What is Coaching?
The experience of being coached is deeply personal. It is this subjective nature that makes it so challenging to define. At Graydin, we believe there is no one way to define coaching. We choose to allow the definition to be generated from and by our course participants, encouraging it to evolve with experience and time.
Over the years we, of course, have needed to answer the question, ‘What is coaching?’ In response we often share: “You can define coaching in many different ways and we encourage you to tailor your definition to the context you are in. How do we define coaching? We see it as… an approach to communication, a transformational way to help others, with a focus on the present and future and a process that supports someone to move from A to B.” We keep it vague and intentionally open to interpretation.
Since March 2020, we have been proudly offering our entire Coaching Course Series online. One feature that we have come to love is Chat on Zoom, and we have found many opportunities to ask participants to share ideas, answers or comments in the Chat.
During The Anatomy: Foundational Coaching Course Live Online, we ask participants to consider how they define coaching at the end of every session. Over the four weeks, they define and redefine their coaching definition as their skills grow. During the final session, they share their refined definition in the Chat. We love seeing the diversity of definitions and the way people see coaching.
During a recent course, we found them all so thought-provoking we wanted to share them with you.
Coaching is…
About working in partnership with a coach, empowering them to achieve goals by guiding them with effective questioning, techniques and support—giving them the tools to explore what they want to achieve and how they will get there.
Granting an individual the key to unlock their own inner wisdom.
A conversation to encourage emotional exploration with potential for personal growth.
Using conversation to enable someone to successfully direct themselves.
About meeting the person where they are - providing space for them—noticing them and reflecting back so they get whatever they need from our time together.
Helping others to uncover/ clarify their value, motivations and beliefs by structuring their thoughts so they can make the right choices for themselves by taking actions to align with their beliefs and therefore sleep better at night.
Guiding the coachee, through constructive questioning, to understand themselves, clarify their ideas and know what they want.
Empowering people to find their way through life guided by their own highest values.
A personalised listening method for being a mirror and prompter for self-directed improvement. A curious fan.
The ability to develop healthy connections between people, to develop meaningful conversations.
We ended up with a continuum of definitions, all different but with noticeable and consistent themes.
Connection, conversation and questions; empowerment and exploration; reflection and space; direction and action.
As with all things deeply personal and subjective, everyone comes to experience, understand and define coaching differently. The beauty of coaching is that every single one of these definitions can be and is simultaneously true. Within its plurality is its power.
To develop your own practical understanding of coaching, join us for The Anatomy: Foundational Coaching Course.