What is Coaching?

Coaching is a professional partnership between a coach and an individual or team that supports the achievement of extraordinary results, based on goals set by the individual or team. Through the process of coaching, focus is on the skills and actions needed to successfully produce relevant results.

The individual or team 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 individual’s or team’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future. Coaches recognize that results are a matter of the individual’s or team’s intentions, choices and actions, supported by the coach’s efforts and application of coaching skills, approaches and methods.

Benefits of Coaching

Individuals 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 carrying out their chosen work and life roles. Consistent with a commitment to enhancing their personal effectiveness, they can also expect to see appreciable results in the areas of productivity, personal satisfaction with life and work, and the achievement of personally relevant goals.

Is Coaching Right For Me?

To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in 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 how to achieve that outcome with greater ease.

Since coaching is a partnership, also ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes in your work or life. If the answer to these questions is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way for you to grow and develop.

Why Would I Want a Coach?

There are many reasons that an individual or team might choose to work with a coach, including but not limited to the following:

• There is something at stake (a challenge, stretch goal or opportunity), and it is urgent, compelling or exciting or all of the above
• There is a gap in knowledge, skills, confidence, or resources
• A big stretch is being asked or required, and it is time sensitive
• There is a desire to accelerate results
• There is a need for a course correction in work or life due to a setback
• An individual has a style of relating that is ineffective or is not supporting the achievement of one’s personally relevant goals
• There is a lack of clarity, and there are choices to be made
• The individual is extremely successful, and success has started to become problematic
• Work and life are out of balance, and this is creating unwanted consequences
• One has not identified his or her core strengths and how best to leverage them
• The individual desires work and life to be simpler, less complicated
• There is a need and a desire to better organized and more self-managing