What the hell is Life Coaching?

In my speaking engagements, I have often compared coaching today to the psychotherapy of the 1920s. The level of public understanding of coaching, outside of people in a certain sociodemographic category, is still in its infancy. We are all so saturated with the language of psychoanalysis – it is difficult to read a book or watch a movie that is not based on this shared language – that we probably do not consider that there was a time when practitioners were asked:

“Now you do what, exactly?”

“And would I tell you my dream because it would reveal what?”

“So there’s this free association thing, which apparently still costs something, and I give them the first thing that comes to mind because there are these subconscious urges that I have.”

For those who are not yet initiated, coaching may sound like this. What is it and why would you want to do it?

Coaching, whether it’s for career or business, existential questions or relationships, starts with alignment.
Coaches align you, your actions and thoughts, and your own lifestyle with who you say you are or want to be.

In other words, we will ensure that your way of living, thinking, acting and working is integrated with the fundamental values ​​and objectives that you say you have. If you don’t know what your ultimate values ​​and goals are, then that can be trained as well.

It is not by magic that coaches help clients achieve their goals. From the practical and action-oriented to the big questions, coaches draw on the best of management consulting, best business practices, motivational and cognitive psychology, sports performance, ethics and spirituality, Socratic dialogue and philosophy.

Fundamentally, coaches help clients get out of their own way.

COACHING BRIEFLY DEFINED

Here is a definition of coaching, from the International Coach Federation:

“Professional Coaching is a professional partnership between a qualified coach and an individual or team that supports the achievement of extraordinary results, based on goals set by the individual or team. Through the coaching process, individuals focus on the skills and actions necessary to successfully produce your personally relevant results.

“The individual or team chooses the focus of the conversation, while the coach listens and provides observations and questions, as well as concepts and principles that can help generate possibilities and identify actions…Coaching accelerates the progress of the individual or team. team by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. . . . . [R]results are a matter of the intentions, choices and actions of the individual or team, supported by the efforts of the coach and the application of coaching skills, approaches and methods.”

If your definition of a coach is borrowed from high school or college athletics, where the athlete is below the coach and may even be fired by him, then the term “coach” may be a bit misleading to you. A personal or executive trainer is more like the trainer of a professional track star or tennis player: in these professional relationships, the trainer and the client are two equals and partners, and it is really the client who decides how long the client stays. coach. the team.

THE PROCESS

A coach begins, from a place of generosity of will and spirit, by getting to know you as a person and formally identifying your goals and values, using a variety of internal or standardized assessments. The coach then analyzes the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

A coach will then work with you to bridge that gap by eradicating your self-limiting thinking, reducing your stress and improving your efficiency, and getting you to stretch and try new things and ways of being. A coach will help you implement strategies to reach your goals, tactical steps to carry out your strategy, and the day-to-day to keep you focused on tactical responsibility, strategy, goal, all while staying explicitly true to your values.

Coaching is basically about expanding your consciousness and taking responsibility for yourself. Trainers expand clients’ self-awareness and then help them take responsibility for what they have learned. It can be a sophisticated way of teaching, mentoring, and partnering in a company with a single focus: your personal, professional, and even spiritual development. Trainers show you ways to find clarity, guide you to be aware of your real situations (including how you get in your own way), and show you how to act based on what you know.

To be mentored, then, is to get experienced, committed, and insightful help to (1) find clarity on issues big and small, (2) deepen your understanding of what’s holding you back, and, most importantly, (3) be guided toward acting on your knowledge to make the desired and lasting change in your life.

WHO IS TRAINED?

Coaching clients are clear that they want something, just about anything, sooner and with more certainty of getting it than they could on their own. It could be learning, career advancement, satisfaction, higher performance, better relationships, or quality of life. Clients do not attempt, through coaching, to address emotional pain or psychological distress. This is one of the key differences between coaching and counseling. See more at http://www.ferocacoaching.com/coaching-and-counseling.html.

Trained clients are performing well and are able to take action toward their goals. Coaches look to the present and the future; they discuss the past primarily to clarify where the customer is today. Critically, coaching does not need to resolve past problems in order to move forward.

THE RELATIONSHIP IN A FEW WORDS

The coaching relationship is the key to your success. The trainer and the client are partners. Mutual appreciation and respect is not just a byproduct of your time together, but the engine of training success. A rarity in relationships, coach and client are collaborators in a joint venture: the client. At my coaching firm, our philosophy is that clients already have many of the answers inside of them, and to the extent that that’s the case, it’s the coach’s job to bring them out.

Trainers often don’t present themselves as experts or authorities on the subject as much as on the process. The client and her trainer jointly choose the topics of their work, the format and the results that the client wants. Coaches are for the emotionally mature. Those who imagine that a coach can change their lives are still not fit for training under the ethics of most coaches. A coach is someone you retain only when you are ready. To take that elusive next step with you.

FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS, NOT SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE

There is rarely a “type” or “field” of coaching, in which life coaches could be considered in any way different from relationship coaches.

The reason why there is normally no difference between, for example, life or personal coaching, on the one hand, and executive

coaching on the other, is that these titles describe only the client, not the coaching itself. That is, the words describe the purchaser of the services and perhaps even how that customer perceives himself.

But the techniques and methods of coaching are very similar, because all coaching is reduced to the process of guiding human beings through the discovery of their full humanity, their perception and a greater responsibility towards themselves. Even if you are an executive who wants “executive” coaching, you know that there are no skills, attitudes and behaviors that are used and useful only in the boardroom or the office. It is on a mission to enhance your effective personality, not your, shall we say, executive ability.

What is the consequence of coaching being the same no matter who the client is? Well, it means that experience in the field is often irrelevant. To be a career coach, it can be helpful to have some knowledge of career resources, of course. The same applies to the specialized aspects of business coaching, business coaching or leadership coaching. But in general, you should go for a trainer with excellent coaching skills and chemistry rather than a trainer with experience in the matter.