How coaching can be used
The purpose of coaching is to help you in your life.
Yes, like therapy – yet not therapy.
Learn to see which method will help you most.
Briefly, the difference between coaching and therapy can be described like this:
Therapy helps you by repairing what’s broken, while coaching helps you by better getting a hold onto what is healthy inside you.
Therapy is intended for those who suffer from deep-rooted problems, if they need to come to terms with some traumatic experiences that have happened or they suffer from extremely poor self-esteem. A therapist will often analyse ones childhood in order to get to the bottom of what it is that is causing ones problem. The strategy is to “correct” the source of the problem in such a way that the symptoms disappear.
Cognitive therapy
The popular and successful cognitive behaviour therapy corrects the unhealthy, but like coaching, focuses upon the present and on the future. Undergoing cognitive behaviour therapy is good if you, for example, want to overcome shyness, obesity or phobias. You can “exercise” away your problems. You expose yourself to those situations you find unpleasant, in small doses at first, but then at progressively increasing levels of difficulty. You learn to think other thoughts and act differently in order for you to overcome your fundamental problem.
Coaching takes your present situation and then looks forward: “What can you do now?”
Mentorship
Is coaching a kind of mentorship? The answer is: no. A mentor is someone who has the same experience or personal qualities that you yourself need. For example, if you want to run your own business, a skilled and successful businessman can be your mentor. The relationship is built simply upon your mentor’s own wisdom within the field that you want to know more about.
A coach may simply lack the experience and knowledge of your situation. With coaching, YOU are the expert. The ideas, insights and action-plans that come about originate only from within you, yourself. Coaching offers no ready-made answers, but rather open-access to your own store of experiences, abilities and passions.
What is coaching used for?
Coaching is used to help you with all of the following (if perhaps not all at the same time…):
- Making decisions.
- Increasing self-awareness.
- Raising Self-esteem.
- Assessing the present situation.
- Discovering strengths.
- Developing strength.
- Discovering unused potential.
- Setting goals.
- Clarifying goals.
- Evaluating goals.
- Figuring out where you want to go.
- Figuring out the next step is.
- Improving your communication skills.
- Allowing yourself to put failure behind you.
- Working more effectively.
- Giving you support.
- Blending in to a new work situation.
- Moving on after a job-loss.
- Going forward in your career.
- Preparing you for a developmental meeting.
- Developing your leadership skills.
- Finding strength when you are/about to be burned-out.
- Finding a new job.
- Becoming better at marketing.
- Finding out if you can take a chance on your business idea.
- Developing your teamwork skills.
- Becoming better at offering feedback.
- Developing your empathy.
- Improving your personal well-being.
- Increasing your motivation.
- Becoming a better decision-maker.
- Breaking a pattern of bad habits.