We explain what coaching is, what it’s used for, and what its advantages are. We also tell you what a coaching session is like. Please read other MTV articles for more information. If you share it, it will be of little help to us.
What is coaching?
Coaching (from the English word “coach,” “trainer,” or “tutor”) is a form of professional assistance that consists of advising companies, organizations, or individuals by a specialized company or an individual experienced in the area of interest. In other words, it consists of a form of external mentoring or tutelage provided by a third party (called a coach) to address specific challenges and problems.
The terms coach, coaching, and, although less commonly used, coachee (“the person receiving the coaching service”) are all Anglicisms, borrowed from English into Spanish, which is why they are always written in italics. However, these terms have become fashionable in the professional and business world and have become a way of referring to a hired mentor, advisor, or monitor.
Must Read: Ergonomics
The work of coaching is simultaneously similar and different from that provided by an educator or teacher. A coach is expected to provide guidance, advice, and teaching, but unlike a teacher, a coach provides these based on personal and/or professional experience, not solely on their training. Furthermore, coaching is a form of ad hoc advice, that is, applied to a specific issue, problem, or process that needs to be addressed, improved, or transformed.
There are different coaching methods and procedures, as many as there are areas in which they can be applied. However, in general terms, it consists of a process of dialogue and specialized support, through which individuals or organizations are prepared to face a challenge in the best possible way.
What is coaching for?
Coaching, in general, consists of specialized and focused advice, operating in the short or medium term. The coach’s work, therefore, is based on teaching, advising, preparing, and monitoring the progress of an individual or organization in the face of a specific transformation, challenge, or difficulty that would otherwise be much more difficult, risky, and unpredictable to address.
For example, a company with human resources problems may hire another company that specializes in outsourcing services in the area to help it resolve its personnel dilemma. The hired company then assigns a coach (or a team of coaches) to oversee the human resources restructuring efforts that the requesting company needs to address.
Other coaching options may involve sports advice (for proper exercise), literary advice (for improving writing), nutritional advice (for safe weight loss), among many others. Coaching provides specialized support when facing a process, which not only covers specialized technical areas but also motivational dynamics and monitoring to ensure everything goes as smoothly as possible.
Must Read: Spiritism
Types of Coaching
There are many types of coaching, depending on the specific area in which advice is needed. Broadly speaking, we can differentiate between:
Business Coaching
This consists of providing technical services and specialized support to small and medium-sized businesses that need to navigate complicated processes, such as restructuring, relaunching, or profound changes in their dynamics.
Sports Coaching
This consists of supporting athletes in their training and preparation for an important sporting event or to begin a new stage in their professional careers.
Executive Coaching
This consists of providing ongoing development and training services to an organization’s management and executive staff, with the goal of improving their performance and leadership skills.
Must Read: Networking
Literary Coaching
This consists of combining the dynamics of an individual writing workshop with literature classes and editorial preparation, along with everything else that might be useful to a novice writer.
Transformational or Transcendental Coaching
This consists of a personalized support service that helps the coachee organize their life, develop their talents, and thrive as an individual.
Ontological or Motivational Coaching
This consists of providing emotional, psychological, and motivational support to a person so they can discover what they want to do but can’t, or at least identify what they want as a life project.
Must Read: Eye of Horus
Advantages of Coaching
Coaching has the virtue of being specialized, individual, and applied advice; that is, it focuses on the process or problem at hand, rather than providing advice from a general perspective.
A coach not only helps provide the necessary elements to face a challenge, but also helps them think about it, determine what can really be changed, and, finally, accompanies the individual or organization as they implement their changes. This is a close-contact approach that enjoys the coach’s full attention, unlike a teacher training program.
Must Read: Anubis
What is a coaching session like?
There is no single method for conducting a coaching session, as it is not really a standardized activity, but rather a mentoring process that varies depending on the coach and the coachee. However, in coaching publications, reference is often made to the GROW method by Graham Alexander and Alan Fine.
This method gets its name from the acronym formed by the initial letters of its steps:
- Goals: The first step in coaching is to identify, together with the coachee, the goals or objectives to be achieved. For example, one might want to reformulate the business structure, or start writing a novel, or prepare for one’s sporting debut in a competition.
- Reality: The second step consists of a detailed study of the subject at its starting point, that is, of things as they currently are. How close is the coachee to achieving their goals? What are they missing? What aspects do they need to work on more? These are key questions for planning mentoring.
- Options: The third step consists of identifying viable options, that is, possible paths toward the determined goals. In this, the coach’s experience is key to saving the coachee time wasted on trial and error.
- Will: The final step in coaching consists of planning and executing actions to meet the established goals, which is carried out under the coach’s monitoring and expert advice. In this stage, the coach must measure, evaluate, and provide feedback to adjust the process as it unfolds.
Coaching and Mentoring
In some settings, the difference between coaching or advising and mentoring is emphasized. While this distinction is neither formal nor universal, for many, it is based on the coach focusing on the coachee’s processes, serving as a mirror and without revealing much of themselves. While the mentoring process is much deeper and more intimate, as the mentor shares their life experience and is much more involved in the coachee’s preparation.
In other words, it’s a methodological distinction: while the coach provides tactical preparation, applied to the coachee’s current situation, the mentor provides more strategic, more general preparation.
Must Read: Brainstorming
References
All the information we offer is supported by authoritative and up-to-date bibliographic sources, ensuring reliable content in line with our editorial principles.
- Coaching on Wikipedia.
- Etymology of Coach in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- What is Coaching? on the European Graduate Center (Mexico).
- What is Coaching? (video) on Smith Leadership LLC.
- Coaching definition, What it is, concept, objectives, advantages, and mentoring – concepto.de
