Coaching -- Does Coaching Work?

Can you imagine the world's top football team without a coach? Or the world's best golfer? No, of course not, because without a coach they wouldn't be there and we wouldn't know about them.

All of us accept that to excel at sport we need a coach. How about work? Can you expect to be the best at what you do without any training or education? Again, of course not. Yet, when we talk about coaching, be it life coaching or business coaching, many people are sceptical of the benefits. We find it hard to believe, especially with regard to life coaching, that we need help with something that is not obviously broken.

Returning to our golfing example. The best in the world (we'll call him Tiger) would probably be a very good golfer if he didn't have a coach. But, and this is important, he would not have realised his full potential without a coach.
So what is the coach's role? It would be daft to suggest that a player can only learn from someone better than themselves. Tiger is obviously a better golfer than his coach (he wins more prizes). But, his coach can, and does, help Tiger become a better player. The coach can tell Tiger what's going wrong and what's going right, he can offer feedback on his game, his attitude; in fact, anything that he thinks will make Tiger a better player.

The same is true for the top sales professional. A coach would almost certainly have helped him (or her) get there.
There is no doubt about it, coaching is essential for anyone who wants to perform at their best and then continue to develop further.
Coaching is not teaching though. Coaching does not feed information, it merely exposes it; the coach assumes that the subject has the answers within them. This is a very powerful concept and in turn is very empowering. Just imagine for a moment that you knew you had the answers to all your challenges within you; you'd be unstoppable. Yet, it is true. The coach's role is to help his or her subject define what they want to do and then help the subject plot a course to get there.

Before a coach can do this however, we need to know where we are at the moment.

A useful tool for this (and one that coaches often use very early on in a coaching relationship), is called the Wheel of Life. Like most things in coaching it is very simple, very effective, and adaptable. Here's an example that is focused on work or career -- you can use it to help you determine where you are at the moment.