14/12/2023
What is a Coach and what does a Coach do?
Even as the Coaching Industry gains momentum and following, a lot of people have yet to understand especially in terms of Life Coaching and Transformation exactly 'What is a Coach and what does a Coach do?'
I wrote about this a few years ago and am re-presenting this article here.
Most people easily understand what coaches do in terms of Sports and coaches for athletes and sports teams. Coaches help you train and create champions and winners. They work with athletes, helping them create training schedules and winning mindsets by bringing their experience and insights. Coaches are not necessarily champions themselves but coaches create champions!
Read that again - Coaches create champions!
As regards Life:
-A lot of people think that a Coach is someone who inspires you once and for all to achieve success in all spheres of life.
-Some people think that a Coach is a motivator, your best fan, someone who stands there on the sidelines, watching you run your race and screams, “Yay, go on ahead. You can do it! You can do it! If you truly want, you can do it and I’m here to tell you that and help you win!”
-Some think that a Coach is there to listen to all your sorry woes and commiserate with you when you need comforting, a “paid” shoulder to cry upon.
-Others believe that a Coach is a sort of expert maestro who can teach you the secrets of life and how to live it painlessly and effortlessly.
-Yet, others believe a Coach to be a kind of mystic Guru with special superpowers using which they manipulate you to automatically resolve all your problems
-Some others firmly believe that the work of a Coach is all about mind control, at times something with dark undertones and connotations!
-Still others feel that this profession is simply a passing fad and a temporary fashion because everybody seems to be working at becoming one.
-There is also a prevalent and misguided belief that a Coach is a perfect being, above all things material and sans problems related to life and living with everything in place at all times! Perfect creatures with perfect lives, sans human defects and faults, living somewhere above the rest of humanity. A few people even go as far as believing that coaches are mysterious and evolved demi-gods who have to simply grant all your wishes in exchange for payment!
Whatever your definition of a Coach and their work, here is what coaches themselves work with:
A Coach is a professional with years of study, training, research and personal development behind them with specific aims and objectives for their clients.
They guide and facilitate understanding, awareness, responsibility, intention, focus, choices, solutions and effective decisions with ensuing practical plans for action.
A Coach facilitates the emergence of important knowledge and awareness of long-held beliefs that the client is blind to on their own.
A Coach helps the clients dive into their subconscious and work on their own inner programming.
A Coach brings the clients to maturity through the realisation of complete responsibility for all their thoughts, beliefs, choices, decisions, actions, behaviours and circumstantial conditions.
A Coach facilitates empowerment with focused and intentional work on the client’s goals and objectives, holding them accountable to their own plans.
A Coach does not make any decisions FOR the Client.
A Coach is NOT responsible for the client’s decisions, actions and results.
A Coach is also “gasp” human and therefore by definition imperfect and fallible just about like any other professional.
Once a client has identified their limits and goals, once the client is aware of their situation and is still not invested in the process or willing to do the work, the job of the coach is over.
A Coach cannot take the client where the client is unwilling to go.
A Coach cannot with a magic wand create miraculous results.
The client has to do the work and it seems that there are no shortcuts to that.
As for the rest, a professional coach can help you gain clarity and arrive much faster at your destination, even help you define it, at times it is something you may not even be aware of!
A coach is not a shoulder to cry on, a teacher, a father figure, a nurturing mother, your new best friend, your confessor, spiritual mentor, your doctor, psychoanalyst or psychiatrist.
A coach facilitates change. You as the client put in the work to make it happen.
Working towards improvement and making that change is the responsibility of the client.
A coach works with you and gets you effective results when you do the work.
A Coach helps you sift through the fluff and chaos and see the key levers, gears and buttons in your own life and mind. You still have to take charge and operate them.
So, this is what a coach is and what a coach does. Hopefully, I have brought some clarity to your understanding of what we do!
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