What is Life Coaching?

The Personal and Professional Coaches Association defines coaching as "an ongoing relationship which focuses on clients taking action toward the realization of their vision, goals or desires. Coaching uses a process of inquiry and personal discovery to build the client's level of awareness and responsibility, and provides the client with structure, support and feedback."

Recent issues of The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal all urge professionals to take advantage of and hire the services of a personal coach. Why? Because it helps people accomplish goals and accelerate desired changes in their life. Coaching helps get you to be where you want to be faster.

Successful athletes have always had coaches to improve their performances by increasing their focus and providing support, structure, and accountability.

Organizations and individuals hire coaches when they are interested in having the best, being the best, and doing their best.

I believe humans have a deep need to grow and develop, to actualize our potential. We want to be our best in the game of life and a coach helps you accomplish this.

What is Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)?

The NLP and Coaching Institute of California defines Neuro-Linguistic Programming as “the practical science of detecting, evolving and using the conscious and unconscious thinking and behavioral patterns that we are constantly experiencing.

Thus NLP is the cutting-edge communications field that enhances professional development and personal performance. NLP is about how people learn, communicate, change, and evolve themselves. It was originally developed by studying patterns of communicating and thinking used by highly successful people.

NLP provides specific "how to" skills to create change in one's self and assist others in becoming more resourceful and effective. NLP is a set of processes that can greatly improve your communication skills in any situation. NLP is truly empowering and helps you do whatever you do better!”

How do NLP and Coaching fit together?

The NLP skills, models and presuppositions serve the coach in many beneficial ways. Several of the NLP presuppositions are:

• The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.
• The map is not the territory.
• You create your own reality.
• People work perfectly.
• People always make the best choice available to them at the time
• Every behavior is useful in some context.
• Choice is better than no choice.
• Just about anyone can learn to do anything.
• People already have all the resources they need.
• Behind every behavior is a positive intention.
• Energy flows where attention goes.

Both NLP and good coaches assume the client is the expert and can accomplish almost anything they want. The NLP background helps identify mental frameworks that either help or deter personal progress and growth. Repeated language patterns help indicate a client’s beliefs and limits. There are NLP processes to change limiting beliefs that may be holding the client back. The NLP coach knows how to listen at different levels and ask the deeper, powerful questions.

The NLP skills assist the coach in every session. It provides great tools in the coach’s tool box which allows significant changes to happen quickly.

How is coaching different from other service professions?

The International Coach Federation describes the distinctions as follows:

"Professional coaching is a distinct service which focuses on an individual’s life as it relates to goal setting, outcome creation and personal change management.

Therapy—Coaching can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First, coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth and development based on individual-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused. Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways. Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follow through.

Consulting—Consultants may be retained by individuals or organizations for the purpose of accessing specialized expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnoses problems and prescribes and sometimes implements solutions. In general, the assumption with coaching is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

Athletic Development—Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from the traditional sports coach. The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities."