The Essence of Coaching
In today's world life has become very demanding.
Each of us is pulled in many different directions. To have a successful life, a person may have an endless list of goals they feel they need to achieve. And the amount of information that is thrown at us is increasing at an astonishing rate. Our time is required for a million and one things.
In business the demands are equally immense. The market is now global and the competition has increased. The number of strategy choices that people in business have has grown. This provides many different opportunities, but also brings its own issues on how to decide the best course of action.
In addition to this, and perhaps because of this, people are thinking more about spiritual aspects. People are considering what their purpose in life is, who they really are and what they are contributing to the world.
This could explain the increasing popularity of coaching. Good coaching can address many of these issues and can make a valuable difference to a clients life or business.
The nature of coaching is to bring clarity to a clients mind about what they want, why they want it, how to achieve it and what happens when they have got it. If a client wishes, they can be coached at an identity level and even a spiritual level.
Coaching is as much, if not more, about creating thinking strategies that support a clients goals as the actions themselves.
Below are a few aspects of coaching that will help to explain the essence of coaching.
Clarity on what you want
Coaching helps you to gain a clearer picture about what you want in all aspects of your life. This clarity can be at a very deep level. By looking at the 'big picture' for your life you can gain a sense of what your purpose in life is. Then by gradually getting into the detail of how you are going to satisfy this purpose in life you can start to build a plan for the way you will live your life and what you need to do. Essentially you can create goals that are in line with your core values. This means that you will achieve what you want with integrity and honesty.
Of course this same principle can be applied to a particular part of your life, for example, your career, relationships or health. And the same principles apply to a business. Identify the overall purpose of your business, start to break that down into specific details and a successful plan can emerge.
Having clarity and a sense of purpose can make a big difference to your state of mind and how you feel. It can make you more motivated, focused, energetic, enthusiastic, relaxed, at ease and full of humour.
Resources for successful change
Coaching brings out the essential resources that you need for successful change. Finding strong reasons and purposes for change provides tremendous motivation and energy. This is the fuel that powers successful changes.
Through coaching you will be able to create a positive mental and physical environment to enable successful changes to happen.
One of the key presuppositions within coaching is that the client has all the resources within them to succeed. Through coaching these resources are brought to the surface and to the clients awareness. The client can then draw on whichever resources are required for a particular aim and fulfill that aim effectively.
Creating the space
One of the key functions for a coach is to create the right space for the client. This requires particular skills which a good coach will understand and practice well.
For a client to make the best of a coaching session the space created will allow the client to be open, honest and mindful. The client will feel that they are being listened to and understood. The client will know that the coach will not be unnecessarily judgemental. They will also know that the coach will provide support and constructive feedback. There will be a good level of trust and rapport between the coach and the client.
These factors are very important in creating a space for the client that allows them to be insightful, thoughtful, creative, positive and empowered. This space is what will determine the success achieved by the client.
Questions that make you think
The key tool that a coach has is their ability to ask powerful questions. This is at the heart of coaching. Powerful questions are what will bring clarity to the clients thinking. They may also bring confusion to a clients thinking, but it will be this confusion that will make a client really think about things in a different way and lead to answers that may otherwise not have come.
Powerful questions will invite the client to become more aware, more creative, more curious, more understanding and more challenged. Having a coach that is able to take an objective and curious perspective will provide powerful questions that the client alone would find it difficult to have considered.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I decide to have coaching?
When you decide that you would like to proceed with coaching the first step is for us to arrange when to have your Intake Session.
Your Intake Session is an important first step that will establish the coaching relationship between you and your coach. It is a chance for your coach to get to know you but also for you to get to know your coach, and establish if you are suited to each other.
Intake sessions are typically about 1 hour long.
The key aims of the Intake Session are
Once the Intake Session is completed coaching sessions can be booked and taken. This is where the clients aims are discussed and explored further.
Coaching Sessions
Coaching sessions will include questions from the coach, exercises and discussions to clarify what the client wants, how they can get there, what might be the obstacles and how to overcome them. There may be actions or exercises for the client to do in between coaching sessions.
However, coaching sessions can be very different depending on the requirements of the clients and what is best for the client to enable them to achieve what they want.
How long is a coaching session and how frequent are they?
The length of coaching sessions can vary but typically a coaching session may be for 30 or 45 minutes.
The frequency can also vary and can be weekly, fortnightly or even monthly.
For the best results a 30 to 45 minute coaching session each week can provide the momentum for effective progress to take place.
How is Coaching delivered?
Coaching can take place face-to-face or over the phone.
Face-to-face
It is preferable for the Intake Session to be face-to-face. This allows the coach and client to get to know each other better and build a good coaching relationship. However, this is not essential.
Face-to-face coaching can take place either at the clients premises or the coaches premises. It is important for the environment to be conducive to the confidential nature of coaching. The client and coach must be comfortable and at ease.
Over the Phone
Coaching can take place over the phone, and in fact some clients prefer coaching over the phone. The coach and client will arrange for the client to ring at an agreed time and date. The coach and client must ensure that they are situated in a comfortable place where they can give their undivided attention to the coaching session.
Take a look at the Coaching Zone for the latest coaching packages available.