Coaching: good or bad?

Recently, you can often find training courses with such headlines or mottos as “Training after which you will no longer be the same”, “We will help you succeed”, “Help your brain think differently”, etc. And what are they Who are coaches and can you really change your life for the better, achieve your goals by attending these trainings?

Essence of coaching

Coaching is a training or consultation, during which a coach (training leader) helps a person to reveal his potential, achieve his personal (and in some cases also professional) goals, change his attitude to a particular phenomenon, acquire certain skills.

Unlike mentoring, during which the mentor shares exactly the practical and theoretical knowledge that is necessary to perform a particular job, coaching is more aimed at activating self-development and self-learning. In most cases, coaching is associated with training.

Despite the fact that it contains some elements of the training, the training is more aimed at acquiring skills and methods that contribute to the elimination of certain problems, unlike training, mentoring does not have an individual approach to everyone.

The emergence of coaching

Coaching originated in the 1970s with the book The Inner Game of Tennis by sports psychologist Timothy Golvia. The book says that the athlete creates certain obstacles in his head that prevent the achievement of the desired goal. The author comes to the conclusion that the main goal of the coach is to help the athlete reduce or eliminate internal obstacles, which will give him the opportunity to independently achieve the coveted victory.

That is, coaching was originally created to perform special work with athletes, but then, thanks to the English businessman John Whitmore, coaching was redirected from the sports arena to the business sphere. It is John who is considered the author of a well-known definition of coaching: “Coaching is the disclosure of human potential in order to maximize its productivity.”

Later, coaching took on a broader meaning thanks to Thomas Leonard, who invented the famous “life coaching” format. The above implies individual work with a person, thanks to which he achieves his goals, thereby improving the quality of his life. Summarizing, we can come to the conclusion that coaching is a fusion of psychology, management, philosophy and logic.

In the 21st century, coaching takes on a new dimension. Currently, there are many organizations that unite coaches from different countries, provide certificates, define standards for coaching, etc. Such enterprises are the International Coach Union (ICU), the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the International Coaching Academy (ICA), European Coaching Federation (EuCF), European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), etc.

Business and coaching

Coaching is practically applied in the business sphere, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises, where the main decisions are made by the same person who uses the services of a coach. He takes on the role of a consultant, considers the client’s business policy, its productivity and gives the so-called “recovery plan”.

Large organizations have their own business coaches and coaches who work with staff (for example: increase staff motivation). At the moment, everything leads to the fact that every manager, whether he is a low, medium or high level, should be a coach for his employees.

To understand the importance of the above, we note that some companies, when advertising a vacancy for a manager in the “required skills” section, note the “ability to train and develop others”, which the candidate must have.

Statistics about coaching

Coaching is developing in the world at a fairly rapid pace. This is evidenced by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), which in 2016 published a study on the place of coaching in the world as of 2015 and the pace of its development.

The study involved 15,380 coaches from 137 countries. For comparison, we can say that in 2011 the number of participating coaches was 12,000 from 117 countries (North, South and Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand).

According to the results of the study, it became clear that there are 53,300 coaches in the world, most of which – 35% – are located in Western Europe, and 33% – in North America. Meanwhile, a study published in 2012 indicates that there are 47,500 coaches worldwide.

This indicator shows that coaching is seen as a promising direction and a way to earn a lot of money, and therefore many people are eager to acquire the skills.