Coaching: Fact or Fiction Part 2

‘Life’ or Personal Coaching is everywhere! You can’t open a magazine or turn on the telly without seeing reference to ‘Coaching’ in all its guises. Be it which celeb is seeing a ‘Life Coach’ to help them with their addiction, or on the latest sitcom in which the protagonist visits a ‘Life Coach’, often resulting in a hilarious parody of the stereotypical American-style, crystal-healing, chakra-realigning, saccharine-sweet, larger-than-life personality (in a recent programme, the voluptuous ‘Life Coach’ sat on the leading character’s face so that she could experience rebirth).

Kris Robertson’s continues his top 10 Coaching Fallacies - PART 2. (Check out https://www.the-coaching-academy.com/blog if you missed last week’s PART 1)

Coaching Fact or Fiction?

#5

Fiction: Professional coaches tell their clients what to do and give them advice.

Fact: Bad coaches tell their clients what to do and are constantly giving advice. Great coaches recognise that their clients have most of the answers within and that motivation and commitment comes from great questions, raising their clients’ awareness of the situation and empowering them to take ownership and responsibility for their action. Great coaches recognise that their clients look at life through a different lens and that their definition of life/career/love/success etc. may be completely different – so how useful will your advice, guidance and suggestion be to someone who has a different way of thinking, different values and different beliefs about the world?

People are usually more convinced by reason they discover themselves than by those found by others. - Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)

#4

Fiction: Life coaches are like having a good friend to bounce ideas off and to keep you motivated.

Fact: Your coach may be friendly, but they are not your friend. Your coach is your advocate. They want the best from you. They will work with you to help you reach your goals and to succeed. Your coach will hold you accountable and challenge you to do more than you think you can do. They will make you take responsibility for the outcomes you want and the actions you say you will take to get there. In doing this they may push, pull, and stretch you in ways that may feel uncomfortable. And unlike a friendship, the coaching relationship is a one-sided affair - it is exclusively focused on YOU and your goals, not the coach, their family, the fact that she, like you, is looking to buy a house, or what he did over the weekend.

#3

Fiction: Coaching can be a one-off quick fix.

Fact: Coaching is very much like going to the gym. In order to develop the series of habits and routines in which you can get the body-beautiful – the abs, the 6 pack, the tone and definition – takes a fair amount of time, effort dedication. Once you are happy with the finished product if you stop it doesn’t take much time for all the hard work to go to waste. Coaching is similar. Whilst clients can achieve remarkable progress toward their desired future in a short space of time – it’s the clients who recognise the long term investment in themselves that reap the rewards. It’s definitely not a quick fix since there’s never going to be a point in which you’ve achieved everything you want in all areas of your life.

#2

Fiction: Personal coaches can only help you reach personal goals / Business coaches can only help you reach business goals.

Fact: A good coach is someone who is an expert at helping others create positive change in their lives. For some clients, the positive change they most want may be focused on personal goals such as relationships, time management, work-life balance, stress reduction, health, etc., but other clients will be more interested in professional or business goals such as leadership, getting a promotion, starting a business, etc. An effective coach works with the client to help them live a better, richer life - regardless of their type of goals. Plus many personal coaching clients may hire the coach in the first instance to help them improve their health, before realising they need to work out an exit strategy from their current career; whilst a business coaching client may employ the services of a coach with a view to improve communication effectiveness within the workplace before instead preferring to focus on how they can spend more time with family and take more holiday.

#1

Fiction: Life coaches are professionals who can help you achieve your goals.

Fact: Some, but certainly not all coaches are professionals who can help you move forward and increase the likelihood that you’ll get what you want from life and/or business. One of the problems in the coaching industry is that anyone can call themselves a professional coach, life coach, personal coach, etc. Bev James, Managing Director of The Coaching Academy, has said, "Technically, anyone can one day wake up and decide to call themselves a coach since coaching is not regulated. Many of the ‘coaches’ out there have absolutely no idea what coaching is as they haven't been trained and have never been coached by a professionally trained, qualified and accredited coach. There are people out there who read a book or watch a TV programme or attend an evening seminar on the subject and decide 'I'm a coach!'" As a result, the quality of coaches varies dramatically. I strongly suggest working with a coach that has completed a recognised coaching qualification, can evidence their on-going continual professional development and actively engages in regular coaching supervision.