Recently, it is rare to hear advertisements, invitations to psychological training. Instead, people are invited to coaching. Subconsciously, we understand that this is something close to personal growth training, but with a deep study of the issue, you can notice some differences.
What is coaching
Coaching literally translates as “instruct, train, inspire”. Initially, the term was used in English sports, and coaching was based on positive, cognitive, organizational psychology.
Today, the term has become widespread, and more often people talk about coaching in the context of life learning: how to find oneself, how to unleash potential, how to find harmony, how to manage time, how to live effectively and productively. Some sources even call coaching an art. In others, it is cooperation that helps a person find a purpose in life, to achieve professional and personal success.
Meetings between the client and the coach are called sessions, and their duration is an hour with a frequency of once a week. At the meeting, the client makes certain conclusions, develops a plan and strategy for the next week. In a new session, the experience gained is analyzed, new goals are set, the strategy is changed if necessary.
In one of the meetings, a person realizes that any event is the result of his activities. Then inner strength arises, faith in oneself comes. All work with a coach lasts on average 1-3 months, but sometimes it reaches six months. During this time, the client develops new thinking and habits, a new vision of himself and the world.
What issues does coaching help to solve:
- What do I want and why do I live?
- What am I?
- I seem to be lost in life.
- It seems that everything is there, but I don’t feel happiness.
- I can’t define the main goal at work, I can’t choose a job.
- The work requires new behavior from me, but I do not know which one.
- I can’t decide on …
- I do not finish the work I have begun, apathy periodically attacks.
- I feel that in this profession I have exhausted myself, but I do not know what to try my hand at.
- I can’t get married.
- I can’t build a long-term relationship.
- Other.
Coaching prepares managers for their own lives, teaches responsibility. With the help of the coach’s leading questions, the client understands his desires, needs, abilities, aspirations, barriers, fears, internal clamps. “All the answers and opportunities are already in you” is the motto of coaching.
If everything is so simple, then, it would seem, why ask for help, because you can ask yourself questions on your own. Coaching is additional support, motivation, a sense of duty and responsibility, a commitment to the person who believes in you. In cooperation, it is easier not to retreat, not to get lost, especially at the beginning of the path.
Types of coaching
Broadly speaking, there are two types of coaching: for life and for work.
- Life coaching. Helps a person to understand the family and relationships, teaches acceptance and understanding of oneself. As a result of work, self-confidence, trust in the world, and psychological flexibility grow. A person becomes open to the world and changes. Life coaching relieves psychosomatic diseases and chronic diseases.
- Coaching for business, management activities. Teaches you to work for a result, create a career development plan that matches personal values, teaches effective communication, overcoming internal barriers. The main result of the changes is the simplification of life, financial savings, balance of work and personal life. A person fully reveals his potential, helps other people in this. In some cases, the participant himself can teach coaching in the future, help his team in rallying, creative and work breakthrough.
Coaching results are delayed so support is important. From time to time, each person gets tired, there is a desire to give up everything, old habits are pulled back, the environment, which does not want to change, also pulls back. At such moments, the coach is the only source of motivation and support.
Coaching elements
Coaching is a system that has incorporated various methods and directions of psychology. Moreover, each trainer develops an individual program to solve clients’ problems. It helps to see and find an answer, a new approach to old conditions.
The coach does not give advice, instructions, schemes, recommendations. He only listens and asks, and through leading questions helps a person to look deeper into himself, to find the key on his own. Each question contains a catch, challenges. This helps the client to break stereotypes, to see himself from the other side.
Questions are a core element of coaching. They are set by the coach, then the person himself sets them. So, one failure will have several questions: what led me to this, what should I do differently, what should I not do, what thoughts and actions led to such a result that I need to change in myself.
To expand consciousness, turn on both hemispheres, that is, awaken divergent, systemic thinking, creativity, NLP and yoga are used. The principle of NLP that any person already contains all the resources to achieve a goal is the basis of coaching. The main task is to get these resources, awaken them.
How coaching differs from psychotherapy and counseling
The psychotherapist works with the patient’s past, examines childhood and negative experiences, looking for the causes of current problems in it. The coach takes ready-made material, works with the facts of the present and the goals of the future. The coach doesn’t care about the past. It helps to mark the starting point of the present and the desired point in the future, draw up a plan to achieve it.
In consulting, the consultant himself finds the cause of difficulties, failures and, based on his experience and knowledge, offers the client several ready-made solutions. The coach helps the client to see the problem on his own and to develop several alternative solutions on his own. The coach does not set any tasks or goals. It directs a person to self-activity.
Coaching is very similar to personal growth courses, perhaps they can be identified. The difference is that the coach works one-on-one with each client; this is a close, trusting relationship. It is important not only to help the participants in self-discovery, but to encourage them to search for a unique path of development, personal mission, unique life goal, and also to accompany them along the way.
Epilogue
Coaching changes people, and therefore constantly changes itself. This direction does not have a unified theory, model, methodology. Each trainer develops his own programs, changes them regularly. This is what makes coaching different from training or other methods of psychology.
Coaching is continuous self-development, expanding your comfort zone. Discipline and orderliness are the foundation of successful coaching. A person who has made the decision to change challenges himself every day in order to become the master of fate.
