I recently qualified as a life coach and it dawned on me that the majority of people are misunderstood about what coaching is and isn't.
This is how it'd go...
I'd say, "I just got my coaching diploma. I'm now a qualified and trained coach".
And I'd always hear any one of the following...
"What sport?"
"So you're into auras and stuff"
"So you boss people around"
"But you're a therapist, Lily. How can you be both a therapist and a coach?"
Apart from the question about sports, I can't understand how the other three comments became such common ideas.
Coaching isn't about auras and definitely not about bossing people around. And it works well integrated with therapy (merging therapy and coaching is a topic for another day).
Instead coaching is about goals. I say "goals", but I could easily say aims, intentions, plans and problem-solving. Simply put, a coach's job is to help their client specify what they want or need, the importance of it, how they'll achieve it and overcome any obstacles that could get in the way. Coaching is about taking action and making progress!
Some people approach coaching without a goal, and some coaches are happy to work without one but many coaches won't. This is mainly for two reasons.
Firstly, action and goals are at the very heart of coaching and a lot of exploring would be needed to create and define a goal before "proper coaching" can begin. There's nothing wrong with this! But many coaches (and clients) want to get to work and start coaching.
Secondly, many coaches specialise in a type of goal - for example, the goal to get a promotion or to have a more stable relationship - and exploring general discontent without goals may lead to a client discovering the coach's specialism isn't appropriate for them. Again, this could be fine, but discovering the coach's service isn't what's best for the client is never what anybody particularly wanted.
That's because the coach's style, approach and specialism really matter and it needs to be properly understood!
Remember, by definition, what coaching is is helping another person to take action so they can achieve their goals. How this is done is incredibly vague and can be done in a thousand ways. There are of course rules and ethical regulations, but the ways in which coaches work are as unique as they are. What coaching is depends on how the coach chooses to work.
A good and ethical coach will clearly define how they help their clients, their style, approach and specialism so that someone can choose if they want to work with this coach or that coach and agree to their methods.
A business coach will work in a very different way to a mental health coach, who will work very differently from a career coach. Yusuf, the business coach, will also work very differently from Mary, the other business coach.
So will a coach out there work with auras? Definitely yes. But not all. I don't.
But will a coach boss people around? Absolutely not.
Coaching is NOT about being told what to do or a coach completing work on behalf of their clients.
Coaching in general may be vague, but any coach worth their salt will clearly describe and explain what kind of goals they work with, their style and approach and what to expect when working with them.
Written by Lily Llewellyn
17th October 2024
Lily is a psychotherapist trained and educated in person-centred counselling, achieved an MA in anthropology and recently got her life coaching diploma. Her areas of interest include our relationships with ourselves and others as well as the ways in which we relate to objects, such as food and money, and activities, such as shopping and work.
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