By Joy Healey
Life-coaching is one of an ever-increasing number of self-development techniques being used by people in their quest for a better quality of life.
What makes coaching particularly attractive is that, although 45-minute sessions are usually recommended, it may be that even as brief a session as a few minutes can switch on a light and point someone towards a solution.
Until recently, coaching was probably done informally by friends or the extended family network. A chat with a favourite aunt or uncle could talk over problems you didn't want to discuss with parents, brothers or sisters. Nowadays families may be too distant geographically for such a trusting relationship to develop. Friends are still an option, but they may be involved in the issue, competitors at work or even prone to enjoy a good gossip. If you need a wise confidante whose confidentiality can be relied upon, a life-coach is the answer.
First a quick word about what coaching is NOT. It isn't a technique you can apply to a third-party. A coach can't 'make' your partner take a specific action. Neither is it counselling nor therapy to resolve issues in your past - coaching focuses on the future, not the past. Coaching is not prescriptive, nor will the coach give long lectures on how to achieve goals. Every client is an individual so the coach will need to ask many simple questions aimed at directing the client to define the issue more clearly themselves. Typically the coach does more listening than talking, but is never judgmental or critical.
In a nut-shell, coaching helps clients identify needs and wants, formulate them into achievable goals and then plan strategies to achieve these goals and measure the progress along the way. Goals are often in the areas of family, fitness, friends, finance or faith in yourself.
Suppose a client comes along and wants 'success', this is not good enough for the coach to work with. The client would need to define their idea of success very clearly. How will they know they're successful, what will they be earning, how will they feel when they're successful, how will others know - and many other questions. This is because the client must know what they're setting out to achieve, otherwise they can't quantify when they've succeeded or how to work towards it. If the client has difficulty formulating the concept of 'success', the coach will tease it out of them bit by bit.
The coach will need to help the client be sure that his goals are attainable. Fantasies and false promises are not what coaching is about. To prove attainability, much discussion will go into mapping out exactly how the goal can be achieved. If there's no way of achieving it, the goal needs redefining.
Having clarified the goal, the coach will help the client marshal his resources to help him reach it. For a distant goal, steps - or mini-goals - will be identified so that the client can have the encouragement of small successes along the way. Typically these will be given as 'homework' before the next coaching session, and on the next appointment the client will be asked to report on progress to date. This allows the coach to congratulate the client, or to look at other ways of meeting the mini-goal if problems have been encountered. Motivating clients to 'do something' is an important part of coaching as without 'action' dreams will stay just dreams.
Motivation can be the avoidance of pain (the embarrassment of telling your coach you didn't do the task set at the last session) or the pursuit of pleasure (telling someone who doubted your abilities of one of your achievements).
A coach will also help clients develop a positive mental attitude, avoiding destructive 'self-talk' and possibly helping them learn to say 'no' instead of 'yes'. A positive mental attitude includes validating the labels you've applied to yourself as well as those others have applied. Clients are encouraged to place a high value on themselves - in the same way that the value of an umbrella seems so much higher in a torrential storm.
Coaching may involve just one session to point someone in a new direction, but it is more likely to be a series of sessions to work towards the mini-goals identified at the first session. It can be used to resolve relationship problems, overcome fears and worries, choose or progress a new career. Because it can easily be done by 'phone, coaching is available to anyone, even those who work odd hours or who would have difficulty travelling. All you need is a 'phone on which to call your coach and you could be set on the route to a new and more fulfilling life.