What Will Coaching Do For Me?

Coaching motivates people to push themselves further than they’ve gone before. A coach will:

• Encourage you to be the best you can be.
  
• Challenge you to dream bigger than you’ve ever dared.
  
• Identify goals and support you as you reach those goals quickly.
  
• Facilitate changes to limiting thinking and behaviour patterns.
  
• Provide the structure, tools and perspectives to help you move forward.
  
• Expect more of you than you expect of yourself.

How Does Coaching Achieve This?

• By helping you to set powerful, compelling goals so that you are clear about your life’s direction.
  
• Providing the structure to help you stick to your guns, even when the going gets tough.
  
• Focusing you on where you are now, where you want to be, and the best way to get there.
  
• Helps you to think laterally to create options and opportunities for yourself, and then think deeply about the choices you wish to make.
  
• Giving you a step-by-step process that avoids the overwhelming feeling of “where do I start?”.

How is Coaching Different From Counseling?

Coaching is not therapy, nor is it a substitute for counseling, although the two can work well together. Counselors are in the business of recovery, whereas coaches are in the business of development.

A counselor’s primary focus is in healing a single or specific problem by examining the past. A coach will concentrate on enhancing the present and shaping the future. In other words, a counselor will help you to walk again and a coach will help you to run the four minute mile!

How Do I Know if I Need a Coach?

You might hire a Coach if you find:

• That you are motivated but lacking support or direction.
• Your business is not growing to the extent that you want. It feels like it’s just ‘spinning its wheels.
  
• Working for yourself you need someone to be accountable to so you fulfil your commitments.
  
• You are wanting to take the next step in your career or relationship.
  
• You are lacking in motivation and are needing a push.
  
• You or your business are looking for clarity.
  
• Find it hard to set and reach your own goals.
  
• Feeling overwhelmed and needing some balance.

How Does Coaching Work?

Coaching is an interactive process whereby the coach guides and facilitates your progress towards defined goals. These may concern relationships, career, self-confidence, financial matters or, a more general goal of “getting life back on course”.

For many people, the trigger for getting a coach can be as specific as a new job, relationship breakdown, illness or simply feeling that life is moving so quickly that you’ve lost control.

A good coach will help you to find direction in various aspects of your life, including relationships, goal setting, stress management, motivation, health, even spirituality.

Does Coaching Really Work?

Ask anyone who has experienced coaching for themselves and they will tell you that it has changed their life. That it has brought them personal satisfaction and success as well as a deep sense of achievement so they can feel energized to move forward in a positive and purposeful way.

Can a Dependency be Created Between A Coach and Client?

Not really. You may look to your coach to help you maximize an opportunity or accelerate your personal or professional growth, however, your coach will ensure you are never dependent on him or her.

While your coach offers advice, support and encouragement, an emotional, and psychological dependency are not created. A coach is never your crutch.

Remember, coaching is designed for people who are already successful and strong enough on their own – the coach is just adding that extra ten to twenty percent impetus needed to help them to really go for and then attain their goals.

What Makes a Great Coach?

A great coach…

• Believes in the amazing innate abilities that each person has and then seeks to draw those abilities out of his or her clients.
  
• Is a supporter and facilitator of people’s dreams.
  
• Knows how to listen and ask just the right questions. They also know when to challenge and when to support.
  
• Puts aside all judgments and lets you start with a fresh sheet of paper to redesign your life.
  
• Will forge a goal-oriented, results-focused alliance with you.
  
• Will help you fearlessly recognise your limitations, identify strategies that will overcome them and then implement those plans effectively.
  
• Sees success as learning to do the right things, rather than doing things right.

How is Coaching Delivered?

The system of coaching delivery varies from coach to coach. Finding a method that suits you is imperative.

Some life coaches work face-to-face with their clients and offer telephone and email backup and support. Other coaching sessions are conducted solely over the telephone or via Skype or email.

Some coaches provide group coaching such as teleclasses (a group coaching call). Sessions can be anything from half an hour to two hours at weekly, fortnightly or monthly intervals depending on the coaching program being offered and your specific needs.

The best coaching programs include “homework” – essentially coursework designed to lock-in the learning between sessions.

How is Coaching Different From Consulting?

Consultants tend to assess situations, provide solutions and often implement plans. A coach doesn’t offer any solutions. Yes, they may offer suggestions but Coaches believe that clients possess all the necessary resources to do, be and have anything they want in life.

Can Coaching Hurt Someone?

No. Coaches aren’t in the business of providing psychological counselling. They are not trying to control anyone’s thinking.
A life coach will never tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. However, while the client is always in the driver’s seat, the coach is never just along for the ride.

A life coach will first listen to you and then question you with such skill that you will come to your own realization and learn how to make your own best choices.

What Tools Do Coaches Use When Coaching?

The coaching process draws on a range of disciplines: psychology and sociology, economics and business, adult learning and education, and philosophy.

Each coach will employ their own personal experiences, as well as their coaching skills to create their own operational toolkit. The most common tools that coaches use are assessment programs such as 360-degree reviews and psychological profiles; charts, graphs and checklists; language distinctions, reading lists and coaching e-classes.

What Does it Cost to Hire a Coach?

The cost depends on the service provided. As each coaching program is tailored to the individual according to their needs, costs will vary from coach to coach and client to client.

Can I Hire a Coach For a Special Project?

Yes. Some clients hire a coach just to help them accomplish specific goals or projects. Usually, however, the client keeps working with the coach after that because there are even more interesting things to accomplish.

Why is Coaching Becoming So Popular?

People around the world are realizing how simple it can be to accomplish something that only a few years ago might have felt out of reach.

More and more of us understand that the only limitations we have are the ones we set ourselves.

Many people are tired of doing what they “should” do and are ready to do something special and meaningful for the rest of their lives. The only problem is, that many can’t see what that may be, or if they can, they can’t see a way to reorient their life around it.

A coach can help them do both.