3 Features in Good Life Coaching

Life and Business coaching became an international “buzzword” concept in the early 90’s. As a psychologist, counsellor and pastor, I spent much of my time educating people on the concept of what is a life coach. Today coaching is common in the workplace, yet the need to define what coaching is has now come full circle.

Sports coaching is well understood and an easy example for us to investigate. A sports coach passes on specific techniques, designs and oversees the athlete’s training schedule and confronts un-resourceful mindsets to replace it with motivated attitudes.

The relationship between coach and coachee is a special professional relationship of personalised help.

With the explosion of coaching courses available, and the number of people signing up, we are in the privileged position of having a selection from the best possible coaches and types of coaching to suit our unique personalities and needs.

When searching for a life or business coach, keep in mind three key features that will assist good coaching:

       1.      Facilitative Coaching: Your coach should not be making your decisions for you, nor should they do the exercises on your behalf. Your coach should play a supportive role, helping you focus and actively working to achieve the goals you want.

2.      Personal Coaching: Generic development programmes are freely available online, but your coach should be more specific than that. The relationship and approach between you and your coach should be tailored to suit your needs and wants.

      3.      Goal-Focused Coaching: Coaching is not serendipity and doesn’t arrive at a therapeutic answer by chance.  You determine the goals of coaching. The role of the coach is to help you formulate goals in a way that offers every chance of you achieving them. The coach should help you stay focused as you work on achieving those goals.

Coaching shouldn’t be therapeutically driven nor instructional in nature.

Coaching shouldn’t deeply explore your past, delving in to psychological processes, offering remedial observations and judgements. That is the role of Psychologists. Coaching should be focused on the structure of your experience and not the content.

A volume of information just confuses people. A good coach will use a simple process tailored to the need of the coachee without all the information overload.

Using a coach is a rewarding experience that will help you accelerate your progress towards that distant success you have been dreaming about. I often tell people that when the pupil is ready the right teacher will appear. If I am not your teacher, keep searching. Don’t be afraid to drop a coach you don’t like, feel free to keep searching for the coach that will benefit you the most. Most of all, enjoy the coaching process, have fun!