Professional coaching is essentially a process of inquiry, choice, and action.
The coaching process stimulates creative thinking, challenges assumptions, inspires commitment, and develops new capabilities that help people maximize their personal and professional potential.
According to Tim Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis, 1997), “Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them”.
The coaching approach holds that people already possess everything they need in order to learn to be effective in the face of even the most challenging circumstances. The role of the coach is to help clients
A) clarify what they want to achieve
B) identify and choose new perspectives, behaviors, and approaches that serve them, and
C) take action that moves them decidedly forward in relation to their vision and goals.
For the client, coaching offers a way to step outside of a particular situation or perspective, and to view things in a new light that illuminates new pathways for achieving results. In addition, coaching offers a rare opportunity to receive objective and unbiased feedback, to identify and transcend barriers to productivity and success, and to articulate a compelling vision for the future.
Coaching begins with the relationship between coach and client. This relationship is one of empowerment, accountability, deep respect, and results-oriented thinking and action. The coaching engagement is informed by the client’s long-term goals, shaped by the client’s current agenda, and driven by the coach’s knowledge and mastery of the coaching process itself.
A skilled coach draws from different theoretical knowledge areas in psychology, organizational systems, leadership, communication, culture, gender, and so on; weaving together a unique approach to each client that can include a variety of coaching tools and techniques, assessments, exercises, and so forth. Every client is unique, and every coaching engagement should be, too.
From the International Coach Federation (ICF):
The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching honors the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that every client is creative, resourceful, and whole. Standing on this foundation, the coach’s responsibility is to:
- Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve;
- Encourage client self-discovery;
- Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies; and
- Hold the client responsible and accountable.
