“I’ve got three kids at home, so I’m very well qualified to be a moms coach.”
“Gee, that’s what a coach does? Sounds like a best friend to me!”
“Boy, do I need a coach to tell me what to do!”
“Everyone needs a coach!”
Eh…no.
Virtually everyone these days is calling themselves a coach and most of them have zero training – or coaching experience, both of which are required, to varying degrees, in order to be an accredited coach. Life’s lessons certainly count, but there is more to coaching than graduating from the School of Hard Knocks.
Coaching does sound like having a best friend, but there’s a big difference – the coach is not wed to any particular outcome. Best friends have skin in the game; they have a stake in the outcome. And while we would love to think that our best friends want only what’s best for us, their views and opinions are influenced by their relationships with us. Yeah, we want our best friends to get a great job…but move 1,500 miles away to land it? We want our best friends to be happy…but how is that even possible, getting married to that jerk!
Your coach wants what you want. Period. And will do whatever she can to help you get there.
While there are similarities between sports coaching and personal and business coaching, the one big difference is this: A properly trained Life or Business Coach London is never going to tell you what to do. She will challenge your assumptions, point out inconsistencies, celebrate wins and commiserate over setbacks. And yes, she will suggest certain tasks and ask you if you are willing and able to do them, based on what you say you want.
This is what we call “co-creating the agenda.” I generally suggest three short-term actions, based on our weekly coaching session, and ask the client if she can complete them. Sometimes the answer is yes to all three. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it’s just one action or even another number altogether. The client is always at choice. The coach is there to support that choice.
The last one – everyone needs a coach – is something my own coach disabused me of in the early days of my training.
“Jackie, everyone can benefit from coaching, no question about it,” she said. “Needing it something completely different.”
Which leads me to Thomas J. Leonard, considered to be the father of coaching and the founder of CoachVille.com. He talked about these and other apparent semantic differences in his “Distinctionary.” Here are a few of the coaching distinctions he made in 1997 that still have merit today.
Here is a sampling of the difference between coaching and everything else.
What coaching is not
Coaching vs. consulting
To coach someone is to “ask for change and growth as well as inform and guide,” he said. Consulting is sharing information and expertise of what you’ve seen work – and then let the client decide whether to make the change.
Coaching vs. mentoring
Leonard defined a mentor as “an expert in a particular field or within a particular company who knows the job inside [and out] and can guide someone under them to move up and forward within the company or in the business.”
On the other hand, a coach is more of an expert on people in general and helps them move forward. There is generally not a one-up/one-down relationship between the client and the coach, he noted. Plus, a mentor depends on the mentee to move up to assume more power or responsibility within the company. These people need each other, Leonard said.
In coaching, the client doesn’t need the coach, nor vice versa.
Coaching vs. parenting
“A coach and parent are similar in that both empower, provide unconditional love to and support the person,” Leonard said. “However, the coach is not responsible for the end result whereas the parent, to some degree (and to some age), generally is.”
The nice thing about the coaching relationship is that “the coach can ask for and demand more from an equal whereas the parent has to be cautious and protective,” he said. It’s about helping the client develop into an extraordinary human being as opposed to protecting her.
Coach vs. partner
A partner clearly has ownership interests in and responsibility for the finances and control of the partnership, the business entity or both. A coach, while certainly “invested” in the client’s success, has no authority, responsibility or equity in the client’s company.
Coach vs. technician
A coach’s main goal is to help the client design her own life. This is more a creative process than a repair process, Leonard said. A technician reacts to the problem or prevents something from going bad. A coach helps the client do more.
Coach vs. therapist
A therapist helps her patient gain insights into issues that are so troublesome they cannot be overcome through their own hard work. A coach, on the other hand, will help the client take those insights and translate them into action.
Part of that is (as mentioned earlier) suggesting alternative courses of action based on their expressed goals and what has been discerned during the coaching session. Leonard called this “directive coaching,” and said it generally “accelerates the client’s pace of development and helps them set bigger and more rewarding goals because of the influence of the coach’s perspective and experience.”
Champion vs. cheerleader
A coach is the client’s champion – supporting the client regardless of results. Alternatively, cheerleaders use praise to get results. That is a huge difference.
What questions do you have about coaching? I’d love to help! Please ask in the comments below.