Did You Know This About Coaching?
By: Lucy Milanova
Tags: Inspiration, Coaching, Self Improvement, Mindfulness, Education

Did You Know This About Coaching?

Interesting facts and new trends in coaching

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

Interesting facts

Coaching is still a relatively new discipline as it only came to light in the late 70s and early 80s years of the past century when it started being used across sports and business sectors. However, the industry has taken a big jump since to become a market worth over $2,4 billion of the global economy in 2019. And it’s still expanding, by the way, expected to grow annually by 6%.

However, despite its relatively new presence in the modern society, many are not aware of how old the coaching approach and principles actually are. Neither, how it’s shaping the world today and impacting the other ‘helping’ social disciplines, so here’s a summary of the interesting facts for you.

Coaching comes from Ancient Greece

The theory and practice of coaching goes back as far as to the Ancient Greece whose philosophy shares the same objective,

‘’to help man to become the best version of himself, to fulfil the whole of his potential and find happiness.’’

The Greeks understood that it is through the knowledge and our direct experience that we can find ourselves. On top of that, Greek philosophers were preoccupied with topics of human existence and how we should live.

They conducted numerous ‘thought schools’ that targeted different aspects of our reality such as life, happiness, purpose, and meaningful living. For instance, Socrates believed that knowing oneself is a path to fulfilment. Plato advocated for bliss to be found in a deeper meaning. Stoics believed that the key to our well-being lies in objectivity and being reasonable. (Violetta Psofaki, Transformation Coach)

And it’s been Socrates precisely who is a father of the famous ‘coaching dialogue’ and ‘questioning techniques,’ fundamental coaching methods that we, coaches use in our daily practice today. This is an approach where a series of questions are asked to help people determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their awareness. The answers to those questions based on a person’s knowledge provide an insight into what they are looking to resolve. To honour its founder, the technique is being referred to as a ‘Socratic Method.’

On top of this, Ancient Greeks are the founders of Ontology, the philosophical discipline that studies the nature of being that involves existence, in particular becoming, reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations between each other.

And this is also the field that ‘’provides a rigorous and substantive theoretical framework for the development of professional coaches,’’ according to Alan Sieler, the Director of Ontological Coaching Institute. Based on Alan’s perspective, ‘’coaches observe and work with key aspects of how {clients} have structured their reality and the nature of their existence, i.e. their perceptions and ways of participating in life.’’

So as you can see, there’s much more to coaching, its origins and resources that an average individual would normally think of. And as we coaches strongly believe, awareness is everything.

Coaching competes counselling and therapy

Before diving deeper in this, it’s important to note that coaching draws a lot of its fundamentals from psychology as it focuses on the human psyche and the way individuals function and structure their reality.

That’s our cognition — awareness, perception, discernment, apprehension, learning, understanding, comprehension, insight, intelligence, enlightenment, reasoning, thinking and feeling — consciously as well as subconsciously and particularly our conscious world of concepts.

And so it’s no surprise that cognitive, positive, humanistic, and social psychology had a big impact over the development of today’s coaching. Including the cognitive-behavioural therapy with its principle that how we think (cognition) determines how we feel (emotion) that in effect determines how we act (behaviour).

Therefore, if we change the way we think, we change our feelings as well as our behavior and actions.

Now, while psychotherapy, counselling and coaching all have some common objectives, each of them uses a very different approach and a set of tools to achieve it.

The main focus of therapy and counselling lies in the past and it accesses and analyses the actions that come from the past to encourage client’s self-reflection and form a base for their present and future self-construction.

Coaching is present and future-oriented and focuses on taking actions over an analysis of the explored facts. It aims to encourage the client’s self-reflection, decision marking, and planning to drive progress. And while the past is also observed, it’s only used as a reflection tool to help understand the present state and a person’s future orientation, rather than being the main focus.

And while coaching doesn’t require a medical qualification, therapy and counselling are only provided by licensed health/ mental health professionals. They deal with patient’s mental and emotional conditions, past circumstances including trauma, engage in patient diagnosis, and give medical advice. Coaches do not treat or counsel those with mental illness and must not provide medical advice or engage in patient diagnosis.

Coaching is becoming more and more preferred by individuals who look to understand themselves better and make a progress in their present and future lives, which involves understanding the profound reasons behind their feelings, thoughts and actions.

Coaches, although they’re not qualified and licensed health/ mental health professionals such as therapists, are capable to help their clients to understand the cause of their thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to support them in changing their mindset, removing their inner blockages and insecurities — fears, limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns, and turn them into a new drive for their future success.

They also guide clients to understand their true potential, deep desires, needs and motivations, and encourage them to work on achieving their goals by clarifying what they want, setting priorities, building confidence and supporting their accountability and determination to actually reach their goals.

Therapy is a longterm process that requires a continuous commitment and it usually takes a long time for clients to see any progress — changes in their behaviour, thoughts, feelings and actions. While coaching delivers results relatively fast.

It’s fair to say that these approaches can’t replace one another completely, rather complement each other — coaching doesn’t support mental health problems such as psychology and psychiatry does. Yet, many individuals nowadays opt in for a coach instead of a counsellor or a psychologist/ therapist when they look to resolve their challenges, gain a new perspective, make a leap in their lives and grow personally. Even if it involves understanding, accepting and making peace with their past.

New Coaching trends

As coaching is a constantly developing market, there’s a lot of things that keep evolving, expanding and changing about the industry nowadays. The spectrum of those changes is so vast that a thorough research could be based entirely on it. But for the benefit of time, here’s a summary of some of the most influential trends in coaching as of today.

Many are driven by what was mentioned above, they make the industry progress and further impact its future. My insights are inspired by Sai Blackbyrn, Master Coach for Online Coaches, as well as Forbes and Harvard Business Review.

Coaching as a necessity, not a luxury

In the past few decades, it was not easy for coaches to sell their skill-set and value to clientele as they had no similar service to compare themselves against. Coaching at that time was considered to be a ‘luxury service’ for elites starting with the business environment, executives, plus successful sportsmen. However, it’s nowadays known and wide-spread much more than years back. And that makes coaching generally more accessible for anyone than how it’s been before. The fact that the industry has to cope with the after-boom years and it’s consequences is there, but it will only continue to grow, spread, and be even more accessible to the common population.

From face-to-face to online coaching

As technology is widely revolutionizing the coaching industry, location-based coaching is losing its significance and online personal coaching is becoming a norm.

The reason is that face-to-face coaching fails to satisfy the growing need for time and location flexibility easily given by online meetings. Online coaching also enables reaching a wider audience it needs — to cope with the competitors.

On top of that, younger generations such as Millennials for whom technology is an inseparable part of daily lives continue to drive demand for coaching services online through webinars, coaching apps, and online delivery via video conferencing.

This also propels coaching automation, a need for outsourcing and delegating some of the tasks especially admin and tech-related, plus automating through online platforms and software. That in the effect strengthens the role of online coaching further.

From one-to-one to group coaching

Whereas beginnings of coaching encouraged and favoured one-to-one delivery, coaching is nowadays slowly moving to a group coaching model. The reasons are many. From a coaches perspective, working with groups enables to share the same message to a wider audience within the same time frame which streamlines the delivery from the time, energy, and financial perspective.

Group environment also provides wider support for individuals — enabling interactions with other people who face similar challenges, encouraging growth through open-mindedness, seeing the value in others and understanding different perspectives.

This in effect boosts accountability, motivation, and confidence of everyone in a group as they see their fellow members progressing individually as well as collectively as a group. It fosters deeper connections and cooperation among the coaching group members that benefit individuals throughout the course of the coaching cooperation. And facilitates the kind of peer-to-peer assistance that a single coach would not be able to deliver to everyone on the course individually.

It is also more affordable than receiving one-to-one coaching.

Personal value and quality over quantity

It’s important to distinguish quality from quantity for coaches as well as clients and comprehend what kind of service a.) gives the highest value to coaching clients as well as b.) what kind of niche coaching best suits your needs as a receiver of coaching.

The quality over quantity rule definitely applies online as providing a lot of ‘generalist’ (often only prerecorded) content in coaching sessions has much less impact on the individual’s progress than offering a personalized service that targets them directly.

This could be achieved by the coaches providing live video sessions for the clients when they engage directly and ensures immediate guidance and feedback sharing on any specific subject a client is looking to resolve rather than seeking that information in a generic coaching program that targets a broad set of topics and large audience.

Awaiting regulation and consolidation of coaching qualifications and specialization

As the industry is maturing after booming and reaching its peak, a regulation requiring more qualifications for the entry is only a question of time.

Customers are now looking to be coached by qualified professionals who can back their success by solid client reviews/ testimonials as well as valid certifications. This is already a high norm within the corporate sector for business coaching, however, it starts to apply broadly to its personal side.

Consolidation also has to do with a specialization of coaches — building ‘’niche’’. Whereas in the past a single coaching professional used to deliver coaching on loads of different subjects, nowadays it’s clear that one person can’t be an expert for everything.

Without a proper specialization, it’s challenging to keep the quality standards high and yet remain a field expert.

Therefore, not only to keep the quality and the expertise high but to attract the desired audience without confusing them, mastering a specific coaching ‘’niche’’ is everything nowadays.