Coaching FAQs
What is coaching?
How does it work?
What are the benefits of coaching?
How do you know if coaching is right for you?
What are some typical reasons someone might work with a coach?
What should you look for when selecting a coach?
How do you ensure a effective coaching partnership?
Within the partnership, what is the role of the coach and the client?
How can the success of the coaching process be measured?
Is coaching a sound investment?
How does coaching differ from other professional services?
What is coaching?
Coaching is a professional partnership between a qualified coach and a client that supports the achievement of results based on goals set by the client. Through the process of coaching, clients focus on the skills and actions needed to successfully achieve their goals.
How does it work?
The client chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions as well as concepts and principles which can assist in generating possibilities and identifying actions. Through the coaching process the clarity that is needed to support the most effective actions is achieved. Coaching accelerates the client's progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where clients are now and what need to do to get where they want to be in the future. Coaches recognize that results are a matter of the client's intentions, choices and actions, supported by the coach's efforts and application of coaching skills, approaches and methods.
What are the benefits of coaching?
Clients who engage in a coaching relationship can expect to experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in their work and life. They can also expect to see appreciable results in the areas of productivity, personal satisfaction with life and work, and the achievement of goals.
How do you know if coaching is right for you?
To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by thinking about what you expect to accomplish through the coaching. When someone has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for achieving that outcome with greater ease.
Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Ask yourself if you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes in your work and life. If the answer to these questions is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way for you to grow and develop.
What are some typical reasons someone might work with a coach?
There are many reasons that a client might choose to work with a coach, including the following:
- There is a need to develop more effective leadership.
- The client wants to find more meaning and purpose in their work or life.
- There is a gap in knowledge, skills, confidence, or resources.
- There is a desire to accelerate results.
- There is a need for a course correction in work or life due to a setback.
- A client needs to grow their interpersonal skills.
- The client is already successful but success has started to become problematic.
- Work and life are out of balance, and this is creating unwanted consequences.
- The client has not identified his or her core strengths and how best to use them.
- The client desires work and life to be simpler or less complicated.
- There is a need to become better organized and more self-managing.
What should you look for when selecting a coach?
The most important thing to look for in selecting a coach is to find someone with whom you feel you can easily relate and create an effective working partnership. Here are some questions you may want to ask prospective coaches:
- What is your coaching experience?
- What is your coach specific training? Do you hold an ICF Credential?
- What is your coaching specialty or client areas you most often work in?
- What specialized skills or experience do you bring to your coaching?
- What is your philosophy about coaching?
- What is your process model for coaching?
- How are sessions conducted, frequency, etc.
- What are some of your coaching success stories?
How do you ensure a effective coaching partnership?
Be prepared to design the coaching partnership with the coach; here are some tips:
- Discuss your goals for coaching within the context of the coach’s speciality or the coach’s preferred way of working.
- Talk with the coach about what to do if you ever feel things are not going well; make some agreements up front on how to handle questions or problems.
- Remember that coaching is a partnership, so be assertive about talking with the coach about anything that is of concern at any time.
Within the partnership, what is the role of the coach and the client?
The role of the coach is to provide objective assessment and observations that foster the client’s awareness of self and others, practice astute listening in order to fully understanding the client’s circumstances, be a sounding board in support of possibility thinking and thoughtful planning and decision making, champion opportunities and potential, encourage stretch and challenge, foster the shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge blind spots in order to illuminate new possibilities, and support the creation of alternative scenarios. Finally, the coach maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.
The role of the client is to create the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful goals, use assessment and observations to enhance awareness of self and others, envision personal and/or organizational success, assume full responsibility for personal decisions and actions, use the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives, take action to achieve goals and aspirations, engage problem solving skills, and use the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach to bring about change.
How can the success of the coaching process be measured?
Measurement may be thought of in two distinct ways. First, there are the external indicators of performance: measures which can be seen and measured in the client’s environment. Second, there are internal indicators of success: measures which are within the client and can be measured by the client with the support of the coach.
Examples of external measures include achievement of coaching goals established at the outset, increased income/revenue, obtaining a promotion, performance feedback which is obtained from a sample of the client’s constituents, personal and/or business performance data. The external measures selected should ideally be things the client is already measuring and are things the client has some ability to directly influence.
Examples of internal measures include self-scoring assessments that can be administered initially and at regular intervals in the coaching process, changes in the client’s awareness of self and others and shifts in thinking which inform more effective actions.
Is coaching a sound investment?
Working with a coach requires a personal commitment of time and energy as well as a financial commitment. Clients should consider both the desired benefits as well as the anticipated length of time to be spent in coaching. Since the coaching relationship is predicated on clear communication, any financial concerns or questions should be voiced in initial conversations before the agreement is made.
How does coaching differ from other professional services?
Professional coaching focuses on a client’s work and life as it relates to goal setting, outcome creation and personal change management. In an effort to understand what a coach is, it can be helpful to distinguish professional coaching from other professions that provide organizational support.
- Mentoring - Mentoring, which can be thought of as guiding from one’s own experience is sometimes confused with coaching. Although some coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, such as in mentor coaching new coaches, coaches are not typically mentors to those they coach.
- Training - Training programmes are based on the acquisition of certain learning objectives as set out by the trainer. Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the client with the coach's guidance. Training also assumes a linear learning path which coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum plan.
- Consulting - Consultants may be retained by clients or organizations because of their special expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnoses problems and prescribes, and sometimes implements solutions. In general, the assumption with coaching is that clients are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
- Sports Coaching - though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is very different from the traditional sports coaching. The sports coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behaviour of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience and knowledge of the client that determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike sports coaching, does not focus on behaviours that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on client strengths and capabilities.