| What is Coaching? |
Shawn Files, MD
What is coaching? Why would someone want to be in a
coaching relationship?
One of the pioneers in Life Coaching defined the
profession this way:
Life coaches assist people to discover what they want in
life and unlock their own brilliance to achieve it. Life
coaching is about people generating their own answers,
not looking outside of themselves for solutions. The
process is not about teaching what you already know or
about clients acting as students. Instead, life coaching is
empowering people to invent something new – to think
something they’ve never thought before and to say
something they’ve never said before. [Ellis, 1998; 1-3]
Of particular import is the notion of what coaching is not.
It is not psychotherapy, although many coaches have
training in psychology and/or psychiatry. Life coaching
does not exist within a “paradigm of pathology” with its
orientation toward healing a defect or getting over past
trauma. Rather, it delves into the realm of possibility with
the focus directed toward outcomes and the means to
achieve goals. Life coaching is solution focused rather than
problem focused allowing the client to set the agenda and
to be accountable for her actions, or inactions, in order to
master that agenda. The client possesses the answers
and the coach facilitates the uncovering and discovering of
this knowledge. In this way, the coach and client form a
mutual, symbiotic relationship full of creativity and joy.
coaching relationship?
One of the pioneers in Life Coaching defined the
profession this way:
Life coaches assist people to discover what they want in
life and unlock their own brilliance to achieve it. Life
coaching is about people generating their own answers,
not looking outside of themselves for solutions. The
process is not about teaching what you already know or
about clients acting as students. Instead, life coaching is
empowering people to invent something new – to think
something they’ve never thought before and to say
something they’ve never said before. [Ellis, 1998; 1-3]
Of particular import is the notion of what coaching is not.
It is not psychotherapy, although many coaches have
training in psychology and/or psychiatry. Life coaching
does not exist within a “paradigm of pathology” with its
orientation toward healing a defect or getting over past
trauma. Rather, it delves into the realm of possibility with
the focus directed toward outcomes and the means to
achieve goals. Life coaching is solution focused rather than
problem focused allowing the client to set the agenda and
to be accountable for her actions, or inactions, in order to
master that agenda. The client possesses the answers
and the coach facilitates the uncovering and discovering of
this knowledge. In this way, the coach and client form a
mutual, symbiotic relationship full of creativity and joy.
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| Shawn[at]ShawnFiles[dot]com 724.472.5995 |
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Copyright 2008 Shawn C. Files, MD LLC All Rights Reserrved