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How Can I Tell if a Coach Is a Legitimate Professional? Who Benefits Most From Coaching? What Are The Benefits Of Coaching? What Is the Difference between Coaching and Therapy? What Other Resources Are Available To Help Me ? How Can I Tell if a Coach Is a Legitimate Professional? Coaching today is one of the fastest growing fields for personal and professional growth and development. Anyone can call himself a “coach.” Many people feel they are coaches by virtue of the fact that their friends and colleagues find them easy to talk to or that these friends and colleagues are always asking them for advice. There are four important steps you should take to insure that the coach you choose has the proper credentials: 1. First you need to determine what formal training your coach has received. The majority of coaches who advertise on the web have no formal training and, if they do, their training is an Internet program or some other program not accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF). The ICF is the only large scale organization that is leading the effort to professionalize coaching by establishing rigorous standards for ethical behavior, awarding accreditation to institutions of learning and setting standards of practice. For more information on the ICF, visit their web site at: http://www.coachfederation.org/ICF/. You can also find a list there of accredited coaching programs. 2. Second, you need to determine how much actual experience the coach has. How many hours of structured coaching has he performed? 3. Third, you need to ask your coach what types of clients he has worked with. What types of results have these clients experienced? 4. Last, be wary of coaches who profess to be all things to all people. The most important thing that your coach must have is your TRUST. Real coaching focuses on finding YOUR truth and YOUR answers. The best coach for you will be the one with whom you can establish a rapport fairly quickly. If you have any doubts, keep talking to other coaches until you find the right coach for YOU.
Who Benefits Most From Coaching? Coaching is best suited for people who are smart, successful, highly motivated, and who want to have a more successful career and a more satisfying life. Generally these people have the ability to achieve their goals, but they are temporarily blocked from seeing the right path by limited perspectives, negative attitudes, and passive approaches. The personal paradigm that individuals build into their lives often locks them into the same thinking, leading to the same behaviors, leading to the same results that they wish to change but don't know how.
What Are The Benefits Of Coaching? We are bound by the limits of our own perceptions. We sometimes get entrenched, or stuck. A coach comes to you with no outside agenda or history but a dedication to serving your needs. A coach can provide perspective and insight, suggest theories and frameworks that will help you reframe your understanding, broaden your perceptions and get you un-stuck Coaches know that your being stuck is not a permanent problem. It's not unusual. It's about your being human. A coach will validate what you are experiencing and show you different ways of seeing your hurdles. What Is the Difference between Coaching and Therapy? Coaching is not therapy, though it is compatible with therapy. Many clients choose to do both. Coaches look at where you are now and where you want to go. With this perspective, coaching is oriented to the present and future. For the most part, therapy focuses on analysis and interpretation of things related to the past. The therapist often asks the question “Why?” In coaching, the emphasis is on experiencing and shifting your perspective and position. Rather than focusing on what has happened, the coach focuses is on what is possible. The emphasis is on the here and now and creating plans for the future. To the extent that you have to understand “why” something happened, a coach will help answer the question and then quickly turn you to the next step: “What do I do now?” Coaches are fond of saying that “insight is life’s greatest ‘boobie prize.’ Without action that changes something, insight is mostly useless.” Professional and ethical coaches also understand the importance and appropriateness of therapy and other types of medical treatment in many situations and should not intrude into those areas or interfere with those treatments. The vast majority of coaching relationships and interactions take place on the phone. This is much more efficient as it saves travel time. In addition, many clients and their coaches live in different parts of the country. In limited cases, coaching is done in person. Ideally, you will have the opportunity to meet your coach face to face at the start of the relationship, but sometimes this is logistically impossible. The vast majority of coaching is provided on a per-session basis with typical prices ranging from $100 up to $500 per session. Most relationships are set up for the coach and client to speak once a week with some limited email exchanges between sessions. Typically, coaches require a commitment by the client to work with the coach for some minimum period (often 3 months). Chris Dachi offers traditional pricing and scheduling models. In addition, he has models and pricing structures that are more intensive to provide much broader access, interaction and quicker results. He also is willing to take a limited number of clients who need or prefer to work in the evenings or on weekends Of course, you will want to consult your tax advisor, but coaching can often be deducted if it is related to your job performance, career change or advancement, or business development. |
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