Coaching evokes self-awareness and converts learning into actions.
Coaching, training, and mentoring are all great tools to develop people, and each plays a different role. Coaching in the workplace is a personal one-to-one intervention that uses a collaborative, goal-focused relationship to achieve outcomes. Coaching is a fundamentally different relationship than either a teaching or mentoring relationship.
Training is about transferring knowledge from teacher to student; therefore, it is a hierarchical relationship. Training is usually structured and formal and is about telling rather than asking. The purpose of the exercise is to teach new knowledge and skills. Research demonstrates that generally, participants lose roughly 50% of the information received after 1 hour, and a week later, 90 percent of the learning is gone.
Mentoring is a long-term relationship based on trust, respect, and a desire to gain wisdom to lead the individual towards specific objectives. Like training, mentoring is also a hierarchical relationship. The mentor is generally a highly experienced individual and provides guidance or career advice to less experienced mentees.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines the act of Coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching enhances, supports, and facilitates individuals to step in and be actively engaged in their growth and learning. The core of Coaching is different from both training and mentoring. There is no hierarchy in this informal, safe and confidential space. The coach partners with the coachee to deepen their self-awareness in areas of growth or strength, working through “blind spots” along the way. The coach helps the coachee design powerful, intentional actions to move them towards their goals.
Coaching is not about telling people what to do; it allows them to examine what they are doing concerning their intentions. The key to the coaching relationship is that the change is ultimately owned, driven, and done by the coachee. It is their desired change that matters. The space created during a coaching engagement is intentional, co-created, and led by thought-provoking questions that allow the coachee to be active in their learning.
The coaching relationship helps the coachee create a positive cycle of thinking, learning, action, reflection, and course correction. This cycle repeats over time and develops new knowledge. Thinking is critical for defining intentional and commitment-worthy actions. As an individual learns to harness their potential in the coaching process, it instills and creates positive action, reflection, and outcomes.
