What Is Coaching?

Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.

"If you want a more empowered, results-oriented life, then team up with a coach! In a year, you may look back and wish you had!"

How can coaching benefit me?

As a coach, you:

• Help people set better goals and then reach those goals.
• Ask clients to do more than they would have done on their own.
• Focus clients' better to more quickly produce results.
• Provide the tools, support and structure to accomplish more.

Why is coaching so popular?

Coaching is becoming popular for a few reasons:

• 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. Problem is, many can't see it, or if they can, they can't see a way to reorient their life around it. A coach can help them do both.
• People are realizing how simple it can be to accomplish something that several years ago might have felt out of reach or like a pipedream. A coach is not a miracle worker (well, they are, sometimes) but a coach does have a large tool kit to help the Big Idea become a Reality. Fortunately, people now have time and resources to invest in themselves in this kind of growth.

How is coaching different from consulting, therapy, sports coaching, or a best friend?

Consulting

Coaching is a form of consulting. But the coach stays with the client to help implement the new skills, changes and goals to make sure they really happen.

Therapy

Coaching is not therapy. We don't work on "issues" or get into the past or deal much with understanding human behavior. We leave that up to the client to know and figure out while we help them move forward and set personal and professional goals that will give them the life they really want.

Sports Coaching

Coaching includes several principles from sports coaching, like teamwork, going for the goal, being your best. But unlike sports coaching, most professional coaching is not competition or win/lose based. We strengthen the client's skills vs help them beat the other team. It's win/win.

Best Friend

A best friend is wonderful to have. But is your best friend a professional who you will trust to advise you on the most important aspects of your life and/or business? Sometimes friends see you and love you for where you are while a coach is going to support you in a vision of what you want to become. Have a best friend and a coach.

Why is it important for African-Americans to team up with a coach?

Because African-Americans have been at the psychological effect of hundreds of years of conditioning about what is possible and available to them. Coaching is an intervention that challenges assumptions about what is possible and identifies defeating language and behavior patterns that prevent us from getting what we want.

Adapted from the International Coach Federation