How does Life Coaching differ from other similar approaches?
Life Coaching is not counseling. In many situations, a counselor will look at your past to try to formulate a specific solution to a particular problem. Your coach will come to have an understanding of how your past has shaped your present, but the focus of Life Coaching is on where you are now and where you are aiming to be in the future. Every situation, every client and every coaching session is unique, and the overall aim is to enable you to take control of your life by accepting responsibility for all that you are and all that you do. Our coaches can guide you in how to achieve this and will be there to support you every step along the way.
Life Coaching is not therapy. A therapist typically addresses a specific physical or mental condition. Your coach sees you as a single, complete person; a culmination of interactions between all that you are, all that you have been and ultimately all that you can be. Instead of looking for causes and reasons, our coaches, using a holistic approach fundamental to Life Coaching Practice, will help you achieve your objectives by helping you to focus in on yourself, mentally, physically and spiritually.
Life Coaching is not consultancy. Coaching in a business environment in itself is not a form of consultancy, though working out how it might best be applied in a business environment can be. Consultants are generally asked to look at particular work-related issues. They usually gather data, analyse functions and quantify requirements, to support proposals designed to create operational or structural change. Their focus is generally on resolving particular functional issues. Our life coaches adopt a different approach; one where people and personality are paramount and where the changes sought are at a personal, psychological level. Life Coaching with its breadth of coverage and depth of understanding about the attitude and desires of the individuals involved, will often enable a company to achieve change in a faster timescale and with longer lasting benefits than those resulting from a standard consultancy approach.
Life Coaching is not mentoring. A mentor is altogether a different beast. A mentor will generally be there to help someone to learn a particular task or to acquire a specific skill-set. The mentor will have a lot of experience in a particular area and will be able to help the client to find short cuts and to learn how to gain specific results in specific areas. The mentor will generally know the ins and outs of a specific job related situation in advance. Life Coaching does not require that the coach should have personal experience of a client’s industry or occupation. Indeed it may be that the absence of experience adds to the effectiveness of coaching in this area, A mentor already knows the answers. The coach works with the individual so that they can first discover the questions for themselves and then find their own answers.
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