What is Coaching?

What Is Coaching?
There are many definitions of coaching and as you develop as a coach you will work out your own best way of explaining to others what coaching is to you. However; most people love a definition, so one is given below.

"Coaching is an on-going partnership that helps clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life. Beginning with the clients' desires, coaching uses reporting, exploring, and a consistent commitment to move the client forward. Coaching accelerates the clients' progress by providing greater focus and awareness of choice. Coaching concentrates on where clients are today and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be tomorrow." - International Coach Federation, ICF website.

Coaching is all about helping people get from where they are in their life at present to where they want to be in the future. The core principle of coaching is that of goal orientated future focused personalised intervention to enable others to move forward with their lives more effectively than if they were doing previously.

If we are all honest with ourselves, we could all do with improving an area or so of our lives but we don’t do anything about it. It is a coach’s role to help people do what they want in life by helping them to remove the barriers that they have imposed upon themselves. When you attend one of CILC's courses you will be coached to remove your barriers and free your own potential.

A good analogy is that of a Personal Fitness Trainer.

If you were to hire a PFT they will first ask you what your goals are: lose weight, lose fat, build muscle, build endurance, increase stamina, etc. They will then see where you are with regards to your goals, e.g. weight. After establishing how much you need to lose the trainer will create a ‘plan of action’ of what you must do to achieve your weight reduction goals.

Your PFT will encourage and motivate you, will ask questions about your motivations and possible barriers that you may face. The goal of a PFT is to help you achieve your goals a lot faster and more efficiently than doing it on your own.

A coach does the same as a PFT but for other areas of life.

It is essential that a coach has a love of working with of people. If you get satisfaction from helping others to achieve their potential coaching is certainly a profession for you to be in.

A summary of coaching is outlined below:

• Non-judgemental: a coach must always be non-judgemental and they must accept the decisions and actions of the coachee. Coaches need to create an environment where the coachee can enter into self-scrutiny and start to 'judge' themself

• Equality of relationship: the coach and coachee must develop a mutual respect and trust with a unshakable common aim - the success of the coachee

• Non-advisory: coaches do not give advice – it carries responsibility. Coaching allows the coachee to discover their solution to a problem

• Goal-oriented: coaching elicits change and measurable results outside the coaching sessions

• Measurable: the results have to be measurable so that the coachee can calibrate how successfully their goals and outcomes are being achieved

• Empowering: coaching should leave the coachee feeling empowered and confident to face the future and any problems life throws at them