Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Coaching is the “in” methodology for personal development, but what exactly is coaching?

Here are a few definitions:

• “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance.  It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.  Clients say coaching brings out their best by helping them focus, break down tasks and clarify their values.”- Fortune Magazine
• “Coaching is a  managerial  methodology that  seeks to maximize  employee performance by conscientiously considering individuals and their unique talents and abilities.”
• “Coaching is a form of accelerated learning that supports and facilitates enhanced performance. The coach applies specific principles of success in a way that creates experiential learning that translates great ideas into actual skills.”
• “Coaching is a conversation,  a  dialogue,  whereby a coach and coachee interact in a dynamic exchange to achieve goals, enhance performance and move the coachee forward to greater success.” Zeus and Skiffington

The common themes from these different definition are;  conversation (dialogue), learning, values, potential, performance, focus, goal and  success. Therefore we could say that,

“Coaching is a dialogue in which the coach facilitates the coachee, to learn, clarify values, release potential and increase performance by focusing on goals to achieve success.”

Coaching takes many forms, life coaching, executive coaching, business coaching, manager coaching employee, to name a few; and it has been my experience that different people have different ideas about what coaching is and what it is not.

Because coaching is associated with sport,  many people think of coaching as the teaching of skills, but coaching today is most definately NOT TELLING, coaching is ASKING.

The trained coach is equiped with the skills to build rapport and ask questions that create self-awareness for thier clients. A key principle of coaching (taken from NLP) is that people have all the resources to solve their own problem. With this principle in mind the coach does not try to ‘fix’ the coachee but rather to bring awareness (self leadership) to factors such as frames of mind (beliefs, values, feelings,  identity etc) that might be limiting performance.  Good questioning skills also allow the coach to facilitate the coachee to focus on what is important to them in terms of values goals and success. With this clarity the coach and the coacee can plan together a strategy to acheive the desired outcome.

Some people are natural coaches but most good coaches learn to hone their skills and avoid imposing their own mental maps on the coachee.

Do you need a coach? At Self Leadership International we have a team of highly skilled executive and leadership coaches that can help you achieve success.