What comes to your mind when you hear about coaches and coaching?
As a coach, I'm struggling to talk with people about coaching because there two different things people mean by coaching:
- A kind of personal training or advice-giving
- An inquiry based process where a coach doesn't provide solutions
Can I ask you to which one you would subscribe? And if you choose the first one, do you think coaching is any different from mentoring?
I would really appreciate your answers.
Hi @AlexMartynov, great question! I'm also interested in knowing what people think about it.
I'm an Executive coach and for me, the answer would be the 2.
According to the ICF, coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Working with my clients, I use mentoring too, especially when they want to improve soft-skills, but then I'm not acting as a coach.
However, I've realized people usually don't know the difference and I have to give lots of details and examples to make them understand. Does it happen to you, too?
"Does it happen to you, too?" To be honest, not that many. But I assume it's mostly because of survivorship bias -- with those who don't know what coaching is or how it can be helpful I just don't have a chance to talk.
Yes, I agree @AlexMartynov. There's a lot of work to do to get the world to know all about coaching and how it can help! I try to create content, articles, help people around me as much as I can, so they can benefit from it. Hopefully, in the near future, it becomes something that most people know and benefit from! :)
When I think of mentoring I think of someone helping, teaching, giving advice.
When I think of coaching I think of someone yelling to do the obvious as a way to provide encouragement maybe?
Probably because I don’t follow any sports and the few times I have been in the vicinity of a tv when a game was on there was usually a cut to an angry coach yelling something.
Got it. Appreciate sharing your thoughts!