What is Coaching?
Coaching is a thinking partnership that brings about change through self-inquiry, clarity, and accountability.
The world’s most successful people - athletes, artists, and high-achievers in all aspects of life - have one thing in common: they have coaches.
Their coach isn’t necessarily better than them at their craft but, rather, is an expert in helping them fulfil their potential.
They know that having someone in their corner to constructively challenge them and unleash what makes them great is a competitive advantage. They can course correct more quickly, think more clearly, and re-focus on the actions that will bring them greater results and personal fulfilment.
In a partnership based on trust, expertise, and the power of human connection, a coach helps you determine what you want and how you can move towards it.
Unlike in therapy, where people need healing, coaching clients begin their journey ready and able to change, seeking self-awareness, and willing to explore what’s holding them back.
While many people receive both therapy and coaching at the same time, the focus of therapy is to resolve what’s happened in the past; whereas the focus of coaching is to create a direction that enables growth into the future.
The most powerful insights are the ones you discover yourself - not the ones told to you by someone else. In Coaching for Performance, Sir John Whitmore said it best:
It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.
That’s why a core principle of coaching is a non-directive stance - where change is led by the client, rather than directed by the coach. The coach simply provides the optimal conditions for the client to realise this change.
Instead of presenting their own beliefs or ideas, coaches help the client to discover what’s most important to them and support them in achieving it. They step in with a contribution when clients could benefit from information they aren’t aware of.
This is where their deep expertise comes in:
- Which tools do they have in their toolbox?
- Which frameworks are second-nature to them?
- What has and hasn’t worked for their other elite performers?
The role of a coach is captured well in Michelangelo’s philosophy about sculpting:
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
Your life is the stone you are given. Your task is to discover the statue within it. Your coach provides the techniques, tools, and support for you to do your best sculpting.
If you’d like to experience the thought-provoking process of coaching, book your first session free with Dr Manu Sidhu.