Coaching

The field of personal and professional coaching has grown rapidly in the past 15 years and, as with most fields and professions that experience this kind of growth, there are many different perspectives on coaching. Here's a definition that perhaps most people would agree with.

Coaching involves working in a partnership between coach and client(s) to provide structure, guidance and support for clients to:

1. Take a complete look at their current state, including their assumptions and perceptions about their work, themselves and/or others;
2. Set relevant and realistic goals for themselves, based on their own nature and needs;
3. Take relevant and realistic actions toward reaching their goals; and
4. Learn by continuing to reflect on their actions and sharing feedback with others along the way.

Coaching can be especially useful to help individuals, groups, and organizations to address complex problems and/or achieve significant goals and to do so in a highly individualized fashion while learning at the same time.

A general framework we use and adapt to specific needs:

1. Forming a relationship with the potential client, including assessing if the client is really ready for coaching, orienting the client to personal or professional coaching, and clarifying how both the coach and client prefer to work together.
2. Establishing a mutual agreement or coaching contract, including the roles of the coach and client, ground rules for working together, frequency of meetings, confidentiality, etc.
3. Developing client-centered goals to be achieved during the coaching project, the goals of which depend very much on whether the coaching is performance- or well-being-oriented.
4. A series of face-to-face and/or phone-based meetings with the coach and client, including ongoing questions, affirmations, accountabilities, etc., to identify relevant and realistic actions the client can take to achieve the goals and learn at the same time.
5. Evaluating the coaching, both during and shortly after the project, which is made easier if the coaching was based on mutually agreed goals.