Since there is not really a common understanding of what coaching is, and lots of confusion and misconceptions about it, it might be helpful to say a bit about what it is not.
Coaching is not advice. A coach does not tell you what to do, or how to do it. They may indeed have studied relevant skills and may enhance coaching with some practical how-to, but this is not the focus of coaching.
Coaching is not education or training.
Coaching is not therapy. In fact, if therapy is indicated, it is the coach’s responsibility to refer the client out to a qualified professional.
Coaching is not encouragement, though it will likely include it.
Coaching is not support.
Coaching is not friendship.
Coaching is not coercion, or carrot-and-stick motivation, or accountability — though it may include accountability if the client wants it.
So, if coaching is not any of these things, what IS it?
Coaching begins with exploration. What is eating you? What gets your goat? What do you love and want more of? Where do you want to be in a week? A month? A year? What’s working, and what’s not?
Coaching is about you and what you want.
Coaching is sometimes about hearing something that no one else in your life would say to you.
Coaching is about being able to say things you never even knew you knew, to someone whose only goal is to help you move forward where you want to go.
Coaching is about a safe and confidential place to do all that — to explore, to express — and to plan, and to execute and tune the plan. (I mean, we may love our families and our friends, AND we have to realize that their advice and suggestions may be just a tiny bit colored by how your growth and change will affect them, and who can blame them?)
Coaching is about a fresh take on something you have gotten so used to, you can’t see it. If you can’t see the forest for the trees, coaching is about climbing a tall tree and looking.
If you don’t like heights, let’s try another way of looking at it.
In my teens and early 20s, I was making extra money learning the trade of auto mechanics in a local repair shop. I made lots of mistakes, which is normal when you are learning something new. The owner, Tom, or the top mechanic, Brad, would keep an eye on me, and make suggestions, offer a tip, lend a special tool.
One afternoon, Brad heard me cussing about something that wasn’t going together right. After watching me for a minute, he said, “I know what’ll help.”
Brad went over to the wall, pulled a work light out of its reel, and came back with it shining very brightly. “If you don’t have enough light, it’s no wonder you’re missing a lot of stuff.”
That observation radically improved how I fixed that car, and every car I worked on after that, and has changed my life in countless ways ever since.
Coaching is kind of like that.
What do you think? Have you ever experienced that kind of coaching, the kind that went beyond advice? The kind of coaching that gave you a tool you’re never had before, something you got to keep for good?
And what if you did?
Preston Larus, CPC 