More About Coaching
This section aims to provide you with some information to help you understand what coaching is, what it isn't, and what happens in a coaching session
A coaching partnership is is all about the coachee (which is rather nice and quite rare!). Coaching is 100% tailored to the needs of the coachee - it's all about their agenda, life, 'stuff'.
Coaching is based on the belief that there is more to a person than meets the eye - that all people have untapped potential waiting to be released, that all people can achieve change, improvement and development in their lives. Coaching is about helping you to move towards this greater potential.
Coaching is about helping the coachee uncover and/or focus on what they want to achieve or change in life - what they want more or less of, what they want to be different or improve. This could be anything - being more healthy, getting out of a rut, being more organised or productive, improving self confidence, improving relationships, setting up a buiness, getting a promotion, developing a team, developing as a leader, planning for a good retirement - the list goes on. And working on one area in coaching can often impact on lots of other areas of life.
A coach believes that the coachee always has the answer to their own problems but that they may need help to find it. So a coach helps the coachee to identify what they need to do - tangible strategies and actions - to achieve their desired outcomes, to take them from where they are now to where they want to be. This involves identifying small, manageable but stretching steps to build confidence and momentum for change and learn about oneself in the process.
A large part of coaching is about becoming more aware of what barriers there are to change. These barriers can be internal or external. External barriers might be lack of time, resources, etc but barriers to change are often internal habits of thinking, feeling and behaving (and often it is these that we are less aware of). Coaching is about the coach working alongside the coachee to help them to be more aware of these barriers and to dismantle them. Once aware the coachee then has a choice about taking action on them.
So coaching may not be a wholly comfortable process for the coachee - if it is they are unlikely to learn and grow and make the changes they want. As such coaching can require a high level of commitment to work on self awareness and take action. But the reward for this commitment is transformational change.
What coaching is
What coaching is not
Coaching its not consulting, mentoring or therapy, though it is related to all of those.
A coach will not be directive, they will not tell you what to do since coaching is based on the belief that the coachee can find their own solutions with support (though a coach may make suggestions if helpful and only with the coachee's permission)
Coaching is not about focussing on the past - it is about the present and future, where the coachee is today and how they are going to move forward in life.
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A coach will assist, challenge and encourage rather than direct, advise or teach (though they may teach you some generic things about how change works) .
In coaching the coachee chooses areas they want to focus on and the coach works with them by listening and contributing observations and questions to help the client to clarify their thinking and understanding of a situation and move into action to progress towards change.
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It may sound simple - but there's an element of magic in it!
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