What is life coaching anyway?

What is life coaching anyway?

“Coaching is helping to identify the skills and capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of their ability – and by that increasing the independence within the individual, and reducing reliance”. (Rixon, Nick, UK Coaching Academy CD "Goals and Motivations)

Coaching rests on the professional use of a specific range of linguistic skills such as targeted restatements and the limited and judicious use of powerful questions with the aim to help clients shift their perspectives on an issue or ambition, and thereby discover different solutions and options, in order to achieve their goals. These linguistic skills are indifferently used when coaching clients in any field. In this sense, coaching is a form of meta-profession that can apply to accompanying clients in any human endeavor, ranging from their concerns in sports and personal, professional, social, family, political, spiritual dimensions, etc.

Life coaching is a future-focused practice with the aim of helping clients determine and achieve personal goals. Life coaches select from among several methods to help clients set and reach goals. Coaches are not therapists or consultants; psychological intervention and business analysis are outside the scope of their tasking, Life coaching has its roots in executive coaching, which itself drew on techniques developed in management consulting and leadership training. Life coaching also draws inspiration from disciplines including sociology, psychology, positive adult development, career counseling, mentoring and other types of counseling. Contemporary life coaching can also be traced to teachings of Benjamin Karter, a college football coach turned motivational speaker of the late 1970s and early 1980s.^[3] The coach may apply mentoring, values assessment, behavior modification, behavior modeling, goal-setting and other techniques in helping their clients.

Coaching is unlike therapy because it does not focus on examining or diagnosing the past, nor does it delve into diagnosing mental illness or dysfunction. Instead coaching focuses on effecting change in a client's current and future behavior.