What is coaching verses counselling?
Coaching helps clients dramatically improve their outlook on work and life while improving their life skills and unlocking their personal potential.
A thought-provoking and creative process that inspires you to maximize your personal and professional potential. Given the demands of today’s busy life, coaching can assist you in your life, work and business. Coaching principles allow you to be the expert of your life while being guided by a highly-skilled professional. It’s a more intuitive less structured experience that is commonly explored over a set agreement of individual or packaged sessions.
The assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
Counselling also allows a person to move from a stuck state and is usually focused on the here and now problem the client is experiencing. Most often there is a past trauma that is triggering the current behaviour so the unpacking process may involve multiple sessions.
Not usually timed or wrapped into a package the same way as coaching this style of talk therapy is usually more structured and follows specific training and disciplines such as Gestalt therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Person-Centred Therapy and Narrative Therapy (the most commonly taught therapies in a Counselling qualification).
Both are considered to be Talk Therapy and equally successful in improving overall client psychology.
How is a coach different to a counsellor?
Both have a responsibility to:
Discover, clarify, and align with what you want to achieve from the partnership.
Encourage your experience of self-discovery where it be structured or fluid.
Elicit your-generated solutions and strategies
Hold you responsible and accountable
Give you ongoing and additional coping skills
How will you know if coaching is right for you?
To determine whether you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish by working with a coach.
If you have a fairly clear idea great you are ready to start now.
If however like most clients you aren’t really sure what you want to achieve rather just something in life isn’t the way you had hoped it would be. That’s a great starting point to start a conversation!
How is coaching different from other therapies?
Some therapies deal with healing pain, dysfunction, and spiritual conflict within an individual or
relationship. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that trigger an
individual’s emotional functioning. I see this often appear in clients as physical discomfort. This is what I call Tap therapy as there are more clues to what’s manifesting through dis-ease in the body.
What are some typical reasons someone might work with a coach?
An individual might choose to work with a coach for reasons such as,
• Work and life are out of balance,
• Something urgent, exciting or challenging has occurred and there’s a need for unbiased, confidential and professional support
• A desire to move to the next level in life but uncertain on how to take the next step
• A lack of clarity with choices to be made
• Success has started to become problematic
• A gap exists in knowledge, skills, confidence or resources
• Life has become mundane and uneventful and you want more out of your future.
What are some typical reasons someone might work with a counsellor?
An individual might choose to work with a counsellor for reasons such as,
• Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks
• Self-harming or suicidal thoughts
• Problems belonging or relationship conflict
• Experiencing abuse
• Excessive unhealthy behaviour such as addiction
• Experiencing Loss or Grief
How is ‘Talk Therapy delivered?
Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either face-to-face or by phone) to assess the individual’s or business’ current opportunities and challenges, identify priorities for action, establish specific desired outcomes and see if there is a match.
Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one’s personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments or models to support the individual’s or business’ thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on needs and preferences.
Counselling typically begins with an intake form being completed to assess any high-risk concerns or potential need for mandatory reporting followed by a brief introduction to discuss the presenting concern. The outcome of the first session with be determined by what is discussed by the client. The client may not need future sessions if they do it is typically within a set period being a week or fortnight. Alternatively, the client may need to be referred to another professional such as a GP or Phychologist for specific treatment plans.
What does the process look like?
A variety of concepts, models and principles drawn from the behavioral sciences, management
literature, spiritual traditions and/or the arts and humanities may be incorporated into the both ‘Talk Therapy’
conversations. It’s a conversation like no other as it’s experiential-based to increase self-awareness
and awareness of others, foster shifts in perspective, promote fresh insights, provide new
frameworks for looking at opportunities and challenges, and energize and inspire forward actions.
Within the partnership, what are the expectations?
The coach or counsellor:
• Provides objective assessment and observations that foster the individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others
• Listens closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances
• Acts as a sounding board for exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making
• Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations
• Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives
• Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios
• Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics
• Seeks to refer to other more suitable professionals if the need arrises
The individual:
• Creates the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals
• Uses assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others
• Envisions personal and/or organizational success
• Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions
• Utilizes the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives
• Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations
• Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills
• Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions
• Have the courage to reach for more than before while engaging in continual self-examination without fear and have some FUN along the way!