coaching concepts library

What is Coaching?

Coaching is a unique profession that blends the best of therapy, consulting and mentoring to create a unique client-helper relationship.  The relationship is a partnership in which you, the client, get to focus on what is important to you.  You have a safe place in the coaching relationship to really focus on what you want, to recognize and breakthrough what is holding you back from creating the world of your dreams.  Your coach helps you connect your inner purpose and passion to your outer goals and tasks.

Coaching Definitions

There are many definitions of coaching and here are a few:

"Coaching is an action oriented [profession], with the focus on a client's current life and plans for the future.'  -- Take Time for Your Life

"Coaching is a powerful relationship for people making important decisions in their lives.  Coaching creates a context where people regularly work on the most important issues of their lives.  Coaching functions on a process level to help people understand who and where they are in their lives."  -- Co-Active Coaching

"Coaching is a healthy, positive and enabling process that develops the capacity of people to solve today's business problems.  Touching people's spirits and rekindling what deeply matters to them is what [coaching] is all about."  -- The Heart of Coaching

One thing that comes through in all the definitions of coaching is that it is inspiring, fulfilling, purposeful - and usually fun.  It brings out the positive in your life and shows you how to nurture it, so you can fill your life with more fun and contentment.

Life coaching is about creating futures for yourself.  The same is true of executive coaching, although the emphasis is on your career.  Most of the people who sign up for coaching are already fairly successful and have greater ambitions for themselves.  What has made them successful is the combination of their ambition and their attitude of humility, curiosity and desire to learn.  They understand that their success depends upon them continuously expanding their horizons - and that is what coaching offers. 

In coaching, the emphasis is on using what you do well to expand your areas of comfort to handle new and challenging situations.  Just like successful companies drive their success by focusing on what they do well and taking those qualities and skills into new markets, you can do the same.  Coaching is a process in which you will come to understand your strengths in new ways and discover how they can be grown into greater strengths that advance you toward your goals.

Coaching is not just talking about your priorities.  Coaching places a premium on following through and acting upon what you learn so that you will understand and become comfortable applying your new skills. 

For more on "what is coaching," see the International Coach Federation webpage  and our collection of coaching articles.  

Coaching Specialties

There are many specialties within coaching. Your personal development is central to all coaching.  The focus and approach change slightly within those specialties.  For example, in life coaching, your coach-partner supports you in creating an environment in which you can focus on your dreams and find ways to better manage your life, achieve greater fulfillment and advance toward your goals. 

Executive coaching is similar, in that the focus is on you and supporting you, but it may have an added focus of also achieving goals desired by your company, especially if it is paying for your coaching.  Executive coaching is for people who have the ambition to achieve greater levels of success in their professional life.  The real focus of executive coaching is to create a more successful executive.   In some companies, coaches are hired to help certain employees "fill in their gaps", but that view does not recognize the success that executive coaching can achieve.

In organizational or corporate coaching, the company typically has multiple employees experiencing individual coaching, plus a set of group activities.  The expectation is that the increased skills and flexibility of the employees will create great benefit for the company through increased collaboration and commitment to shared goals.

Some of the more common coaching specialties include:

• ADD/ADHD

• Aging

• Career

• Communication Skills

• Conflict Resolution Skills

• Corporate

• Couples

• Creativity/Self-Expression

• Executive

• Family

• Fear/Phobia

• Grief/Bereavement

• Gremlin Awareness and Management

• Group/Team

• Investment

• Intimacy

• Leadership Development

• Life Balance and Purpose

• Management Skills

• Nutritional

• Organizational

• Personal Development

• Relationship Skills

• Retirement

• Sales

• Small Business/Entrepreneur

• Spiritual Awareness

• Stress Management

• Time Management

The materials presented in this site are the opinions of the authors and do not fully cover any aspect of coaching.  These materials are presented to help you understand the basic nature of coaching. Should you hire a coach, your experience is likely to differ in at least some respects from what is presented here.