What is Coaching?
ORIGINS OF COACHING
The word coach was first used to describe a “large kind of carriage.” It got its name from the city of Kocs in Hungary, where wagons, carts, carriages and wheeled vehicles were designed in the 16th century. It also later applied to railway cars.
So the word carried the sense of traveling from one place to another. At the beginning of the 19th century, Oxford University started using it as a slang for “instructor/ trainer”, “for a tutor who carries a student through an exam.” Around 1860, it was used in sports for the trainer of a team or an athlete, which is nowadays the most common definition.
SPORTS PERFORMANCE
Fast forward to the 1970s. The Inner Game of Tennis introduced the idea that the self plays a huge part in sports performance. In this book, a Harvard-English-major-turned-tennis pro named Timothy Gallwey writes that the right approach to improve performance is not to focus on technique and practice, but rather to understand that “every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game”:
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The outer game is facing an opponent in a match, which all sports coaches focused on.
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The inner game is internal: competing self-doubt, lack of confidence or concentration, anxiety, etc.
Timothy Gallwey suggested that there are two selves:
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Self 1 is the brain, the analytical and worrying self,
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Self 2 is the body, the intuitive and physical self.
Self 1 instructs, Self 2 acts. The inner game is to let go of Self 1 (stop being so self-critical) to let Self 2 in control (the unconscious).
BUSINESS PERFORMANCE
Timothy Gallwey’s approach was quite revolutionary at that time. It quickly spread to the business world, where organizations began to create workshops, trainings, and seminars on leadership and personal effectiveness.
By the 80s, coaching for performance had become increasingly popular. John Whitmore, who had trained with Timothy Gallwey, worked on a methodology inspired from The Inner Game of Tennis. The GROW model was born and his book Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose was a best-seller. Since then, GROW has been one of the most popular and used models in companies.
Positive psychology was also developed in the 90s as a result of the success of self-help, personal growth, and well-being. Psychologists and researches started studying what makes people happy, rather than what makes people unwell. Since then, many new concepts and models have emerged that apply to both psychology and coaching, like resilience, self-awareness, or emotional intelligence. Reference: coachstudies.org
Health and Wellness Coaching is a relatively new, but rapidly developing discipline. Several definitions have been put forward but it can be understood that Health and Wellness Coaching is a client-centred, collaborative intervention whose primary aim is to support others in sustainable lifestyle change. The goals are selected by the client who is positioned as the expert in his/her own life, with the coach bringing defined skills and knowledge to support the process of change.
The major difference between a Health and Wellness Coach and other health professionals is the facilitative, as opposed to prescriptive approach and the handing over of responsibility to the client. There are many aspects that are derived from other helping professions such as the unconditional positive regard that the coach will always display and the honouring of the client’s autonomy and unique values. Reference: Wellness Coaching Australia
Ordinarily, coaching is a collaborative process supported by the coach who creates a safe space for exploration; and led by the client who shares what is of importance to them in order to create positive, sustainable change. In my case its a little different and this is my point of difference in the market place. Coaching is normally described with the metaphor of taking a car journey together. The client is behind the wheel, while the coach is on the passenger seat. The client decides when to start the trip and the destination. As the co-pilot, the coach simply holds the map and invites the client to explore different roads and make stops along the way to enjoy the trip. The client decides whether they want to do that or not. They choose the speed and the roads to take, the same way they choose what happens during their coaching session.
This is great, however as I am able to gain access to a client's level of consciousness they are not aware of, to bring forward information that will hasten the process allowing the client to more quickly become aware of how they may be sabotaging where they would like to go. This is like having a deflating tyre on the car and not being aware of it. Everything about the journey is compromised. This process allows the client to see behind the obvious reasons for why they have not achieved their goals and address them directly. You might like to regard what I do could be called a "MINDSET PPRACTITIONER". Just like a Naturopath or a Doctor looks to diagnose what may be going on beneath the surface causing the outward symptoms. The MINDSET PRACTITIONER uses looks beneath at the psychology of the client to uncover the conditioning that may be contributing to the clients sabotage or DIS-EASE.