Coaching Self Improvement
Coaching
Coaching, with a professional coach, is the practice of supporting an individual, referred to as a client, through the process of achieving a specific personal or professional result.
Description of coaching process The structure and methodologies of coaching are very numerous with one unifying feature, coaching approaches are predominantly facilitating in style, that is to say that the coach is mainly asking questions and challenging the coachee. Coaching is differentiated from therapeutic and counselling disciplines
There are a variety of approaches within the coaching methodology. Coaching is performed with individuals and groups, in person, over the phone and online.
The facilititive approach to coaching in sport was pioneered by Timothy Gallwey, hithertoo, sports coaching was (and often remains solely a skills-based learning experience from a master in the sport). Other contexts for coaching are numerous and include executive coaching, life-coaching, emotional intelligence coaching and wealth coaching.
Today, coaching is widespread. For example, Newcastle College registered 15,000 students on its Performance Coaching Diploma Course from launch and within its first four years. The UK's Chartered Institute of Personnel Management reports that 51% of companies (sample of 500) 'consider coaching as a key part of learning development' and 'crucial to their strategy', with 90% reporting that they 'use coaching'. The basic skills of coaching are often being developed in managers within organizations specifically to upskill their managing and leadership abilities, rather than to apply in formal one-to-one coaching sessions. These skills can also be applied within team meetings and are akin then to the more traditional skills of group facilitation.
Instructing, coaching and mentoring differ. Instructors disseminate knowledge. Coaches help clients build skills. Mentors shape mental attitudes. Alternately, instructors train to immediate tasks, coaches accompany achievements, and mentors provide whole-life shaping.
There are many definitions of coaching, mentoring and various styles of line management and training. The position is complicated by the perceived overlapping between many of these activities. A more succinct definition positions coaching as follows:
- Managing is making sure people do what they know how to do.
- Training is teaching people to do what they don’t know how to do.
- Mentoring is showing people how the people who are really good at doing something do it.
- Coaching is none of these – it is helping to identify the skills and capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of their ability – and by that increasing the independence within the individual, and reducing reliance”.
Coaching rests on the professional use of a specific range of linguistic skills such as targeted restatements and the limited and judicious use of powerful questions with the aim to help clients shift their perspectives on an issue or ambition, and thereby discover different solutions and options, in order to achieve their goals. These linguistic skills are indifferently used when coaching clients in any field. In this sense, coaching is a form of meta-profession that can apply to accompanying clients in any human endeavor, ranging from their concerns in sports and personal, professional, social, family, political, spiritual dimensions, etc.
Life coaching
Life coaching is a practice that helps people identify and achieve personal goals. Life coaches help clients set and reach goals using a variety of tools and techniques. Coaches are not therapists, nor consultants; psychological intervention and business analysis are outside the scope of their work. Life coaching has its roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training. Life coaching also draws inspiration from disciplines including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring and other types of counseling. The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting and other techniques in helping their clients.
Multiple coach-training schools and programs are available, providing many options for the individual who wants to gain "certification" or a "credential" in the field of life-coaching. Multiple certificates and credential designations are available within the industry.
Critics assert that life coaching is akin to psychotherapy without restrictions, oversight or regulation. The State legislature of Colorado disagreed, after holding a hearing on such concerns, asserting that coaching is unlike therapy because it does not focus on examining nor diagnosing the past. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a person's current and future behavior. Additionally, life coaching does not delve into diagnosing mental illness or dysfunction.
Business coaching
In organizations today, coaching refers to a method of personal development or human resource development (HRD). This field of coaching is becoming a distinct area of practice for individuals and in organizations. Although the role of coach has changed over time, some examples of research papers on business coaching show that between the late 1930s and the late 1960s, some forms of internal coaching in organizations were already informally present; i.e. managers (or supervisors) also acted as coaches to their staff.
A casual business practice of coaching is the act of providing positive support and positive feedback while offering occasional advice to an individual or group in order to help them recognize ways in which they can improve the effectiveness of their business. Coaching is an excellent way to attain a certain work behavior that will improve leadership, employee accountability, teamwork, sales, communication, goal setting, strategic planning and more. It can be provided in a number of ways, including one-on-one, group coaching sessions and large scale organizational work.
Personal coaching
Personal coaching is a process which is designed and defined in a relationship agreement between a client and a coach. It is based on the client's expressed interests, goals and objectives.
A professional coach may use inquiry, reflection, requests and discussion to help clients identify personal and/or business and/or relationship goals, develop strategies, relationships and action plans intended to achieve those goals. A coach provides a place for clients to be held accountable to themselves by monitoring the clients' progress towards implementation of their action plans. Together they evolve and modify the plan to best suit the client's needs and environmental relationships. Coaches often act as human mirrors for clients by sharing outside and unbiased perspectives. Coaches may teach specific insights and skills to empower the client toward their goals.
Clients are responsible for their own achievements and success. The client takes action, and the coach may assist, but never leads or does more than the client. Therefore, a coach cannot and does not promise that a client will take any specific action or attain specific goals. Professional coaching is not counseling, therapy or consulting. These different skill sets and approaches to change may be adjunct skills and professions.
Transformational coaching
A transformational life coach incorporates many modalities available in meeting the needs of the client, from business best practices or better household financial management to personal growth and spiritual matters. This help may increase awareness and success in transforming one's life. The new millennium has brought massive economic shifts for many people, creating a need for redefining their lives. People in transition often want to address deeper convictions about what they want out of life; they want more self-awareness and self-improvement. A transformational coach aims to bring together and highlight all the possibilities that will help mold and shape the visioneering process for clients as they create a plan and execute the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly details.
Coaching ethics and standards
One of the challenges in the field of coaching is upholding levels of professionalism, standards and ethics. To this end, many of the coaching bodies and organizations have codes of ethics and member standards and criteria according to which they hold their members accountable in order to protect coaching clients' interests.
Neuro-linguistic programming
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is an approach to psychotherapy and organizational change based on "a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them" and "a system of alternative therapy based on this which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behaviour".
The co-founders, Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder, believed that NLP would be useful in "finding ways to help people have better, fuller and richer lives". They coined the term "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" to emphasize their belief in a connection between the neurological processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic") and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience ("programming") and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.
In early workshops by Bandler and Grinder and in books that followed, it was often claimed that through the use of NLP, problems especially phobias could be overcome in a single short session whereas traditional therapies would have taken weeks, or even months of regular sessions to make progress. It was claimed that NLP was capable of addressing the full range of problems that psychologists are likely to encounter, such as phobias, depression, habit disorder, psychosomatic illnesses, and learning disorders. It also espoused the potential for self-determination through overcoming learned limitations and emphasized well-being and healthy functioning. Later, it was promoted as a "science of excellence", derived from the study or "modeling" of how successful or outstanding people in different fields obtain their results. Bandler and Grinder claimed that if the effective patterns of behaviour of outstanding therapists (and other exceptional communicators) could be modeled then these patterns could be acquired by others.
Despite its popularity, NLP has been largely ignored by conventional social science in part due to a lack of professional credibility and insufficient empirical evidence to substantiate its effectiveness. It is difficult to determine the exact impact NLP has had; NLP appears to have minimal impact on academic psychology or mainstream psychotherapy and counselling. At the same time, NLP has been adopted by some private psychotherapists, including hypnotherapists, who undertake training in NLP and apply it to their practice. NLP has gained popularity within management training, life coaching, and the self-help industry.
While the original goals of neuro-linguistic programming were therapeutic, the patterns have also been adapted for use outside psychotherapy for interpersonal communications and persuasion including business communication, management training, sales, sports, and interpersonal influence, used for coaching, team building, public speaking, negotiation, and communication. The UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development includes a number of NLP courses including an application of NLP to coaching in its 2010 training programme. A range of books have been published related to the application of NLP to coaching.