What Is Coaching?

I am often asked, “What do you do?”

Most people get the idea of coaching when you play a sport league or watch one of the major leagues.   But when you say, “I am a High Performance Coach and I help ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs get to their NEXT level of business and personal wellbeing faster than what they can do on their own,” folks often just nod their heads and pretend they understand. I admit, it is a mouthful.   However, it’s also what I do. In fact, it’s what I love to do!

Consider your business, your career, and your life. That’s the “game” you are playing. Fort that game, I am your coach. We may not wear the same jerseys or uniforms. I certainly don’t use a whistle to get your attention and you most likely will not pull a muscle when we train. But we share the same goal of you winning! You winning at your game! Your win is why I do this thing called “Coaching.”

Recently, I was recognized as an International Premier Success Coach by eWomenNetwork. As part of that recognition, I have the honor of helping high achieving and powerful professionals envision, clarify, and establish personal and professional mindsets, habits and action to achieve their goals. I like to think of myself as a problem solver, helping you focus your mindset, efforts and actions on what will deliver you the most as quickly as possible.

So What is Coaching?

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there. That is understandable because of all the types, and subtypes of coaching programs, processes, methods and providers. In fact, I drew myself a little cheat sheet to help me gather and understand the full range of coaching.

Types of coaching range over several spectrums: What they focus on, what content is leveraged and what the goals are for the coaching. For simplicity, I like to look at them on a spectrum from more esoteric and not so clear-cut to those things that are more easily defined and understood.

On one end of the spectrum you have spiritual, holistic and life coaching. All of these have a more concept-centered goal of achieving your best self spiritually, emotionally and psychologically. On the other end of the spectrum are more concrete types of coaching such as career, business, financial and any subset of skills that support either of those. The most commonly known type of coaching, sports and/or physical, is in the middle of this spectrum.

Here is a definition I recently found at eWomenNetwork that I think concisely captures the essence that is at the core of ALL coaching.

Coaching is a jointly designed partnership that supports you and forwards your actions toward the achievement of your goals and visions in your business, career, or personal life. Success means different things to each of us and this partnership allows you to reach greater personal and business success.

Coaching is not advice. Your friends, family and loved ones can provide that. Coaching is not therapy nor counseling. There are many other highly skilled occupations and professionals with far deeper knowledge to assist in those types of situations and needs.

So, if a coach is your partner, ally and catalyst for personal and professional growth what are the traits of a good coach? Let’s start with the more obvious ones, those traits that are more easily determined.

  • They have a proven method, process or curriculum they leverage
  • They engage in direct and powerful questioning
  • They assist you in expanding your thought patterns, beliefs and perceptions
  • They aim to enable you make better choices, decisions and to take action
  • They help you hold yourself accountable
  • They have a proven track record of success for their clients.

There are also traits that are less obvious. These include:

  • They are honest and forthright, having your success at heart
  • They are open to meeting you where you are at
  • They are unbiased and outcome neutral
  • They know their professional and personal limitations.

So, now that you understand what coaching is and what makes up a good coach, what can you expect from coaching?

Check into next week’s blog for the answer.