How Is Coaching Different From Other Helping Professions?
Most helping professions exist for the same purpose: to help individuals grow personally or professionally. However, while coaching does share some similarities with other professions, it also has a few defining qualities that set it apart from other professions.
Many coaches who are not trained and certified with an ICF accredited program often mix coaching with other helping professions and find it difficult to distinguish between coaching and other professions.
In today’s blog, we will look at the differences between coaching and other helping professions. First, let us know what helping professions are and get some background on coaching.
What Are Helping Professions?
These are the professions that help or support individuals or a group to nurture their growth and address their challenges, which can be psychological, intellectual, or emotional, to make life easier and more fulfilling. In addition to coaching, some examples of helping professions that aim to assist individuals in reaching their potential are counseling, consulting, therapy, and mentoring.
What Is Coaching?
Coaching is a future-oriented, short-term partnership where clients define their goals and gain clarity to transform from their current state to a new desired way of being. It is defined by The International Coach Federation (ICF) as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”
The ICF is a leading organization dedicated to advancing the coaching profession worldwide by setting high standards and developing core competencies for coaching.
Difference Between Coaching and Other Helping Professions
Coaching and Consulting
Consulting is also a future-oriented approach like coaching that focuses on assisting the clients to achieve their desired goals. In consulting, the consultant, based on their expertise in the field, offers expert analysis and action plans to the client that directly impacts the client’s goals. However, these action plans provided in consulting are helpful for a short period or recurring challenges the client faces.
In contrast, the client owns the entire process of coaching. The coach supports the clients by asking open-ended questions that evoke new awareness within the client and motivates them to adopt the right mindset to discover the challenges and come up with solutions that help them to achieve their professional or personal goals. This motivation and awareness in the client supports long-lasting changes and increases the client’s self-confidence, where they begin to trust themselves and take up challenges as they come without hesitation or second thought.
Coaching and Counseling
Counseling is a process of guiding clients to overcome their past challenges that act as a barrier to their present. Coaching is a process of partnering with clients to assist them in moving from where they are to where they want to be, do or have in their personal or professional lives.
While both coaching and counseling focus on “inquiry,” the questions in counseling often focus on the “why” from their client’s past to analyze the clients’ challenges and offer solutions. In contrast, the questions in coaching are designed to assist the client in “finding the desired outcome” from within as a coach believes that the client is fully capable of doing so independently. The coach supports the client in this process to get clarity on what they want in the future, why they want it, and how they will achieve it.
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Coaching and Mentoring
One main difference between coaching and mentoring is that coaching is a non-directive approach, and mentoring is a directive approach.
Both coaching and mentoring are solution focused for their clients. The mentor provides solutions, advice, and guidance bolstered by the expertise and past experiences gained by working in the same field or organization as the client. Conversely, the coach supports their clients in achieving more profound insight by assisting them in exploring the available options and their possible outcomes by asking the right questions, providing the space to reflect, and showing confidence in the client.
So What Makes Coaching Different?
Coaching focuses on helping individuals to achieve results and maximize their potential. Instead of offering solutions or advice, it actively seeks out the client’s strengths. Also, it supports them in finding their own solutions independently, where coaches partner with clients and encourage them to maximize their potential and achieve their personal and professional goals.
ARE YOU READY TO BECOME AN ICF PROFESSIONAL CERTIFIED COACH?
to learn more about the ICF PCC requirements to coach at the level of PCC coaching confidently.
