There is a lot of unclarity and confusion about the coaching profession worldwide, about what do coaches do and how they do that.
I am one of the 1.300 Master Certified Coaches in the world, I went through a long professional development journey, I served hundreds of executive and business clients through coaching, I became a Coach Trainer myself, a Mentor Coach, an ICF Assessor and the Director of Education of an ICF accredited coaching training program.
I am committed to be an Ambassador of this wonderful and most of the time obscure profession to let as many people as possible know what professional coaching is really about and what are the amazing benefits of working with a professional coach.
I write articles about that, with the purpose to inspire my readers to learn more and to inspire people to hire a coach to experience an impactful partnership that can deeply transform lives.
To learn more about the impact of coaching, it is important to know the difference between coaching for performance and coaching for evolution.
- Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific issue, situation or challenge. It’s mainly about exploring the issue, the obstacles, the possibilities, the challenges, the options and find solutions to the problem or issue.
- Coaching for evolution is about putting the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the focus, the individual who is dealing with a situation or a problem.
In this type of coaching we deal with the human being, we address the individual, the being of the individual, in a coaching partnership where the coach and the client are equal, they collaborate to explore the inner realm of the client, with the purpose to evoke and promote new awareness, new learning, new insights and new perspectives that could be applied not only to the issue occurring in the moment, but to the whole client’s life.
This type of coaching conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful.
In this type of coaching partnership the coach calls the clients forward to learn, to improve and to grow, rather than just getting something sorted out. This coaching approach is an impactful one, it is a masterful way of coaching clients and it is such a precious professional relationship to find!
When coaches engage with clients in such a mode, they explore the values, the beliefs, the purpose, the identity, the mission and the vision of the clients. It is the relationship of the clients with the presented issue or problem that is explored, in order to allow more awareness and therefore new learning to emerge.
The issue is not the core of the conversation in this type of coaching, but solutions to the issue will emerge spontaneously from a deep exploration where the Being of the client is the focus. The new emerging awareness and the new learnings will be integrated into new actions and new behaviors by the clients, who will be more present to their own life as a consequence of the partnership with such a master coach.
- Coaching for performance is the label typically applied to everyday solving-the-problem management.
- Coaching for evolution goes beyond just solving the problem: this type of coaching is all about the difference between the issue and the person who’s trying to address and solve the issue.
The simple choice of the coach of offering to the clients open-ended evocative questions can make conversations more evolution- than performance-oriented.
And believe me: the problems are not forgotten at all!
They still get addressed and sorted out. But with this type of coaching for evolution, there’s often much more personal insight, and with personal insight comes increased growth and capability, and as a consequence more resources become available.
As coaches, generally speaking, when we serve our clients we want to focus on the real problem not on the first problem. Through a masterful approach to coaching for evolution we learn to
– offer our clients ‘focus questions’ that cut through the fog
– ask the client, for example, ‘what is the real challenge here for you?’ and therefore address the human being behind the problem
– connect, allow space for authenticity and for a genuine partnership
– use a direct communication mode, we cut the intro and we just ask the questions with the purpose to offer a clean language that promote and nurture clarity and focus
– address what the clients are holding in their mind, that will unconsciously influence what they can notice and focus on.
By coaching with this evolutionary approach and by offering this type of questions it works as a little pressure-release valve and helps make explicit something that might be unseen and might be influencing the way clients operate. The question releases the challenge from where it may well be rattling around in a slightly unformed and unclear way.
The power of coaching for evolution is immense, it expands to every areas of the clients’ life and it is nowadays yet unvalued and unmeasured. I encourage to experience coaching like that: a partnership with a professional or master coach can unlock an immense potential energy, potential resources and solutions, that can be directed and used in many areas of our life.
We encourage you to contact our Academy and to book a FREE exploratory meeting to taste master coaching and coaching for evolution, you will be able to experience first-hand what coaching is and learn more about this amazing profession.
Get in touch here, book a free consultation.
