Further to my previous blog, I told my mum and my housemate that my beliefs are that:

“Coaching is working together with a client to identify goals they wish to achieve, motivating the client to take action in achieving these goals and measuring results so they know when the goals have been achieved. Coaching is not therapy, counselling, consulting or mentoring. Coaches do not act as advisers or focus on past events”. (Lee Benning)

My mother’s understanding from this was that coaching is about asking questions to see where the client wants to be and how they can get to where they want to be. She concluded that coaches don’t work for you, they work with you and that the client is responsible for achieving their goals.

My housemate understood quite differently and from my explanation to her she thought coaching was only for individuals who had something in their life they wanted to fix, such as a relationship. My goal setting explanation did not come across well enough it would seem and perhaps I should expand on this as well as explaining who a potential client could be (individual, business, groups). After a discussion with my housemate I also realised I need to explain who would want coaching and what they would get out of it.

As you can see, my housemate and my mother’s understandings were both very different. My housemate agreed that she may have had some preconceived understanding of what a coach does whereas I may have explained in more detail to my mother the role of a coach. This also highlights the importance of geting past people’s preconceived images of a coach and making them eager to find out more about how a coach could be useful to them.