OK, so a coach helps their client to “be the best that they can be” by asking them good questions and helping them to “see the wood for the trees” - to work out their own solution to the question of how to get from where they are to where they want to be. So how does this differ from counselling? Or mentoring?
Let's start with what these disciplines have in common. They are all about “people helping.” They are all, in one way or another, about helping people get from where they are, to where they want to be. They do, however have different approaches; different focuses; and to some extent, different tool sets. Having said that, there are no universally accepted definitions of these disciplines. One person's coach is another person's mentor.
Coaching is always future oriented. It's about how we make our way from our present situation to our desired future. It's not that concerned with the past. Counselling sometimes (but not always), delves into the past in order to explain the present. For coaching the present is our starting point.
Coaching is generally non-directive. A coach rarely, if ever, tells a client how to do what they aught to do. Mentoring is based on transferring the skills and experience of the mentor to the mentee, where coaching is based on helping the client make better use of their own skills and experience. Of course, a coach may dip into his tool box and don his mentoring hat for a period, if he has specific skills and experience that his client might benefit from, but that is not his primary mode of operation.
Next time we'll look at how a coaching session might help a client...
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