your life with your goals.
The more open and honest you are throughout the process, the better you can benefit from a coaching relationship. Transformation and breakthrough in achieving your goals might be easier than you think!
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If you agree with the above statements, you’re ready for a great coaching experience! If not, let’s still connect and explore what your first steps could look like to set you on your best path to achieve your goals.
