What I love about coaching is that it is such a diverse profession. Every coach is a unique blend of their culture, professional and life experience, style and personality. Every coach works to serve people who most resonate with their background, or sometimes, those who find that the differences in their experience could shed a new light on their own path.
Because there are so many flavours of coaching and coaches who offer mixed services, I thought it’d be worthwhile jotting down what 1:1 coaching isn’t to clear up misconceptions that potential clients may have.
1. Coaching isn’t Therapy
Psychotherapy focuses on creating solutions for the client’s emotional or mental problems, and goes deeper into the experience of client through dialogues to address feelings and thoughts. It is primarily a healing process, with the source of the issue as a single event that has passed, e.g. trauma or loss, or as a series of events or patterns which impacted the mental wellbeing of the individual.
Though some theories in coaching are based on psychoanalysis such as cognitive behavioural therapy and other fields in psychology, coaching is fundamentally a way to allow clients to focus on their present and future, and not the past. In coaching, we may touch on past events or explore patterns of how the past may have shaped where you are right now, but the past only serves to inform the future. It is not about fixing a problem, but more around co-creating a vision, systems and strategies that would be sustainable for the client. The objectives of the coaching sessions do not have to be specific to the client’s mental wellbeing or relationships, and can stretch broadly into career performance, physical wellbeing and fitness, improving time management and motivation and many other topics as the client desires.
2. Coaching isn’t Consulting
Having been a management consultant previously, I can safely say that consulting is a totally different beast to coaching!
Consulting relies on the consultant being an expert in a field, often equipped with skills, experience and knowledge that the client needs, to provide advice to the client. Clients normally approach consultants in hope to explore the problem, produce options and select a chosen solution at the end of the consultation. The conversation could be rather directive from the consultant to the client, often with the consultant having ‘deliverables’ to present back to the client at the end of the consultation.
Coaching is fundamentally a co-creating but client-driven process. The role of the coach is to facilitate the thinking of the client. This can be through the use of various tools and techniques, but the ways forward need to come from the clients. A good coach would use silence wisely, allowing time for the client to think for themselves, and pose challenges only when the time is right. A coach would also not give out much advice to the client, as coaches believe that the clients know themselves best. The rapport between coaches and clients comes from the coaches trusting the clients having the answers in themselves, and the clients trusting that the coaches, through questions, reflections and challenges, would be able to draw out the best from themselves.
3. Coaching isn’t Mentoring
Coaching has often been associated with mentoring, and some clients have approached me seeking for mentorship in the past. Mentoring often requires someone who may have slightly more experience in a field that the mentee wishes to explore, and although peer or reverse mentoring is also possible, the mentor role often involves advice giving to the mentee.
In a coaching relationship, the coach is at the same level as the client, and coaches do not give advice to the client. Coaches trust that the clients have their ways forward buried in them — the coach’s role is to support the clients in unpicking their situation and fishing options out. It is worth noting that some times the clients touch on deeper questions about their beliefs and identities that they may not expect. In these instances, it is up to the client and the coach to work out whether these routes are to be explored further together.
What is coaching then, really?
Therapy, consulting, mentoring and coaching each have their own space and use. Personally, I’d like to think that coaching is the simplest and yet most effective approach if you feel stuck in your current situation, and that you’d like to explore your vision, passions and goals in life.
To put it simply, coaching is an intentional conversation that enables someone to live towards a better future. In a successful coaching session, you may not even notice the techniques and tools that the coach has used — it would simply feel like an flowing dialogue, with the coach being fully present on you. The coach may ask for your permission to share some observations with you through the conversation; at times these may come as a surprise or a challenge, but if you are ready for a change in your life, then these could be observations that help you reflect and grow.
A good coach will also be a good listener, and be someone who can hold yourself accountable to what you do. After all (as I was reminded by a client), will power is a limited resource. Working through a big change on your own could also be time-consuming and demotivating, especially if you sway off track. So why not share your thoughts with a coach, gain a different perspective, and start gearing up for change?
I hope this article has given you clarity on what coaching is and isn’t. Feel free to share your thoughts with me here!
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