(adapted from the International Coach Federation)
Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organizational support professions.
Therapy:
Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is on resolving difficulties arising from the past that limit an individual’s ability to function in the present. The intent is to improve psychological functioning and how to deal with the present in more emotionally healthy ways.
Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth. Its purpose is to encourage individuals to learn and grow while pursuing specific actions and results. These outcomes link directly 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 emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability, and follow through.
Consulting:
Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. Consultants are expected to diagnose problems, prescribe and, often, 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 that encourages new thinking.
Mentoring:
Mentoring is most often defined as a professional relationship in which and experienced person (mentor) assists another (mentee) in developing specific skills and knowledge that will enhance the less-experienced person’s professional and personal growth.
A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience.
Although some coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, coaches are not typically mentors to those they coach.
Training:
Training programs are based on objectives set out by the trainer or instructor. Though 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 plan.
Athletic Development:
Though 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 it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that 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 opportunities for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.
The length of a coaching partnership is typically between six to 12 months involving bi-monthly meetings. There can also be shorter engagement of three to four months. The duration varies depending on the client’s needs and preferences. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals prefer to work, the frequency of coaching meetings and financial resources available to support coaching.
The coach:
- Provides objective assessment and observations that foster the individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others;
- Listens closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances;
- Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making;
- Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations;
- Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives;
- Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios; and
- Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.
The individual:
- Creates the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals;
- Uses assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others;
- Envisions personal and/or organizational success;
- Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions;
- Utilizes the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives;
- Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations;
- Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills; and
- Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions.
Measurement may be thought of in two distinct ways: external indicators of performance and internal indicators of success. Ideally, both are incorporated.
Examples of external measures include achievement of coaching goals established at the outset of the coaching relationship, obtaining a promotion, performance feedback that is obtained from a sample of the individual’s constituents (e.g., direct reports, colleagues, boss), closing the performance gap. The external measures selected should be things the individual is already measuring and has some ability to directly influence.
Examples of internal measures include self-scoring/self-validating assessments that can be administered initially and at regular intervals in the coaching process, changes in the individual’s self-awareness and awareness of others, shifts in thinking that create more effective actions, and shifts in one’s emotional state that inspire confidence.
Working with a coach requires both a personal commitment of time and energy as well as a financial commitment. Fees charged vary by specialty and by the level of experience of the coach. Individuals should consider both the desired benefits as well as the anticipated length of time to be spent in coaching.
