Coaching is the option for the healthy and aspiring mind.
Coaching young people in times of change for times of change.
In order to meet the challenges we face in these times of accelerating change and complexity even the healthy mind is gaining valuable support from the professional. Coaching is perfectly placed to serve our evolving psychological needs. But how does coaching relate to therapy, counselling, consultation and having a mentor? And how do we choose the best option?
It is generally agreed that it is wise to look after our mental health with a good life balance. A clear understanding of how the helping professions operate and the kind support available to us can help us respond quickly in these unsettled times to ensure we and our loved ones stay safe and successful.
Coaching is one of the latest of these professions to emerge. Coaching has grown organically and locally whilst meeting today’s growing areas of need and is agile in the face of change. As a consequence, there is great diversity in its approaches and methodologies. Emerging neurological and social research on how we think, how we best learn and collaborate are helping all the helping professions to become more effective. Coaching agility has an open-sourced nature to it where coaches share their experiences and findings in webinars and blogs etc that are free of some of the bounds that the more regulatory of commercially guarded professions in this discussion.
In coaching the coachee’s profile is non-clinical, there is no direct focus on the healing of disease. Even though there may be some psychotherapeutic benefits through gaining awareness and insights into problems, the aim is not to bring relief to symptoms and is therefore not therapeutic in nature. This differentiates it from Psychotherapy and many areas of counselling.
Effective coaching assumes a non-hierarchical, adult to adult position in the helping relationship. This differentiates it from mentoring and consultancy. Here the helping relationship is valued for its imbalance of experience and expertise, It is the elevated position that information and role modelling is given to the process that is key. The coaching relationship assumes that the coach is the expert in coaching and the coachee the expert in his or her own life.
The process of coaching is about self-actualisation. At all points, the coachee is the one that determines the speed and direction of proceedings. The coach works within a boundary formed by the particular set of internal and external resources available to the coachee. This differentiates it from the other helping professions as the point where it is assumed that there is a lack of such resources.