What is professional coaching and why is it important?

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Rana El Deeb, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

If you’ve been hearing the term “professional coaching” thrown around a lot, but you’re not quite sure what it is, you’ve come to the right place!

There are some common misconceptions about coaching, both about what it is and what it is not.

Professional Coaching has been described/defined in many ways and with many words, but the commonly accepted definition of the field is the one by the International Coaching Federation ICF :

“partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

To push this brief description a bit further, professional coaching is not meant to

tell you what decisions to make in order to reach desired personal or professional success. While some coaches may operate this way, evidence based professional coaching works through empowering clients to unlock their own potential to make the best decisions by revealing their true fulfillment through their personal and professional life. It’s my great life’s work to partner with my clients to create more self awareness and self-confidence in the potential that I see in each and every one of them.

6 Benefits of Professional Coaching
If you decide to work with a professional coach, you will uncover many benefits to both your personal and professional life. These six benefits are just the tip of the iceberg:

You will realize increased self awareness. A session with a professional coach changes your perspective of yourself, tapping into the “why” and “for what” that is driving your decisions and behavior. Through strategic coaching strategies in conversation and brainstorming together, you’ll become more aware that the outcomes of your own actions and choices impact who and where you are today, while harnessing the power to use that self-awareness to fuel forward movement in the direction of your desired personal and professional goals. Becoming self aware is a strong leadership trait that the most successful professionals exercise daily.

Action-driven next steps will define your progress. Continuous action, paired with accountability and commitment, spurs quicker elevation to even your highest of goals. Professional coaching, when done right, does not consist of passive thought experiments but instead taps into a very active mindset, in which next steps are clear, direct, and can be implemented immediately. Regularly creating and implementing actionable steps towards your goals will drive you closer to achieving your potential.

You will feel empowered to take responsibility in your life. Relying on someone else to fix the challenges you face or to change your situation will never assist you in achieving your goals. Professional coaching will spawn empowerment deep inside of yourself in order to take control of your own progress and achievements. While you may not be able to change everything about your situation, there are many things that you can change that you do have control over. Discovering what those are, and how to make progress in areas within your reach, will boost your success.

You will come to acknowledge your uniqueness. Just like snowflakes and fingerprints, every person is unique. Personal attributes, career paths, and aspirational goals will look different person-to-person, even if they seem to be similar in their results. A professional coach takes your exact skills, needs, and inner workings to mine your uniqueness for what will help you realize success in your own way. In working with a professional coach, you will also learn to respect your own experience and become the expert in your own life. No one else can fulfill that role, not even a professional coach.

You will develop a holistic mindset. Professional coaching addresses the whole person, not just one portion of your life. That means that if a professional coach notices signs of trouble in areas outside of the current session, they will address it. For example, if you are running into a roadblock with your goals, your coach may notice that it’s an underlying personal issue causing the problem. Pausing to address that issue will help to achieve the overall goals you are trying to achieve. Developing this holistic mindset will help you to identify problem areas before they affect other areas of your life and work.

You will mine difficult conversations for growth opportunities. Obstacles and fears are naturally present in everyone’s path to achieve goals, making the difficult conversations required to address them a fundamental pillar of professional coaching. It won’t be fun or easy, but they are key to move forward and achieve your goals. You will not only practice having difficult conversations to uncover truths and opportunities to identify actionable next steps, but will develop a habit of making this a regular part of your professional growth.

Professional coaching has tremendous benefits for everyone, from the entry-level professional to a power-house executive. Taking advantage of these benefits will assist in achieving your goals sooner than you might expect. Finding a coach that you trust is the second. If you are looking for a professional coach to partner with you in realizing your goals, I’d love to meet you!