Coaching is not therapy, consulting, or training.
Here are key ways coaching is different than these other approaches to behavior change.
Coaching Is Not Therapy
Therapy looks backward to connect emotions and behaviors to events, situations, and relationships that caused pain or unhealthy attitudes that interfere with a happy, healthy life. Therapy works by exploring what happened in the past and how past experiences created patterns of thinking or behavior that make you unhappy.
By contrast, coaching looks forward, not backward. In our coaching conversations, you may become aware of thoughts or behavior patterns that are not serving you well. When that happens, we will explore how you want to think or behave instead. As you discover new attitudes and mindsets, you will find healthier and more effective actions easier to take.
In coaching conversations, clients often do look back at previous relationships and experiences to connect the dots regarding how they came to adopt limiting behaviors. This is often useful for clients to consider. Where a therapist might explore the past further, as a coach I will ask you what you learned from your past that will help you move forward more effectively. We’ll explore options for thinking and responding that open up new possibilities for success.
Coaching Is Not Consulting
When you hire a consultant, you hire an expert whose job is to analyze your current situation and give you their expert opinion of what you should do Their job is to recommend or advise.
As a coach, I assume that you are the expert in your life. My job is not to advise you but to help you explore what is going on, make you more aware of how your thoughts and behaviors affect others, and be a thought partner as you find new ways to move forward more effectively.
A consultant applies what they have learned to your situation to advise you on what to do. In coaching, you explore what you have learned through your own experiences and apply what you know to solve your own problems.
Like a consultant, I have expertise that I can share. I have deep experience with entrepreneurship, inspirational leadership and story-telling, access to HR and Emotional Intelligence assessments and best practices. Rather than advise you on how to apply knowledge, I’ll give you access to quick guides, short articles, evidence-based assessments, and proven methods and plans. It’s up to you to decide what knowledge is relevant to you.
Ultimately, whether you hire a consultant or a coach, you are responsible for the pathway you choose to reach your goal.
Coaching Is Not Training
Training refers to courses or lectures that teach you skills for a certain job or activity. Training courses are designed by experts who have found ways that help them and others solve certain kinds of problems, in certain contexts, in certain specific ways.
Unfortunately, most training courses simply don’t work. According to McKinsey, training programs fail because they fail to take situational context into account and provide one-size-fits-all solutions. Although training is a $14 billion industry, most CEOs report that they do little to increase leadership or create measurable success.
In contrast, studies have found that coaching results in a 500% to 750% return on investment. Instead of traditional teaching methods like memorization, lecturing, and step-by-step solutions, coaching helps you learn through self-reflection, self-awareness, empathy, and experimentation. It puts you and your unique situation at the center of problem solving, focusing only on what is relevant and useful to you as you develop better ways to move forward to better results.
Coaching uses principles proven effective for adult learning. Best practices in adult learning recognize that most adults:
don’t like to be told what to do
prefer to learn by doing
like to solve their own problems
recognize that more than one solution to a problem can be effective
most adults prefer interaction to passive listening