Frequently Asked Questions

Coaching is an action-driven partnership that closes the gap between desire and achievement. thinking vs. doing. dreaming vs. action… you get it.

Professional coaches offer perspective, support, and accountability to strategically move clients toward their personal or professional goals. Those who engage in coaching also can expect appreciable improvement in productivity, satisfaction with life and work, and the attainment of relevant goals.

And there are numbers to back it up for you proof-seeking types:

IBISWorld’s 2015 Business Coaching report estimates that the sector has grown to $11 billion annually in the U.S.

The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual’s or team’s needs and preferences. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or teams prefer to work, the frequency of coaching meetings and financial resources available to support coaching.

The coach:

• Provides objective assessment and observations that foster the individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others

• Listens closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances

• Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making

• Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging bold action and challenges commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations

• Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives,

• Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios

• Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.

The client:

• Creates the coaching agenda based on their coaching goals

• Uses assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others

• Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions

• Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations

• Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills

• Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions

Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change, starting from where the client is NOW. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organizational support professions.

• Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphases in a coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.

• Consulting: Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

• Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counseling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives

Fees can vary widely depending on the coach, their area of expertise, level of experience and clientele. Generally, working with recently certified coaches is a more affordable option.

Professional coaches know how to work with clients in all different ways, whether it is in person, via Zoom or over the phone.

On the contrary. Coaching isn’t for people who are dysfunctional, broken or incapable. Being coached doesn’t indicate that one is weak, lazy or possessing any other derogatory attributes. The Co-active coaching model sees people as Creative, Resourceful and Whole and fully capable of achieving their goals and aspirations.

Coaching is based on a proven methodology that employs powerful inquiry-based tools tools to facilitate clarity, action, and discovery while staying present and on-topic with clients. In coaching, we co-design the relationship and move forward according to each client’s individual objectives.