Coaching
It can also be a targeted approach to help support an individual’s learning, for example as part of a leadership development programme. Depending on individual circumstances, coaching could include elements of:
- Business coaching
- Executive coaching
- Performance coaching
- Skills coaching
- Career coaching
- Personal/Life coaching
The term “Coaching” means different things to different people and there are many definitions.
A popular and straightforward definition of coaching was put forward by Timothy Gallwey (1975), a Harvard educationalist, who described coaching as:
“Unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.”
The idea of learning and improved performance is also reflected by Parsloe (1999) who describes coaching as:
“A process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve.”
Megginson and Baydell (1979) described coaching as a flexible process:
“Whereby an individual, through direct discussion and guided activity, helps a colleague to learn to solve a problem or to do a task, better than would otherwise be the case”.
As Guest (1999) points out, coaching:
“Concerns itself with amplifying the individual’s own knowledge and thought processes. It is about creating a supportive environment in which to challenge and develop critical thinking skills, ideas and behaviours.”
Coaching helps to build self-reliance, self-responsibility and confidence; it is an intervention that develops within the coachee a sustainable approach to addressing challenges and securing success. The coach is not there to provide answers, to solve problems, to teach or to instruct; the coach is a facilitator, a sounding board, an awareness-raiser. If the coach is acting as an objective, detached awareness-raiser, they do not necessarily need technical knowledge or experience in the field of the person with whom they are working. Whitmore (2004) points out that:
“Every time input is provided the responsibility of the coachee is reduced.”