Demystifying Coaching
Who is a coach?
Coaching is one of the most confusing professions in the modern world. If you ask a coach about what you do or how you coach, the answer will differ depending on whom you ask. Coaching spans from niche areas like athletic, financial, relationship, and health coaching to career, team, and executive coaching.
In addition, there are no set requirements, regulations, or mandatory education requirements for coaching. Anyone can call themselves a coach!
This makes distinguishing between a “real;” and a “snake-oil” coach difficult!
Various coaching organizations such as ICF and universities invest their time and effort to make coaching more regulated.
So, what exactly is coaching?
Coaching is a multidisciplinary approach to facilitating learning and change that supports personal reflection, meaning-making, and achieving specific personal and/or professional objectives. It originates in various fields of study, including psychology, psychiatry, medicine, physics, systems theory, linguistics, therapy, hypnosis, management development, anthropology, leadership theory, organization development, training, selling, religion, and philosophy.
Jenny Rogers defines coaching as the art of facilitating another person’s learning, development, well-being, and performance. Coaching raises self-awareness and identifies choices. Through coaching, people can find their own solutions, develop their skills, and change their attitudes and behaviors. The whole aim of coaching is to close the gap between people’s potential and their current state.
Before getting into the coaching process, let me clarify what coaching is not!!
Coaching is not
Advice Giving
Therapy
Mentoring
Performance Evaluation
Consulting
Training
Now you understand what coaching is. But how will you decide whether you need coaching or not?
There are various narratives about coaching out there!! Are coaches hired to fix problems and improve underperforming employees? Or are they therapy for “healthy” people? Is therapy past-focused and coaching future-focused?
Let's understand the principles of coaching based on Jenny Rogers's book Coaching Skills: The Definitive Guide to Being a Coach.
Coaching Principles
Principle 1: The client is resourceful
Principle 2: The coach’s role is to develop the client’s resourcefulness through skillful questioning, challenge, and support.
Principle 3: Coaching addresses the whole person - past, present, and future
Principle 4: The client sets the agenda
Principle 5: The coach and the client are equals
Principle 6: Coaching is about change and action
Before deciding whether you need coaching, let us also describe different types of coaching! Remember, this is only a loose description, and the definition can vary based on your chosen dimension.
Based on the client's demographics and goals
Traditional sports coaches who work from client-centric methods.
Nowadays, many advisory services refer to their services as coaching. Examples are health, financial, acting, and marriage coaching.
Life coaches who work on whole-life dilemmas, including personal relationships, work-life balance, planning for the future, etc.
Situational coaching like performance, engagement, systemic, Developmental
Organizational Coaching includes team, managerial, and leadership coaching and executive coaching.
Based on the theories used
You might have heard many coaches add methods they use for coaching. Some examples are Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT), Psychodynamic, Hypnosis, Narrative, Systemic, Solution-Focused, etc. These are based on particular schools of therapy. The more popular ones have branched out and created training courses. Coaches who train in these methods approach coaching based on these theories and tools.
With all these options available, how do I choose a coach? Since there are no specific regulations, it becomes harder!
This is where evidence-based coaching plays an important role!!
So, what is Evidence-based coaching?
Grant coined evidence-based coaching to distinguish between professional coaching explicitly grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge bases from “pop psychology.”
Evidence-based practice is the idea that occupational practices should be based on scientific evidence. Linking coaching practice with existing knowledge of science and practice is important in enhancing credibility. This shifts from focusing on primary techniques and skills to a broader and deeper understanding of relevant knowledge in coach education. To address this, an increasing number of coaches from various disciplines have developed coaching methodologies explicitly grounded in the academic knowledge base. Coaching is a cross-disciplinary methodology, and people from various professional backgrounds are now working as coaches. The backgrounds include behavioral and social sciences, organizational change and development, psychoanalytical therapy, cognitive and behavioral psychology, adult education, and business and economic science.
Does that mean evidence-based practitioners need to be researchers or develop prescriptive intervention models? The answer is No. Informed practitioners are expected to be insignificant research producers. They are the consumers of research who can utilize their research, theoretical frameworks, information, and critical thinking skills to improve their practices and understanding of coaching.
Here are some theories and frameworks widely used by evidence-based practitioners. Practitioners can adopt a few theories, which will change their approach to coaching. Experienced and effective practitioners can use multiple theories and pick the one that suits the client’s needs and circumstances!
Coaching from a humanistic and transpersonal psychology perspective
Behavioral and Cognitive theories based coaching
Coaching from a neuroscience perspective
Psychoanalytically informed coaching
Positive psychology-based coaching
Coaching grounded in Adult Development Theory
Coaching from a social and cultural perspective
Coaching rooted in systems theory and Family systems therapy
Coaching from communication and conflict management theories
Career and change management
Organizational theories
Spirituality based coaching
Self-help and Human Potential Movements
Mindfulness-based theories
Some popular theories are used in coaching but are a partial list.
The coaching methodologies might be very different depending on the coach's theory. However, a good coach can incorporate various techniques and theories while working with the client.
I plan to write a series of articles demystifying coaching focused on each of these popular theories and types of coaching.
The content in this article is adapted from books The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: From Theory to Practice, The Handbook of Knowledge-Based Coaching: From Theory to Practice, Coaching Skills: The definitive guide to being a coach.
Images used in the article are generated by chatGPT!
Please reach out to me at athiradas@greymahout.com to learn more about coaching!!