Life coaching — what is it?
Life coaching is about guiding, inspiring someone and helping one create an actionable plan to achieve one’s life goals.
What does a Life Coach do?
Coaches help you identify your strengths and areas of concern and encourage you to leverage your strengths to address your concerns, helping you to live a fuller, meaningful life that empowers you.
Types of Coaches
Executive coach: Are you a C-Suite leader with a mandate to take the organization to the next level? An executive coach will help you navigate the VUCA world.
Leadership coach: will coach you in developing your staff, help develop your executive presence and coach you to develop better decision-making capabilities. Irrespective of the type of leader you are, regardless of the experience-first time or season you could use the guidance of a leadership coach. Leadership coaching will enable you to earn the respect of new team members, motivate them and help you create more leaders.
Entrepreneur coach: An entrepreneur coach will help you be confident and empowered enough to confidently take a leap into the exciting world of being your own ‘boss, help you to scale up, despite the lack of initial stability, security and comfort. Finally, an entrepreneur coach will always be a partner to help your business grow multi-fold.
Personal life coach: Will help you by focusing on areas like-career, relationship, money, retirement, health and various others. A professionally trained life coach can coach you in any of the above.
Sounds interesting, so don’t they have to be experienced in all facets of life I’m ordered to be good?
Not necessarily.
Be it an executive coach, leadership coach, entrepreneur coach or life coach, they need not have experience in the challenges you are facing. However, it is essential that they have the ability to be non-judgemental, be able to discern and ask masterful questions that will help you approach your challenges in solution-centric manner. A certified coach is trained to enable this process.
The importance of life coaching
Today, most of us are struggling to strike a meaningful balance between the various demands of our lives. It’s not just work-life anymore, it’s also about other additional aspects like our aspirations, our ‘personal me time’ so on so forth. Life coaching helps in improving the performance in all areas of life.
That sounds simple! I am sure everyone can do this.
Well. Maybe not. It is not Mentoring. It is Life Coaching- it needs certain skills and a professional certification from a recognised, registered body. Every practicing and professional life coach is one that is certified by a reputable agency. International Coaching Federation (ICF) (www.coachfederation.org) is one such accreditation body. EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council) is another.
Differences — Mentoring, Therapy and Coaching!
Coaching and therapy are completely different. Coaching, though meant to help address and overcome obstacles, isn’t a fill-in for therapy (which is more intrinsic, invasive, longterm and addresses clinical cases). Coaching focuses on the now and the future, while therapists spend time analyzing the past to help the clients. Leadership coaching, life coaching, and executive coaching is meant to achieve your goals and help organize your life better — professionally or socially.
What is the difference between Coaching and Mentoring? Mentors are more directive and offer specific advice to a situation. During a coaching session, the coach will not advice, but help the individual find a solution through masterful questions. Coaching raises the self-awareness of the individual and hence prepares the individual for finding own solution for similar future scenarios. So mentoring provides an immediate solutions to the problems while coaching is focused on helping individuals find both short term solutions and prepare them for long term situations.
Behind every successful person is an army of people who offer support, advice, investment and many such things; coaches are just one in that army of support.
Life Coaching and You
Life coaching is important because you and your dreams are important. To help chase your dreams, or to help build foundations of your new entrepreneurial venture or to grow it multi-fold, or to motivate you to overcome your insecurities — each of these is a monumental task leading to their own setbacks and obstacles. Life coaches help you cushion every fall, elevate you when you’re down, and motivate you to keep on running. They draw from their experience and passion to help you come out of the top.
To sum it up, life coaching is simple:
It makes “I want” to “I have”
It makes “I should” to “I am”
So, are you ready to see life with a fresh pair of eyes?
Author
Johncey George (Coach Johncey, www.coachjohncey.com) is an Executive Leadership Coach and also a Life Coach with Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential from ICF. He is based in Bengaluru, India and coaches senior leaders and business owners globally. He also coaches introverts to express more, as required, and create a leadership space for themselves.