What Coaching IS and ISN’T

Coaching is not mentoring, counseling, or training.

Mentoring is not Coaching although there are many similarities.  Like Coaching, Mentoring can be formal or informal. Like Coaching, Mentoring is also done with respect and wisdom and is valued by the other person. However unlike Coaching, Mentors provide advice and solutions and tell what they think the other person should do.

Counseling is not Coaching. Unlike Coaching, Counseling focuses on past issues and ends in the present. Key words are “disciplinary action, personal problems and past to present”. So if you find yourself having in-depth conversations with staff about personal issues and trying to provide guidance, chances are you are not Coaching, you are Counseling them.

Training is different again. A trainer tells and demonstrates. Often it’s a one to many scenario and the trainer has a license to be quite prescriptive in his/her language and directive in their actions. Key words are “tells and demonstrates”…

Coaching in the workplace does not provide advice. It does not spend a lot of time looking into the past. It does not rely on a one way flow of telling and instructing.

The kind of coaching provided by Coaching for Grace & Peter Cammarano includes all of the following:

  • Starts in the present (not the past)
  • Uses listening and powerful questioning techniques to understand where you the client is now and where you want to go so that we determine how you will get there.
  • Is based on the philosophy that you the client already know the answers to the majority of your challenges but lack confidence or insight to back your own judgment and take action.
  • Focus on unlocking your inner wisdom so that you can solve your own problems with confidence.

Coaches all know that in the majority of circumstances, their client has either experienced a similar problem before or knows someone else who has or have had the ability to come up with a variety of options and chose a solution with a little help.

The coach’s job is not to provide the solution or give advice (as a Mentor would) but to question the person to help them find and seize opportunities for themselves so that they develop their own ability to find their own solutions.

It is surprising, how a few quick guiding questions can help others on the path to see the opportunities around them and give them confidence and insight to explore them.

(Information gathered from an article written by Executive Coach Juliette Robertson www.howtocoachyourstaff.com.au.)