What Is Life/Executive Coaching?
Coaching Is About Being Your Greatest
All top athletes have coaches who encourage them to be their absolute best, keep them focused on their goals and support them through challenging times. Life Coaching does the same but for your life. It is a partnership with someone who supports, guides, and empowers you to create the results you want in your personal and professional life.
It’s About Bridging the Gap
Coaching is about closing the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. It helps you address whatever isn’t working in your life right now and helps you do what it takes to create the life you want.
It’s Asking Powerful Questions
To quote Albert Einstein, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness at which they were created.” Coaches are skilled at asking you the questions that take you to a deeper level of awareness and help you see more clearly how you can get past obstacles to where you want to go.
It’s Forward-Focused and Action-Oriented
Coaching is all about you leading a successful and happy life. It’s not about dealing with the past so much as it is about creating the kind of future you want to live. For things to change, action is required. Coaching is powerful because it empowers you to take the actions that move you in the direction you want to go.
It’s About Learning New Tools for Life
Coaching is not teaching although learning is a fundamental component of coaching. It is designed to generate greater resourcefulness and stronger muscles for change. By learning new distinctions and “life tools” you can be more effective in every area of your life and be better equipped to deal with the inevitable challenges of life beyond the coaching relationship.
It’s Objective and Unconditional Support for Your Success
A coach is someone who can help you find clarity of purpose and passion then lead you in devising your own strategies to create the life you want. It also helps you in overcoming the barriers to achieving your goals, dealing with setbacks, fears and self-doubts.
It’s Your Life. You Choose How You Live It
Ultimately it is you, and you alone, who is responsible for your experience of life, what you do, who you are! Taking full responsibility for where you are now and where you want to go is the first step in transforming your life to one with more enjoyment, prosperity and passion.
Is Coaching Regulated?
The coaching profession is self-regulated through the International Coaching Federation which has a Professional Code of Ethics (see www.coachfederation.org) and the International Association of Certified Coaches (www.certifiedcoach.org). I am a member of both of these organizations.
How Is Coaching Different?
Coaching vs. Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy relies on a medical model that is past-focused to address a deficit or illness (e.g. to make an individual well). Coaching is future-oriented and promotes resilience, working with ambitious clients seeking to enhance their capabilities, achieve greater outcomes and explore new possibilities.
Coaching vs. Mentoring
Mentors are trusted advisors who guide clients by sharing wisdom gained through their experiences. Coaches promote clients’ learning by building on the client’s own successes, identifying solutions that are right for them, and thus empowering clients to generate strategies for future challenges.
Coaching vs. Consulting
Consultants offer expertise, advice or solutions typically focusing on the “what” of a situation. Coaches focus on the individual or the “who” of the situation, working one-on-one to develop the leader’s new skills and capabilities.
Coaching Means Profound Questions
Coaching isn’t about giving you, the client, all the answers. It’s about helping you find them for yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’re faced with a problem that has you “stuck.”
