What is Mental Strength Coaching? – Part 1

At least once in any given week someone, during an Introductory Consultation or a discussion about The Warriors Quest, someone will ask me what exactly mental strength coaching is?

I thought I’d clarify mental strength coaching a bit so that you get a better feel for what it is, what it can do for you and if it’s something you’d like to pursue.

Twenty years ago, no one had heard of life, business, or success coaching. Today it is featured in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Oprah and CNN. But still, most of the world has not heard of it.

Demand for coaching is expected to grow and may accelerate. I wonder what will happen when the first major movie featuring Tom Cruise as a life coach hits the street. Corporations are jumping on the bandwagon with Fortune 100 companies creating both external and internal coaching positions.

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.” (ICF website, 2006) Coaching is strongest in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand, and is reaching more and more countries all the time.

Mental strength coaching is a comparably new profession. It blends the best concepts from business, psychology, philosophy, NLP, sports and spirituality. Although mental strength coaching combines skills from other disciplines, it is a distinct process of supporting others to create an ideal life by reaching their personal goals and personal success.

As a mental strength coach I work with clients on a variety of topics: from business and professional issues to personal and spiritual concerns. You could sat that I’m an advocate, a sounding board, a cheerleader, an accountability partner, a truth teller and a supporter.

Mental strength coaching involves dialogue between a coach and a client with the aim of helping the client obtain a fulfilling life. This is achieved by helping the client establish what is important to them and by clarifying their values. With the client’s input the coach co-creates value based goals and a plan to achieve them.

Through collaboration, the coach supports the client to achieve these goals. A coach offers many things to the client during the coaching process such as:

• Support to discover the answers within him or her self

• Clarification of values

• Co-creation of a plan for how to achieve what the client really wants

• A sounding board for new ideas

• Support in making life changing decisions

• Challenge to expand their views beyond their perceived limitations

• Direction

• Acknowledgement

• Encouragement

• Resource of information

What Mental Strength Coaching is Not

As a relatively new coaching profession, mental strength coaching is a methodology that draws on a range of other more traditional professions including psychology, NLP, Time Empowerment, business consulting, mentoring, management theory and adult learning. However, mental strength coaching is a unique field and there are significant differences between coaching and these fields.

Coaching and Therapy

Mental strength coaching is not therapy, counseling or psychology, in the strict sense of the profession. Although intervention often follows some psychological models such as NLP and behavioral theory, the actual process of coaching should not be mistaken for a therapeutic intervention.

One of the most obvious differences between the two approaches is that therapy tends to focus on feelings and experiences related to past events, whereas coaching is oriented towards goal setting and encourages the client to move forward.

A therapist typically works with a dysfunctional person to get them to become functional. A coach works with a functional person to get them to become exceptional.

Therapists typically work with people who need help to become emotionally healthy. A coach works with people who are already emotionally healthy to move them to magnificent levels.

Mental strength coaching does not rely on past issues for achieving growth, but rather focuses on goals towards the future.

Coaching is action oriented.

The focus is on where the client is right now, where they want to be next, and how to get them there.

If a person is working in the past, then you are involved in therapy. If a person is stuck and can’t seem to move forward or if there is a drug or alcohol problem, then they are more likely doing something other than coaching.

Therapy helps a person back to “zero”, i.e. normal.  Mental strength coaching moves a person forward to achieve their personal goals and personal success.

Coaching and Consulting

Coaching is often likened to consulting. However, there are distinct differences between these disciplines.

A consultant is usually a specialist in a given area. They are hired to give recommendations and provide solutions.

A consultant works with a client to solve a particular problem or to address a specific issue. Once the problem is solved or the issue addressed, the consultant leaves.

Generally, a consultant doesn’t get involved with areas outside of their specialty.

Mental strength coaching uses a more holistic approach. With the client, the coach examines the situation, creates a plan of action, and works side by side to resolve the issue. The coach does not have to be an expert in the client’s business, if the coach is familiar, all the more better. And here the client is the expert. The coach collaborates with the client to create a solution using the client’s knowledge and answers.

While people, and companies, will often choose a coach who has previous experience or expertise in the field that they work in, the coaching methodology does not require this.

Consultants however, build their businesses around the knowledge they have gathered over time in the specific field in which they then offer consulting expertise. They are expected to provide advice, information and anecdotes about the field.

The coach, on the other hand, does not have the answers and does not claim to have them. They have the questions that allow the client to find their own answers and clarify their own values.

Coaching and Mentoring

The term “mentoring” originates from Homer’s Odyssey. In the Odyssey, the character Mentor advises, supports and counsels Telemachus, Odysseus’ son as Telemachus prepares to take on the responsibilities of the family in his father’s absence. Mentor also advises Odysseus on how to search for his father. Telemachus thanks him for his help: “Sir, I thank you for your kindness; you might be a father speaking to his own son, and I will not forget one word of what you say…”

The mentor is usually older and more experienced than the person being mentored. The mentor bestows their knowledge and wisdom onto the student. The student looks up to the mentor and seeks guidance and advice from the mentor. There are both formal and informal mentoring relationships.

In a business setting, mentoring is a formal relationship that is established with someone who is an expert in his or her field. Like consulting, mentoring involves passing on the benefit of a set of specific experiences. A mental strength coaching relationship, on the other hand, is a partnership whereby the coach walks side by side with the client. The coach supports the client in drawing on their own wisdom and following their inner guidance.

OK…I hope this helped to clarify what mental strength coaching is and is not.  I’ll finish this up next week.

Until then if you’d like to explore mental strength coaching further request your Introductory Consultation HERE.

Or if you’re ready to explore The Warriors Quest further you can download an e-book brochure HERE.