What Is Coaching?

Coaching is a unique and emerging people-helping profession.  Like traditional athletic coaching, professional coaching is designed to help each “player” play to the best of his or her ability, with an overarching commitment to victory.  As a profession, coaching has many different focuses: life coaching, executive coaching, financial coaching, career coaching, marriage coaching, health & wellness coaching, retirement coaching, etc. Leadership coaching is focused on helping leaders wield the influence they have to create positive change.  Leadership coaches are co-partners, champions who are there to “walk with” their clients through the exciting journey of identifying, positioning, and unleashing their unique vision.

Four things that make professional coaching distinctive are:

• Client Agenda: the client sets the agenda from the outset of what is to be accomplished instead of conforming to a script or curriculum of the coach
• Forward Moving: coaching conversations begin where the client is and move toward what and where the client would like to see, be, do, and have
• Action-Oriented: each coaching conversation is reinforced by specific, client-determined action
• Client Responsibility: since each vision is unique to each person, clients retain full ownership of the agenda, action steps, and results

What coaching is not:

• Counseling
• Consulting
• Mentoring
• Training