What is coaching?  

Coaching is a collaborative process. Although the coach may have some amount of information that you do not have, you are the expert on you and that is the most important information when trying to uncover and rediscover the motivation to accomplish great things.

A coach comes to the coaching session on the same level as you and asks questions to figure out what you want to do and how you want to do it. Your freedom of choice is the guide and central tenet behind coaching, so there is never deprivation or forced behaviors. Your opinions and desires are the objective in the coaching process, so all actions steps and goals are custom fit to suit your needs.  The objective is to establish and focus on your goal, develop suitable action steps for you, and accomplish your goals at a rate and in a way that is comfortable for you.  In taking this very objective, but custom fit approach, the coach empowers you to understand that you can accomplish the things you want to be able to do.  Moreover, you are empowered to understand that there is nothing you can't do!

 

What is the difference between coaching and therapy?

Whereas a therapist’s job is to identify problems and perhaps search in your past to uncover their foundations, a coach’s view is forward facing only. A coach seeks only to identify strengths and utilize those strengths to overcome obstacles that seem to stand in the way of progress towards your goals. One of the most important things a coach does overlaps what therapists also do, which is to point out progress, whether it be mental or behavioral, and its importance, to avoid feeling discouraged or beliefs that “you’ve always been this way (and so it can’t change)” or “your whole family is like this (so you're genetically engineered to stay this way.)”  Perhaps the greatest difference though, is the assignment of the participants' desires and feelings as the leader in the coaching relationship rather than the prescription assigned by a therapist in a therapy relationship. '

 

Coach • Helps design better situation • Clarify goals and empower • Participant directed • Focus on present and future	Therapist Deals with dysfunction • Develops treatment plan • Directive • Focus on past, present, and future
Both •   Support the participant •   Assist with movement towards recovery