How You Can Benefit From a Coach

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Personal coaching has been around for some time now and still there is much confusion as to what a coach is, what they do and how they can help (you).

To start I’d like to offer a definition from The International Coach Federation defines coaching in the following way:

“Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.

Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.” 

Coaching is still a comparably new profession. It blends the best concepts from business, psychology, philosophy, sports and spirituality. Although coaching combines skills from other disciplines, it is a distinct process of supporting others to create an ideal life. Coaches work with clients on a variety of topics: from business and professional issues to personal and spiritual concerns. A coach is an advocate, a sounding board, a cheerleader, an accountability partner, a truth teller and a supporter.

In general, coaching is the process of helping people and teams to perform at the peak of their abilities. It involves drawing out people’s strengths, helping them to bypass personal barriers and limits in order to achieve their personal best, and facilitating them to function more effectively as members of a team. Thus, effective coaching requires an emphasis on both task and relationship.

Coaching emphasizes generative change, concentrating on defining and achieving specific goals. Coaching methodologies are outcome-oriented rather than problem-oriented. They tend to be highly solution focused, promoting the development of new strategies for thinking and acting, as opposed to trying to resolve problems and past conflicts. Problem solving, or remedial change, is more associated with counseling and therapy.

Coaching can be helpful in all areas of a person’s life like:

• Fitness
• Sales
• Personal goals
• Business
• Relationships
• Finance

Just to name a few.

Robert Dilts of NLP University has taken the concept of coaching to a new level.  He refers to it as “From Coach to Awakener.”  This is the method I tend to embrace.  There are 6 unique “roles” that a coach plays in this journey, and they are:

Guiding and Caretaking

Guiding and caretaking have to do with providing support with respect to the environment in which change takes place. Guiding is the process of directing a person or group along the path leading from some present state to a desired state. It presupposes that the “guide” has been there before, and knows the best way (or at least a way) to reach the desired state. Being a caretaker, or “custodian,” involves providing a safe and supportive environment. It has to do with attending to the external context and making sure that what is needed is available, and that there are no unnecessary distractions or interferences from the outside.

Coaching

Traditional coaching (i.e., small “c” coaching) is focused at a behavioral level, involving the process of helping another person to achieve or improve a particular behavioral performance. Coaching methods at this level derive primarily from a sports training model, promoting conscious awareness of resources and abilities, and the development of conscious competence. They involve drawing out and strengthening people’s abilities through careful observation and feedback, and facilitating them to act in coordination with other team members. An effective coach of this type observes people’s behavior and gives them tips and guidance about how to improve in specific contexts and situations.

Teaching

Teaching relates to helping a person develop cognitive skills and capabilities. The goal of teaching is generally to assist people to increase competencies and “thinking skills” relevant to an area of learning. Teaching focuses on the acquisition of general cognitive abilities, rather than on particular performances in specific situations. A teacher helps a person to develop new strategies for thinking and acting. The emphasis of teaching is more on new learning than on refining one’s previous performance.

Mentoring

Mentoring involves guiding someone to discover his or her own unconscious competencies and overcome internal resistances and interferences, through believing in the person and validating his or her positive intentions. Mentors help to shape or influence a person’s beliefs and values in a positive way by “resonating” with, releasing, or unveiling that person’s inner wisdom, frequently through the mentor’s own example. This type of mentoring often becomes internalized as part of a person, so that the external presence of the mentor is no longer necessary. People are able to carry “inner mentors” as counselors and guides for their lives in many situations.

Sponsoring

“Sponsorship” is the process of recognizing and acknowledging (“seeing and blessing”) the essence or identity of another person. Sponsorship involves seeking and safeguarding potential within others, focusing on the development of identity and core values. Effective sponsorship results from the commitment to the promotion of something that is already within a person or group, but which is not being manifested to its fullest capacity. This is accomplished through constantly sending messages such as: You exist. I see you. You are valuable. You are important/special/unique. You are welcome. You belong here. You have something to contribute. A good “sponsor” creates a context in which others can act, grow and excel. Sponsors provide the conditions, contacts and resources that allow the group or individual being sponsored to focus on, develop and use their own abilities and skills.

Awakening

Awakening goes beyond coaching, teaching, mentoring and sponsorship to include the level of vision, mission and spirit. An awakener supports another person by providing contexts and experiences which bring out the best of that person’s understanding of love, self, and spirit. An awakener “awakens” others through his or her own integrity and congruence. An awakener puts other people in touch with their own missions and visions by being in full contact with his or her own vision and mission

Robert Dilts goes on to explain:

“This complementary group of competencies—caretaking, guiding, coaching, teaching, mentoring, sponsoring and awakening—define the skill set of large “C” coaching. These are essential skills, regardless of whether one is coaching a little league baseball team, a coworker trying to improve his or her ability to communicate, a project group in a company, a person making a life transition, or the Chief Executive Officer of a multinational organization. Each of the different levels of support requires a different quality of relationship on the part of the coach and a different tool set. The tools of mentoring, for instance, are distinct from those of teaching, guiding or awakening.”

I also discuss how coaching can assist groups and individuals in my podcast below:

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 I firmly embrace the concept that people are holistic and synergistic in their existence and to “work” on one area of life to the exclusion of others creates an unbalance.  My specialty is developing mental strength for personal peak performance and personal success by working with the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual systems of the individual.

Only by working in these four major energy areas can a person realize their true potential.  

A word of warning, the path of the Awakener is not easy, it will test you.  And if you can develop the mental strength and push past the mind chatter, the ego and self-doubt you WILL come out the other end a completely changed person.

This is what a coach can do for you!

If you’d like to experience what coaching is like request an Introductory Consolation and give it a spin and see what it feels like.

If you’d like to take a different approach, pick up a copy of “Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior” first.  Then when you’ve finished the book and the exercises contact me for the Introductory Consolation.

OK…has this helped clear up some of what a coach is and how a coach can help you?  Please let me know in the comments below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (40.9MB)

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