Life CoachingAn Uplifting PartnershipLife coaching is a relatively new field worldwide. But it is a rapidly growing area and in the past five years or so the number of coaches worldwide has more than doubled to over 13,000. Africa has only 1% of the global number of life coaches.
What is coaching?The International Coach Federation, ICF, is a consortium of professional coaches and organizations that have joined together under its auspices to shape and govern the profession of coaching. It defines coaching as:“A partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.” Coaching is different from counselling and therapyThis differs distinctly from counselling, which can be defined as the art of listening to people and assisting them deal with their problems. A counsellor helps his clients to recognise their problem, analyse it fully and also assists them in facing the problems and handling them effectively. The focus of counselling and therapy is mainly the past.Although life coaching can involve an element of counselling it is a totally different experience. It is more focused on the future and moving you forward with your life.
This is because the focus of professional coaches is to provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives. Therapy also often includes an element of improving someone’s feelings or emotional state. Although positive feelings and emotions are a natural outcome of coaching, the main focus is to create actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in a person’s work or personal life. SMART goal setting and life coachingThe creation of these SMART goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-based, is one of the most powerful aspects of coaching as it gives you solid things on which you can act and ensure that you are progressing towards your intended objective.The emphasis, as stated by CLI, is on action, accountability and follow-through. Empowering belief in the client’s abilities and resourcesOne thing particularly empowering with coaching is the belief that:the client is naturally creative and resourceful and also has the best answers to their own challenges in life. It is the coach’s job to elicit these solutions and strategies from the client. The coach's job is simply to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has through listening, observation and customizing of their approach to individual client needs. Executive and Personal Coaching
As mentioned earlier, coaching can be both personal and professional. Some coaches are trained to help people with personal issues such as
relationship coaching,
personal values,
communication, money, self-esteem,
career transition,
children, health and life balance. Professional executive coaching deals with areas such as conflict resolution, team building, entrepreneurship, leadership, innovation, recognition, time management, mission, vision and goals to mention just a few. The coaching can be one on one life coaching or even group coaching depending on the circumsatnces and needs of the individual or group. Many coaches can do both professional and personal coaching, as do Cornerstone Executive and Life Coaching Ltd through Dr. Moses Simuyemba, who is a certified coach. Power Coaching™ With Mind Kinetics™, PCMK™Power Coaching® with Mind Kinetics®, PCMK™, is a life coaching methodology developed by Coaching and Leadership International. It incorporates coaching, mentoring and Mind Kinetics®.Mind Kinetics® will help you to become more of a bilateral thinker, utilising your emotional intelligence, EQ and Logic, IQ to be able to generate creative solutions to your challenges and problems. There are also various profiles that can help you to gain deeper insight into the challenges that you are facing and your personality as part of your life coaching package. The DiSC behavioural profile, developed by Inscape Pblishing is one such example. Others developed by Coaching and Leadership International include “Happiness in Seven Areas of My Life”, “Rate the Health Level of Your Organisation” and the “Summary Accelerator Intake Form.” These tools are good for getting a deeper insight into your personality as well as some of the issues that you may be facing. With more insight and clarity you become empowered and able to change those things about yourself that may not be serving you well. They are also good for improving relationships with other people as with a realisation of our own weaknesses, we tend to be more understanding and tolerant of other people’s flaws. Advanced and proven tools and methodologies for success in all areasThe Ivy Business Journal once said “Coaching simply speeds up a process of change that would most likely occur anyway if an individual had enough time. Without a coaching program that forces a client to focus and make time, people sometimes miss the real issues they need to focus on.”This is true a lot of the time, but sometimes, as experience shows, without some form of guidance or coaching some people simply never get to make personal changes that move them forward. The reason for this is that they do not have the necessary tools and knowledge to help them analyse things and find solid and lasting solutions to their life challenges. That is where a trained coach can make a huge difference with the tools and training they have to speed up your progress. But with so many different forms of coaching out there it can become very difficult to choose a coach. How do you decide? Choosing a coachOne of the first things to do is to know the training of the coach you wish to get.The ICF recommends that you get a coach that has received professional training from a program specifically designed to teach coaching skills in alignment with the ICF Competencies and Code of Ethics. They advise that “If you are considering hiring a coach, be diligent in asking the coach if they have been specifically trained in coaching skills and currently hold or in the process of acquiring an ICF credential. Don't be misled to think a coach is a competent coach because they have other professional credentials or set high fees.” If you are thinking of hiring a coach remember that you will get out of the coaching experience what you put into it. It is your effort and desire to change in order to lead a happier and more fulfilled life that will determine your results. Life coaching will only help you go as far as you are determined to go.
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