In recent years the term ‘coaching’ has come to refer to many different activities. Its early use in the business world often carried a remedial connotation – people were coached because they were underperforming or their behaviour was unsatisfactory.
Various sorts of performance issues have frequently been defined as the ‘purpose of coaching’. However, these days coaching is more usually seen as a means of developing people so they can perform more effectively and reach their potential.
There is still confusion about what exactly coaching is and how it is different from other ‘helping behaviours’ such as counselling and mentoring. Many ‘niche’ types of coaching have appeared on the scene as the term has been popularised – life coaching, skills coaching, health coaching, executive coaching to name but a few.
This may have arisen as a result of some practitioners taking advantage of a popular new term and applying it to their general services.
Consequently, coaching has suffered from a degree of misperception and misrepresentation. To make things worse, people often use the terms interchangeably so that one person’s life coaching is another’s developmental mentoring.
The key issue is that coaching can be used in a variety of ways and the organisational context is all important.
Whilst there may be disagreement about the precise definition, there are some core characteristics of coaching activity that are generally agreed on by most coaching professionals:-
•   it consists of one to one development discussions
•   it provides people with feedback on both their strengths and weaknesses
•   it is essentially a non-directive form of development
•   it is aimed at specific issues/areas
•   it works on the premise that clients are self-aware or can achieve self-awareness
•   it focuses on improving performance and developing individual skills
•   personal issues may be discussed but the emphasis is on performance at work
•   it is time-bounded
Carole Davidson Coaching – inspiring business people to succeed.
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