Coaching & Consulting
Why Coaching Matters
Coaching can have a dramatic impact on your life by holding a mirror up to your thoughts, actions, and ongoing behaviours that may be limiting you.
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Coaching:
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Helps you articulate areas where you feel stuck and identify an action plan to get "unstuck"
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Provides an accountability partner for your personal action plan
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Supplies you with a cheerleader to help you achieve your goals
What Coaching ISN'T
Consulting
Where a consultant is paid to have the answers, a coach is paid to help the client articulate their own answers. A suitable analogy may be giving someone a fish, vs guiding them to be able to fish on their own.
Therapy
Therapy is practised by a licensed healthcare provider and often focuses on past traumas and issues to change self-destructive habits, repair and improve relationships and work through painful feelings. Coaching, on the other hand, assumes that the client is starting from a neutral point and is looking for forward momentum to help them achieve goals. The coaching mantra is often "Deeper and forward"
Mentoring
A mentor relationship often assumes that the "mentor" is senior and the "mentee" is more junior (in regards to the topic at hand). The mentor is tasked with providing guidance and advice based on their knowledge. On the other hand, coaching acknowledges that the client and coach are in equal partnership and that the client, in fact, is the expert on themselves.
Advice from family or friends
Using a close network of people to bounce ideas off and unload life's stresses is often a great way to strengthen and build relationship. However, just by virtue of the existing relationship you have with friends and family they will always have a bias based on their history with you and the nature of your relationship. A coach is unbiased and takes their cues from listening intently to you and holding your agenda at the heart of the relationship.
What Coaching Is
The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.
We all have goals we want to reach, challenges we’re striving to overcome and times when we feel stuck. Partnering with a coach can change your life, setting you on a path to greater personal and professional fulfillment.
