What Coaching Is

&

Isn’t

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as: partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.

Coaching Is

Client-centric
Goal Oriented
Present & Future Focus
Explorative Partnership

Coaching Isn't

Therapy / Counseling
Consulting
Training
Mentorship

These other approaches tend to be rooted in the client’s past and / or focused on directive approaches (i.e. expert analysis, diagnosis, instruction, advice, or solutions).

Counseling & Therapy

Mental, emotional, or behavioral interventions are usually based on uncovering a client’s past experiences to help them heal, or overcome trauma arising from those experiences.

Counseling is a more explorative intervention, helping the client overcome emotional traumas.

Therapy is a more directive intervention, helping the client heal pain, dysfunction, and conflict (whether internal or with relationships).

Consulting

Consulting is usually the analysis, diagnosis, solution advice, and/or solution implementation from a subject-matter expert hired by the client for a specific need.

Training

Training is usually imparting or transferring knowledge from the trainer to the learner(s) using varied formal structured activities (e.g. reading/writing, instruction, hands-on projects, etc.) in the service of specific (typically trainer-specified) learning goals.

Mentorship

Mentorship is usually the sharing of wisdom, experience, and guidance from an a more senior expert mentor to the mentee.

Coaching discussions naturally venture into topics involving past experiences, relationships, feelings, or emotions…but when that appears to significantly affect a client’s daily functioning, block their coaching progress, or otherwise exceed the coach’s competency, clients may be offered a therapeutic referral.

While unnecessary for coaches to know whether a client is in an active therapeutic relationship, it is important clients inform their therapist or counselor before initiating a coincident coaching relationship.

Coaching Accelerates Client Growth

Coaches can help enhance and accelerate your development by:

Serving as a neutral sounding board
Facilitating objective self-reflection
Curating rich dialogue and resources
Offering illuminating insights & observations
Deeply exploring alternative, perhaps challenging, perspectives
Partnering on your self-accountability
Drawing from a library of effecitve tools & frameworks

Coach / Client Partnership

The coaching partnership is future-oriented and employs explorative approaches.

Honoring client self-agency (choice) and self-accountability, we employ a variety of approaches tailored uniquely to facilitate your introspection, exploration, discovery, and forward movement, including:

- Active & reflective inquiry: explorative and reflective dialogue employing powerful questioning and active listening
- Assessments: providing appreciative insights about you: preferences, personality features, Emotional Intelligence (EI) competence, colleague perceptions / impressions
- Frameworks: structured exercises that facilitate reflection, identify hurdles / barriers, clarify priorities, and yield action plans
- Other tools & methods

Coach & Client Expertise

Coaches regard clients as the only experts on your own contexts…

While we also may not be experts in a client’s particular field or specific discipline, we bring our own expertise in listening, observing, asking powerful questions, and helping clients see what they may not already see in themselves.

We explore, leverage, and celebrate our clients’ unique circumstances, passions, talents, and wisdom as the foundation for their sustainable effectiveness and growth