WHAT THE HECK IS COACHING?

Posted on November 14, 2021 by Chiara Ghinolfi, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

“Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Coaching is a client-driven process distinct from other service professions, such as counselling, mentoring, consulting and training.
Coaches honour the clients as the expert in their own life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole”.
The above is the ICF (International Coaching Federation) definition of coaching.
Another possible definition is: “Coaching is a method aimed at developing a person, a group or an organization, which takes place within a facilitating relationship, based on the identification and use of the client’s potential to achieve change, self-determined goals, and improvements through an action plan”
There are several definitions, though the common thread is that it is a process through which a professional, the coach, helps a person, individually or within organizations, to achieve their best levels of performance in any area of their lives.
The coaching relationship is based on a fundamental assumption, namely the belief that each person already has all the resources necessary to achieve their goals. What the coach does is use some techniques to help the coachees activate these resources and the tools they possess to achieve their personal and/or professional goals. Some may see the coach as someone who makes the change happen, whereas, it would be incorrect to give the coach such power/burden. The clients have the ability the make change happen and it is their responsibility to do so, the coach is a partner in this process.
We are talking about a discipline that, unlike other helping professions, is very action and result oriented and focuses on the definition and achievement of specific objectives.
What are its applications
Coaching was born, and initially developed, in the sports field and finds its first definition and theorization in the book by Timothy Gallwey “The Inner Game of Tennis” in which it is explained how the greatest opponent of the sportsman in improving his performance is not only the one who is on the other side of the net but what lies in his head. The solution to this is making the tennis players concentrate on their own internal sensations, achieving a significant improvement in the performance. From the sports field, in which it is still widespread and achieves important results, coaching has found applications in the field of personal development, professional development, in team development, and in the field of education and learning. In short, anywhere there are people motivated to achieve results and to do it by getting involved!
More and more companies are choosing to complement or replace traditional training with an approach based on coaching. In fact, this approach, being more focused and oriented towards achieving specific objectives, turns out to be a more effective tool in generating real changes than traditional training methods. To understand how the development of individuals can benefit organizations, it may be useful to analyse what are the issues on which they most frequently undertake to improve, and it will be seen how the improvement of individual performance in some sectors can only produce more performing professionals.
Coaching can be used to
• Generate new possibilities • Make choices
• Organize expectations about oneself and others • Communicate effectively
• Manage time
• Learn from the mistakes of the past
• Solve problems
• Improve working relationships
• Manage the ups and downs
• Finding a balance between private and professional life
In coaching people can work on limiting beliefs and attitudes to better face the new, to act to transform the fear of change into an energy aimed at the development and realization of the person and the team. Coaching allows to unblock resistance, to get out of the critical phase and to redesign and develop somebody’s private or professional life, to rediscover the pleasure of changing, with optimal results, improving the quality of existence and professional successes.
The clients are responsible for every step, the coach helps them to become aware of their goals and to achieve them in the best possible way. The coach has full confidence in the development of people’s potential and in the ability that everyone must find in themselves the right answers to their problems. It is not a psychotherapy, nor an alternative to psychological therapies, but it can coexist with such approaches.
Is coaching useful?
It is a highly effective method that helps people become successful in their private or professional life, improve relationships with others, discovering the most appropriate strategies to achieve their goals. The first step is to foster knowledge and awareness of oneself, one’s resources and areas that can be improved.
What are the outcomes of coaching? Some of the surveys that were carried out in the corporate world report the productivity of staff with training alone improved by about 22%, while with coaching the improvement reached 88%.
A study on the return on investment of Executive Coaching, published by the Manchester Review, demonstrates the following areas of impact on the business:
• Productivity, 53% • Quality, 48%
• Customer service, 39% • Reduction in customer complaints, 34% • Fidelity of executives, 32%
• Cost reduction of 23%
• Bottom-line profitability, 22%
Executives recognized improvements in the following areas:
• Working relationships with direct collaborators, 77% • Collaborative relationships with superiors, 71%
• Teamwork, 67%

• Work relationships with colleagues, 63% • Job satisfaction, 61% • Conflict reduction, 52%
• Organizational commitment, 44%
• Working relationships with clients, 37%
What differentiates the coach from a consultant?
Consultants are someone who, having gained experience in a specific topic, are called upon to provide opinions, say what to do and give answers all framed by their own worldview.
A coach’s work is based on asking open ended questions. An impartial observer and a witty listener the coach works on the client’s vision and world map, expanding it through powerful questioning. The range of action can be very broad so can be the type of coaching. Coaching can be involved in achieving personal, professional, team, leadership or performance goals. A coach can focus on a specific niche even though the strategies and tools implemented can work for pretty much any goal, as long as it falls into the scope of work clearly defined by internationally recognised bodies such as ICF.
ICF also provides a list of competencies that are expected to be shown in every session by the coach. The most updated version is:
1) Demonstrate ethical practice
2) Embodies a coaching mindset
3) Establishes and maintains agreements
4) Cultivates trust and safety
5) Maintains presence
6) Listens actively
7) Evokes awareness
8) Facilitates client growth
Most of these competences can be shown through powerful questioning done by the coach after creating rapport with the client. Holding a non-judgmental space for them to express what they are dealing with it while being genuinely interested in the conversation. A coach will listen through a frame of curiosity with the presupposition that the clients are the specialists in their own life and area.
What differentiates the Coach from a psychologist or therapist?
A psychologist or therapist deals with pathologies and disorders that affect the psyche. They provide therapies, diagnosis and prognosis. Their work generally revolves around the past, what happened, and how is that series of event affecting the patient’s life. It tends to be a problem centred work where the relationship between the therapist and the patient can create a lasting bond over time. Some types of therapists are also licensed to administer drugs and medications to treat their patients.
Coaching is a future oriented work, where the past is reflected on only to create positive actions and change. It’s a space for self-reflection, where one of the most powerful questions the clients can ask themselves is “What can I do better next?”.
Coaching has the goal of making good better, as it is not a “fix it” strategy; clients could be working on objectives such as overcoming difficulties or improving communication, increasing the level of performance in a certain area or creating change in their own personal life. It is not about pathologies, as that is when a coach should be referring out the clients to specific therapist who can cooperate with the coach if that is appropriate. There’s

a strategy that has to be created and the clients are responsible for the creation of an accountability system that can allow them to be successful as it is a “results-oriented” strategy.
A model that can be followed in a coaching process to achieve change is CTA’s A4 model. Agreement, awareness, actions and accountably are its components. This model requires the coach to show skills such as generative listening, where the focus is both on verbal and non-verbal communication, holding a non-judgemental space for the client to express freely and feel safe. Observation and identification of values and beliefs in the client’s language are key to achieving change and transformation while using the strategy of reflecting back aimed at enabling clients to hear their own thoughts and words.