This is not the whistling-blowing type of coaching you remember from high school. Coach practitioners (professional coaches) help you clarify your desired outcomes, define your action steps, and measure your progress. Using active listening, encouragement, and open questions, your coach facilitates your progress.
Professional coaching is an intentional conversation that empowers individuals and groups to reach their potential – both personally and professionally.
Unlike other “coaching” which more closely resembles teaching or consulting, professional coaches are client-centric and focus on client-based solutions. Much is expected of you as the client. You will evaluate, reason, imagine, decide, and implement.
What Coaching Is
Coaching is about you – your goals, your learning, and your growth. Your coach’s role is to assist you in discovering insights and taking next steps.
Coaching is about your learning – rather than the coach’s teaching. You are the expert on your life. Your coach uses techniques such as active listening, encouragement, and open questions to help you gain awareness and identify action items.
Coaching is about action – your action. Each session you will determine 1-3 actions steps you will take before the next session. You may be surprised how quickly you progress toward your goals.
Coaching is about all of you – not just your work. Changing old habits and thought patterns is difficult. Your coach recognizes these patterns and will support you as you change and grow.
What Coaching Is Not
It’s not therapy. Although utilizing many of the same communication techniques, therapy focuses on healing the past. Coaching is future and action-oriented, not treating psychological and emotional concerns.
It’s not mentoring. Mentors are experts in a particular field who seek to pass on their expertise. They may use coaching techniques, but mentors usually play the roles of advisor and teacher.
It’s not training. In training, the trainer sets the agenda. Change comes from outside the participant, via the trainer. In coaching, you set the agenda. Coaches use principles of self-discovery to motivate change from within you.
It’s not authoritarian. Your coach will push you beyond what you might think you can do but will always be supportive. You are in control. The responsibility to decide and act is yours.
The coaching relationship is expected to produce insights, greater personal awareness, changed behaviors, actions, and ultimately results that satisfy the client.
To learn more about how coaching can help you make progress, reach out to Kelly.
![For the regular days...
Yesterday, we celebrated the mamas. But I have some hesitance about the day on behalf of those for whom the day is hard. For those who will face disappointment, longing, or loneliness.
Here's to regular days, the ones that come right after the "important" days, the days we might feel overlooked or unappreciated.
Here's to Monday mornings when you get up with the sun and get to work, whatever that looks like for you.
Here's to having hard conversations and making hard decisions.
Here's to doing what needs done, whatever that means and wherever it takes you.
Here's to doing what you're meant to do.
[Caroline is traveling with me this week in Guatemala. She's my assistant on this trip.]](https://scontent-ord5-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/280158713_1358881094613296_3621727649573332245_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8ae9d6&_nc_ohc=duBTgZ_t7EYAX-t81l9&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=AM6HXa8EAAAA&oh=00_AfB0DJU-rZtZ4AiySx_1Z9ZTE9R3FMu7VuAocA5xigGIcw&oe=6493C8EA "What Is Coaching")
