Coaching is a training method consisting of regular interaction, on a weekly basis, between you and your coach. Effective coaching is based on five fundamental principles of education that create lasting change: knowledge, application, motivation, accountability, and time.

Though coaching shares many characteristics with related learning processes, it is unique in many significant ways. To understand exactly what coaching IS, it is helpful to clarify it and then compare it to what coaching is NOT.

Coaching is:

Establishing Relationships of Accountability

The essence of coaching is to establish relationships of accountability that inspire and motivate. These relationships are best achieved after goals and action plans have been co-constructed. Once a foundation of trust has been laid, your coach can support and monitor your success.

Drawing Out Needs and Solutions

Effective coaches draw out needs and solutions from their clients. A good coach knows that if you “tell them” they will doubt it, but if you “draw it out from them” they will own it. In most cases you already know most the answers—it’s the job of your coach to draw them out from you. Your coach will seek to understand each situation you face as they guide you toward the discovery of solutions.

Being a Sounding Board

A coach’s role is to listen, to amplify, and to clarify without altering or judging. Effective coaches re-state what they hear. Your coach will empower you to determine if you are “playing in the right key” as you determine appropriate next steps and will hold you accountable to your commitment to follow through with them.

Celebrating Successes

Celebrating successes is a constant part of the coaching experience. Nothing is more valuable than an ongoing recognition of the small—but significant—things that go right as you progress toward your goals. Your coach will motivate you by encouraging you to take time to pause and reflect on what you have accomplished.

Coaching is not:

Telling

Telling another how to solve or overcome a challenge keeps them from discovering and owning solutions themselves. To truly educate is to educe. To educe is to draw out. Coaching seeks to draw out from you the best that is within you, including solutions, ownership, & self-accountability.

Directing

Directing can limit another’s ability to be creative and self-sufficient as they seek to follow someone else’s directives. Coaching seeks to empower you to direct your own life.

Consulting

Consulting deals with providing answers and helps others solve immediate problems but does not create in them long-term, permanent capabilities. Coaching deals with asking questions and drawing out answers from within you.

Training

Training operates with a fixed agenda and instructional design. Though there are foundational principles that most clients need to build from, coaching deals with designing the process and work around your agenda.

Therapy

Therapy deals with healing or repairing something from the past. Coaching deals with proactive motion for the present and forward into the future.

Counseling

Counseling deals with remedial approaches to overcoming deficits. Coaching emphasizes your strengths and achievements.

Mentoring

Mentoring is usually career focused only, and creates future behaviors based on the wisdom and expertise of someone else. Coaching deals with supporting the experiences and wisdom of the client in all the significant roles they play in life (personal, family, professional, etc.) while making relevant changes.