WHAT IS COACHING?

A pic from one of my Personal Trainer sessions at the Botanical Garden in Hanoi, Vietnam.

I'm in the process of becoming an ASEP certified coach, to complement my Personal Trainer accreditations. As a part of the course I've been asked to define "What is coaching?" and this is what I've come up with so far:


What is coaching?

To me, the definition of coaching is the interaction between a coach and an individual, or group of individuals, and the dynamic processes of communicating, demonstrating, analyzing, encouraging, questioning, challenging and assisting individual(s) to attain a desired personal and/or professional goal.
Coaching a skill isn’t the same thing as executing or practicing a skill, very few world class athletes become world class coaches. I think this is in part of the great pedagogic, educational skills needed to be a good coach. Another important feature of a coach is also to be able to analyze situations and movements and then transform those observations in to easy comprehendible instructions and advice that will help the individual(s) excel and perform better.

Wikipedia defines coaching as following:
“Coaching…is identifying the skills and capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of their ability – and by that increasing the independence within the individual, and reducing reliance”

To me coaching is also about mentoring and leadership (being a role model), practicing and teaching skills, especially in coaching athletes. And although I agree some form of reduction in coach reliance is advantageous, I think it’s always beneficial to have presence of a good coach (feedback, guidance, etc). 

I view coaching as a resource to provide feedback, critique, motivation and opportunities to individual(s), allowing them to grow. For example, if a client to a Personal Trainer (PT) wants the loose weight, the PT will give directions, examples, advice, motivation, instructions and guidelines how to get rid of the unwanted excessive weight. But at the end of the day there’s only going to be one person that decides if the weight will come off and that is the client herself.  In other words, a coach assists people achieve their goals by being an educator, a listener, a motivator and an analyst that helps people develop.

...please feel free to leave a comment if you agree/disagree or think something is missing in my definition!