FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWERS

What is coaching?

What is the basic philosophy of coaching?

What is the difference between coaching, mentoring, counselling or therapy?

Does a coach work on personal goals or business/professional goals?

How personal does coaching get?

Can I coach myself using a book?

Can I focus on one issue or area of my life?

Why does coaching work?

Why is coaching becoming so popular?

Sources of inspiration

WHAT IS COACHING?

The essence of coaching is about giving you the opportunity to spend some quality time working on what you feel and think needs to be addressed. It is about looking at the present and the future rather than peering into the past.

It is an effective, ongoing collaborative partnership that focuses totally on the results YOU want, helping you discover and clarify YOUR goals and successfully translate your ideas into action.

Working with a professional coach you can achieve extraordinary results in your life, moving from where you are today to where you really want to be FASTER and MORE EASILY.

With support, encouragement – and often challenges – from your coach, you are able to develop new resourcefulness and discover creative solutions that are right for YOU. By combining action and learning you create effective change and transition.

WHAT IS THE BASIC PHILOSOPHY OF COACHING?

It is very simple:
Each of us has unlimited potential – each of us is a potential masterpiece. We are all on a journey of discovering what we really want, and we can get what we want faster and easier by having a coach.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COACHING, MENTORING, COUNSELLING OR THERAPY?

Mentors have particular skills or knowledge, picked up over many years of doing the job, which they pass on to their client. Mentoring is often based in the workplace, has a strong tutoring element and is usually about the client's professional and career development. Mentors might or might not use a coaching approach.

Counselling is used by people struggling with difficult life situations or suffering from deep emotional pain. As clients become more consciously aware of what is happening in their lives they feel better able to face problems more objectively or with less anxiety and tension. Often it can be about looking into the person's past to relate it to the present circumstances.

Psychotherapy covers a variety of techniques and methods that help people explore difficult, and often painful, emotions and past experiences. Usually used with diagnosable psychiatric disorders, psychotherapy aims to reach the underlying, often unconscious, causes of distress.

Coaching raises awareness about the present and uses this as a springboard to formulate future options and their achievement.

DOES A COACH WORK ON PERSONAL GOALS OR BUSINESS/PROFESSIONAL GOALS?

Both. The line between personal goals and life and business goals and life are increasingly blurring. A coach is trained to work with all aspects of you.

HOW PERSONAL DOES COACHING GET?

Sometimes, highly personal issues surface in a coaching session. However, at the outset of the coaching relationship, and throughout the process, you are in control of what you wish to address. This means that if you do not want to go down a thought path, you simply say so to your coach. If your coach sees that there is a personal issues standing in the way of you moving forward, your coach will always ask if you want to pursue that line of thought, and you can choose to do that or not.

CAN I COACH MYSELF USING A BOOK?

There are many good books on coaching, and I review some of them at Books, Tapes and Other References. They are very useful for a view on all the coaching methods, processes and exercises, as well as raising your awareness of what you can achieve.

What books lack, though, is an external perspective. For self-development to be fundamentally successful, you need the opportunity to step outside the box in your thinking, to spend some time free of your internal judge and jury. This environment of freedom is provided by your coach. Coaches also feed you with positive feedback and appreciation to fuel your self-confidence and give you the energy to take the actions to achieve your goals.

CAN I FOCUS ON ONE ISSUE OR AREA OF MY LIFE?

Absolutely. It sometimes happens that there is a burning issue that you want to concentrate on, and this is the sole subject of your coaching session.

Equally, you may start a session with a particular issue in mind, and as your thinking develops, you find there is something else you need to deal with. Your coach just follows and supports your thinking so that you reach the conclusions you need.

WHY DOES COACHING WORK?

Coaching works for several reasons:

• the synergy between you and the coach creates momentum
• being with another person means that you can free your thinking more easily than addressing an issue on your own
• you are introduced to more and different ways of looking at your issues
• you develop more effective goals because of your freedom to think clearly – goals that naturally pull you towards them rather than require you to push yourself to them.

WHY IS COACHING BECOMING SO POPULAR?

1. Many people are tired of doing what they 'should' do and are ready to do something special and meaningful – or something they have always wanted to do – for the rest of their lives. The challenge is, some of them can't see it; or if they can, they can't work out how to re-orientate their life. Some people cannot work out what it really is that they've always wanted to do – although they know it's not what they are currently doing. A coach can help them with all this.

2. People are realising how simple it can be to accomplish something that several years ago might have felt out of reach or like a pipe-dream. A coach is not a miracle worker but does have a large 'tool kit' to help the Big Idea become a Reality. Fortunately, people now put more time and resources into investing in themselves.

3. An increasing number of people want to look at and consider the notion of spirituality. In fact, many coaches are spiritually based – even the ones who coach our largest companies. A definition of spirituality is how connected and integrated you are with yourself, with others, and with Nature. A coach can help you to tune in better to yourself and others.

MY THANKS TO:

The International Coaching Federation

Christian Worth

Trevor Cousins

who inspired some of the items on this page and/or allowed me to use their material on parts of this page.