Frequently asked questions
What is Coaching?
ICF (International Coach Federation) 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. We all have goals we want to reach; challenges we’re striving to overcome and times when we feel stuck. Partnering with a coach can change your life, setting you on a path to greater personal and professional fulfillment. Coaching is a unique form of help for health.
The underlying belief in coaching is that every individual has the ability to find solutions to their challenges from within themselves. They just may not know the right questions to ask yet. Often, they just need someone to help them discover and uncover those solutions through a process of co-creation.
Every coaching session begins with an agenda. The client’s agenda. The coach holds the space for the client and for the client’s agenda and allows it to unfold through the session.
A coach’s role is that of one who holds the belief that the leader has unlimited potential to achieve his or her goal and live their true potential. Coaches don’t solve problems for the coachee’s as they believe coachee’s are the experts in their own lives. However, through a process of powerful questions, deep listening and reflection, the coach holds the space for the coachee to connect to their inner brilliance, their natural strengths and values and discover a path which is uniquely theirs.
What is a Credentialed Coach?
Anyone can call themselves a coach. However, ICF-credentialed coaches are professionals who have met stringent education and experience requirements and have demonstrated a thorough understanding of the coaching competencies that set the standard in the profession.
Who sets the agenda for a coaching session?
The client always sets the agenda. The best agenda is often specific, accessible, exciting, stretched and anchored to the future and the client’s overall goal. The coach holds no bias for the client’s agenda and approaches every session from a learner’s mindset. In contrast, Consultants, Trainers, Mentors and Therapist all set the agenda for you.
What can coaching help you with?
A coach’s role is that of one who holds the belief that the leader has unlimited potential to achieve his or her goal and live their true potential. A good coach can help you with living your true potential in many ways. Some of these are:
- Greater self-awareness: Find the ability to appreciate your strengths and consistently operate from them.
- Greater impact: Deliver greater impact professionally – on people, culture and business; and personally – in areas of life that you value, by unlocking your best self.
- Easier transitions: Make more intentional decisions. Succeed in a new career, role or assignment, by navigating the challenges and learning demands in new unfamiliar circumstances.
- Clarity and alignment: Answer the questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘what is my purpose?’ Through alignment with your purpose, find energy, joy and flow, and ultimately, greater success and fulfillment.
- Harnessing a growth mindset: Nurture the courage to take on bigger challenges, the resilience to work through them, and the flexibility to adapt and succeed in an ever-changing world.
- Synergy, effectiveness and impact of leadership team: Operate in sync, aligned to a common purpose and shared goals, to deliver greater impact. Enable your leadership team to unleash success through the rest of the organization.
What does a coach do?
A coach holds the space of total acceptance and no judgement for himself or herself and for their client as he or she assists the client’s self-discovery and re-connection to their inner-most truths about themselves – their qualities, their gifts and their life purpose.
The coach also facilitates the client with their conscious alignment with their inner-most truths in their everyday decisions and actions.
The coach’s role is to raise the level of consciousness of the client through questions that allow the client to choose what they want, what they are prepared to do and what they are prepared to commit to themselves in the present moment.
What does a coach not do?
- A coach does not advise. A coach believes the client has the answers and the ability to find them. A good coach operates as a good listener and from a beginner’s mindset.
- A coach does not rescue. A coach coaches but does not become a crutch.
- A coach does not get involved in the client’s problems.
- A coach does not set the agenda for the client.
- A coach does not sit in judgement of the coachee or their specific challenges.
- A coach does not dictate the solution and the timing of the coachee’s journey.
How is coaching different from consulting, mentoring, training, and therapy?
- In consulting, a subject matter expert delivers the answers. The consultant may know of several ways of doing things and the consultant provides an answer that is appropriate. Consulting tells people what to do. Many consultants call themselves coaches, but they are very different disciplines. Consulting is about telling and provides businesses expertise the client currently lacks. A coach believes their client has all their best answers within them and the coach supports the client in accessing their truth to find the most effective answer for themselves. Coaching is about asking provocative questions and targeting individuals, teams, and organizations to become a better version of themselves. In consulting, the consultant is dependent on the client’s review, approval, and implementation of his / her work. In coaching, the client is responsible for doing all the work to create forward movement.
- A mentor uses his / her experience in having dealt with similar challenges to advise the client. A mentor sets the agenda for you. Coaching believes that every individual can find solutions to their challenges themselves. They just need someone to help them discover and uncover those solutions.
- Training teaches a skill, so clients know what and how of the training subject.
- Therapy tends to focus on healing past experiences and on how someone is feeling. Therapy sets the agenda for you. Coaching focuses on the client creating from the present moment, acting and moving forward towards his or her desired goal, aspiration or need for fulfillment. Coaching cannot and does not replace therapy. Coaches are not trained as therapists.
- In coaching, the client always sets the agenda. The coach holds no brief for the client’s agenda and approaches every session from a learner’s mindset.
What is leadership development coaching?
Leadership Coaching is the term given to a coaching process focused on leaders or leadership, where an individual client or a team gets customized help from a coach to help achieve their goals and become a more effective leader or leadership team.
What is the difference between life coaching and leadership coaching?
While both forms of coaching work on the same fundamental premise, skills and objectives, the difference between life coaching and leadership coaching lies in the client’s agenda.
Someone who seeks a life coach is primarily trying to address an agenda that impacts their personal life. The life coach often helps their client find balance, improve relationships, or build positivity. Success is measured mostly by the happiness and fulfillment a client achieves in their personal lives. While this often has a deep connection and an impact on their professional life, the primary focus is all about the individual.
Leadership Coaching is the term given to a coaching process focused on leaders or leadership, where an individual client or a team seeks help from a coach to achieve their goals and become more effective professionals. The agenda is primarily linked to professional, organizational, team or leadership goals. Once again this is often deeply intertwined with the client’s personal life. But the primary focus is professional. When we coach, we coach the whole person, how we think , process, and see known and unknown bias, is the same where it subject be personal or business.
Skill and training for both is the same and transferable. However many coaches seek to focus on one aspect or the other and build their experience and credentials accordingly.
What is group coaching?
Group coaching is a type of coaching process where a single coach works with a group of individuals with a common interest but not always the same goal. For example, a group of people from different companies may come together to be coached on leadership, but each individual would apply their new learning or mindset towards their company’s own goals and challenges.
What is team coaching?
Team coaching works with a team for a common goal to build its effectiveness. Often done with leadership teams, team coaching focuses on both engagement and productivity. The coaching exercise itself is a little more complex as it deals with individuals, their inter-relationships, and the team as an entity, all at the same time. In every other way team and individual coaching require the same skills and follow the same standards of confidentiality.
The definition of a team is a group of people who are all aligned and bound to a common goal or outcome, such as the completion of a new business project.
What is an accountability partner?
The word “accountability” has so many stereotypes associated with it – judgment, evaluation, approval and even disapproval. But in the world of coaching and goal setting, accountability is a foundational principle.
An accountability partner can be a peer, spouse, friend, or their coach.
In the process of coaching, an accountability partner helps goal setting, is supportive to the coachee’s progress towards achieving these goals by providing honest acknowledgement, support, and motivation.
Some questions & definitions provided by The Core Question 2022
