What Is Coaching?

Coaching is the opposite of therapy or expert advice. In coaching, whether live coaching, wellness coaching, health coaching, mind-body coaching, or executive coaching, the process focuses on a client's strengths. The coach assists either an individual or a group to assess their areas of strength and then draw upon those strengths to build capacity and resources in areas that are less well or less capable.

Coaching is a powerful partnership in which professionals trained in coaching help people design their future. Coaches aid clients in creating visions and goals for all aspects of their lives and multiple strategies to support the achievement of those goals. The client is responsible for their actions and choices.

For example if one has a need to improve nutrition or lose weight, that may be the hardest area to address directly, but it may be easier to accelerate play and fun. Or it may be more appropriate to focus on an area like finance, that will reduce anxiety and help support less stress related decision making on the diet and food choices.

Coaching is less about fixing what is wrong and more about maximizing what is right. The key coaching question isn’t “what is your problem or your diagnosis?”, but “what do you want to achieve?” Coaching is not about what is pulling you back and hampering your progress, it is more about what is pulling you forward – future pull – to your rightful destiny.

Coaches see clients as whole, with nothing wrong, broken, missing, or in need of repair.
Coaches recognize their clients’ strengths and personal power to discover their own
solutions, when they are provided with information, lifestyle skills, resources, coaching
support, accountability and unconditional positive regard.

The training and certification of coaches is one of the most rapidly growing professional fields. Many people are changing their professions to new era careers and coaching is a key new career path. Many nurses, doctors, therapists, social workers, teachers, fitness professionals, and faith professionals are adding coaching to their key 21st century skills.

Added key concepts: wellness programs, chronic disease self managed care, disease prevention, stress management, health self-management, health cost reduction, employee wellness.