The essential part of coaching, then, is to help people to learn to silence that inner voice and allow their instincts, or their subconscious, to take over. Sometimes that means distracting it, and sometimes it’s about exploring the ‘worst case scenario’ and removing the fear.
WHAT IS COACHING?
Put simply, coaching is a process that aims to improve performance and focuses on the ‘here and now’ rather than on the distant past or future.
There is a huge difference between teaching someone and helping them to learn. In coaching, fundamentally, the coach is helping the individual to improve their own performance: in other words, helping them to learn.
I believe that the individual always has the answer to their own problems and understands that they may need help to find the answer.
Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.
-- John Whitmore, in Coaching for Performance.
The Differences Between Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring and Counselling
Although teaching, coaching, mentoring and counselling all share some key characteristics and skills, they are nonetheless quite different and it’s important to be aware of the differences.
Teaching and Training
Teaching and training involve an expert teacher who imparts knowledge to their students.
Although the best teachers will use participative and interactive techniques, like coaching, there is very definitely an imbalance of knowledge, with the teacher as expert knowing the ‘right answer’.
Coaching
Coaching involves the belief that the individual has the answers to their own problems within them.
The coach is not a subject expert, but rather is focused on helping the individual to unlock their own potential. The focus is very much on the individual and what is inside their head. A coach is not necessarily a designated individual: anyone can take a coaching approach with others, whether peers, subordinates or superiors.
The key skill of coaching is asking the right questions to help the individual work through their own issues.
Mentoring
Mentoring is similar to coaching. There is general agreement that a mentor is a guide who helps someone to learn or develop faster than they might do alone.
In the workplace mentors are often formally designated as such by mutual agreement, and outside of an individual’s line management chain. They usually have considerable experience and expertise in the individual’s line of business.
A mentoring relationship usually focuses on the future, career development, and broadening an individual’s horizons, unlike coaching which tends to focus more on the here and now and solving immediate problems or issues.
Counselling
Counselling is closer to a therapeutic intervention. It focuses on the past, helping the individual to overcome barriers and issues from their past and move on. Here, the focus may be either internal or external.
The differences between these various 'learning methods' can be summarized as:
Based on the work of: Clutterbuck, D. & Schneider, S. (1998)