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A Brief What And Why Of Coaching

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Coaching (outside the sports industry) has been growing since the 1980s and many people still know little about it, despite there now being many coaches out there. And yet, as a friend said to me, “We all need a coach and those who say they don’t are either lying or are very lucky.” Investing in the process of being coached, with the right person for you, can be life changing.

So, what is it?

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as ‘partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential’. It is about tapping into your most powerful resources, identifying what really matters to you in life, making choices from that knowledge and creating the life that is best for you.

Just to be clear here, though there is coaching that purely focuses on one aspect of a person’s life (e.g. a project at work, engagement with the team), I am writing here about whole-person coaching. All elements of ourselves and our lives are inter-linked and so when we work on our selves, we need to bring our whole self to the process. The brilliance of this is that whatever single challenge we have in life, we have a mass of resources within us to handle it. Coaching is different to mentoring and consultation – in coaching the client, or coachee, is the expert. The coach works from a belief that the client has all the creativity and resources they need to move forward.

It follows that each coach brings their whole self to the process too. Which means that each great coach has range and can work in many different ways, depending on what each individual client needs. It also means that they are not going to ‘click’ with every client they come across because, well, that’s how human relationships are.

For a client investing themselves in the coaching process, it is about identifying and exploring what it is that they really want in life and courageously stepping in to creating that. It may even be bringing what they don’t want because they may not know what they do want yet. Whatever it is you bring to coaching, it is a process of unearthing what really matters to you, stretching yourself so that you can bring your whole, dynamic self into the game and creating the path ahead so that you can walk/run/drive/dance it in your own fabulous way.

Coaching is a journey of curiosity. It can be disruptive, playful, vulnerable, slow and spacious, fast-paced, and many other things. The gems are the insights – sometimes a ‘ping’ moment and sometimes a gradual unfolding that goes on for days, weeks, months…. The coaches job is to ask questions, offer insights (which can be rejected!), hold the clients agenda, hold the space, challenge, champion and be reflexive; all this in service of the client. The coach is not there to fix anything or to give advice or opinions. Coaching is different with each coach and with each client so it is a hard thing to explain. The best way to know is to get stuck in and try it out.
A Brief What and Why of Coaching by Bryony Rowntree

The science behind it…

There is a growing body of research that supports coaching as an incredibly valuable profession. The ICF holds a huge library of research on their website and there is much more out there on mindfulness, neuroscience, body/gut/heart intelligence, positive psychology and many other areas that inform, or are the foundations of coaching practice. Here are a few fun facts to keep you going:
  • Though counter-intuitive, coaching that is focused on presence and curiosity in the moment (as opposed to problem solving) promotes and supports the identification of values, priorities and the attainment of goals. Plus it brings more focus and calmness and allows for an increased sense of wholeness (E.M. Topp, 2006).
  • Coaching from a place of ‘custodian’ of the space, rather than ‘expert’ allows for the dialogue to open up so that there is a deeper generation of new meanings and insights, which in turn allows for the client to move forward (H. Armstrong, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 2012).
  • Identifying, making sense of and becoming more aware of our feelings, emotions and response have a significant impact on how we move forward in life (Franklin, 2005).
  • Creating changes requires sustained attention and effort; discovering our own answers is more powerful than focusing on the problem; neuroscience research on Attention, Reflection, Insight and Action (ARIA) strongly supports coaching as a practice. (A Brain-based Approach to Coaching, an article by David Rock, 2006).
  • There is a huge amount of knowledge present in our bodies, as Joseph Chilton Pearce writes, ‘the heart is the centre of true intelligence’ (The Heart-Mind Matrix, 2012, p.xii) and that ‘our mind is the last to know’. The HeartMath Institute is a great place to look to for Heart Intelligence research. There is also growing research giving us a better understanding of the impressive intelligence that lies in our gut. Robert Schleip reported at the British Fascia Symposium 2018 that our gut is about as complex as a cat’s brain. If we can remember how to tap into our body’s knowing, we will find an abundant source of wisdom and information! And the better we are at Interoception (awareness of our own body’s functions), the better we are at reading other people which means we have greater possibilities for connection.

Why choose coaching?

People work with coaches for all sorts of reasons. These are some reasons why people enter into a coaching relationship:
  • To reduce stress/anxiety
  • To build resilience/self-worth/confidence/aliveness
  • Feeling stuck
  • Wanting to create something
  • Having someone to be accountable to
  • Life changes and transitions – going into, going through and coming out of
  • Letting go of something or someone
  • To change behaviours/thought patterns
  • Wanting to engage with life in a different way
  • Returning to work
  • Leaving work
  • Entering retirement
  • Parenting
  • Wanting more/something else
  • Finding oneself asking who am I?

It is important to note that coaching, whilst often reported as feeling therapeutic, is not a therapy. It can be hugely powerful for processing emotion without going into the story or details but cannot take the place of therapy. Open conversation between coach and client is the best way to identify if coaching is what is right for a particular individual right now, at this point in life.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash