What is coaching?

Coaching is a partnership that expands the possibilies of perspectives and creates

• TheInternational Coach Federation (ICF) defines professional coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.”

• The Association for Coaching defines it as “a facilitated, dialogic and reflective learning process that aims to grow the individuals (or teams) awareness, responsibility and choice (thinking and behavioural). ” 

• Here is the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) definition of coaching and mentoring. “It is a professionally guided process that inspires clients to maximise their personal and professional potential. It is a structured, purposeful and transformational process, helping clients to see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision making and enhancement of quality of life. Coach and Mentor and client work togetmy in a partnering relationship on strictly confidential terms. In this relationship, clients are experts on the content & decision making level; the coach & mentor is an expert in professionally guiding the process.”  

• The Institute for Life Coach Training defines it as “a professional relationship that helps people produce extraordinary results in their lives, careers, businesses or organizations, helping them to bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. Coaches partner with their clients to design the life they want, bring out their clients’ own brilliance and resources so that they can achieve excellence and create purposeful, extraordinary lives. By creating clarity, coaching moves the client into action, accelerating their progress by providing greater focus and awareness of all the possibilities which exist to create fulfilling lives.”

What Coaching Is Not

Coaching has its unique value compared to other interventions like mentoring, counselling, therapy or skills training.  

It is not Counselling… Counselling is a professional guidance of the individual by utilizing psychological methods, especially in collecting case history data, using various techniques of the personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes. While counselling invests time looking in one’s past, coaching focuses on one’s future. Coaching is a conversation focused on partnering coachees move forward to their goals, hopes, and curiosities—not to dig into their past.

It is not Mentoring… Mentoring is experience sharing between two individuals. While coaching is a true partnership among equals, mentoring most typically consists of a more experienced person directly guiding the mentee through an experience that the mentor have already been through. It has similarities such with coaching such ad being curious until finding the real need of the mentee. Then, differs from coaching at the phase of action planning that allows suggestions from the mentor.

It is not Training… Training is a facilitation of certain topics through knowlegde and tool sharing. It is an organized activity aimed at imparting information and/or instructions to improve the recipient’s performance or to help him or her attain a required level of knowledge or skill. It refers to educational activities within a company created to enhance the knowledge and skills of employees while providing information and instruction on how to better perform specific tasks.