What is Lifecoaching and how will it help you?

Lifecoaching, or any other form of coaching only exists for one reason. That is to help you get the results you want faster than you could, or would, on your own.

There are many different kinds of coaching now. They have developed as coaches began to specialise and discover the marketing power of having a niche. The bottom line is that a good coach helps you get where you want to go, faster. Often, clarifying just where you do want to go amidst the confusion of life is a part of the process.

People go to coaches for many reasons, time management, goal setting, career development, personal development, relationship issues, business coaching. The reasons are many but the rationale is the same. The client wants movement in a situation and the forward power of having someone absolutely focus on what you want to achieve.

Coaching often seeks to distinguish itself from other forms of working. Partly this is 'positioning' and partly reflects the uniqueness of the coaching approach.

In general, a coach will not advise you or give suggestions. A presupposition of coaching is that the client is a creative being who can get to their own answers. Thus the coach will predominantly ask questions. This is not mentoring or consulting, and it is quite possible that the coach does not have the knowledge (and doesn't need to have the knowledge) that you have about your situation or context.

A coach will refine the area you want to work on until there is a very clear goal with an evidence procedure for achieving the goal. A major part of coaching is that the coach will hold the client accountable for taking agreed actions towards those goals.

Coaching is about taking action now. As a way of working, it is very different from the so called 'talking therapies' which seek to find out why the client cannot do what they want to do and the feelings that this brings up for the client. This may be a gross oversimplification of the talking therapies. The distinction is that coaching is forward looking and solution focused with a propensity for action and measurable, timed results!

There may be no such thing as a typical session as coaches come from different backgrounds and have individual approaches. This said, a session may well follow the T-GROW model.

• T stands for the topic, the general area or issue that has brought the person to coaching.
• G stands for goal. As the coach helps the client to refine the area of concern and break it down into more manageable chunks, client and coach will work towards producing a well formed goal that the client can then take action towards.
• R stands for reality. This is an assessment of where the client is now in relation to the goal.
• O stands for options. This is the creative part of the process. What are ways that the client could take that would move them, even a small step closer, to their goal.
• W stands for Way. What actions can the client take to move them closer to their goal?

Part of the coach's job is to keep the client focused on defining their goal and what they can actually do to move forward. This can involve breaking the goal down into more achievable steps as well as re focusing the client when they get lost in their story about why they haven't achieved their goal.

At the end of a session, the client should come away with a list of specific actions to take and when they are going to take them. This accountability leaves very little to chance and is one of the reasons for coaching's amazing results.

There are a lot of coaches these days. Take your time to find one that you resonate with. One way to find a coach is through referral. The major coach training organisations will suggest their members to you, which gives you some idea that the coach is trained, but it is still worth while talking to the coach first to determine if there is a rapport between you that you think is conducive to working together.

Coaches work in different ways. Some will do one off sessions and others insist on a three month commitment. Take your time to find a person and a way of working that you feel comfortable with. Then go and work! The results of successful coaching are well worth the investment.

Be wary of certifications and credentials. There are quite a few coaching courses that are distance learning and provide no supervised practice. Coaching is an unregulated industry and very fashionable at the moment, which has led to some people attempting to get rich quickly, rather than focusing on providing value. Use your common sense!

Coaching is a new field of endeavour and is changing from the original linear, 'lock step' models. Key developers in this move towards 'transformational coaching' are people like Michael Neil and others developing the work of Sydney Banks, which he termed The Three Principles.

The Three Principles steps up levels and deals more directly with the nature of the mind and how we can let go of what we are doing to get in our own way of success.