During todays episode Karim talks about the origin of Coaching and elaborated on the difference between Coaching & Mentoring, Coaching & Counselling and Coaching & Teaching.
— Transcript —
Hey what’s up everybody, this is Karim Amri. Welcome to Coaching Secrets Podcast
During todays episode as part of the initial foundations, every coach should know, we’re gonna talk about the origin of coaching.
I guess if you gonna stop randomly 10 people in the street and ask them what does the word Coach means to them, it’s highly probable that the majority will refer to the Basket ball coach, soccer team coach or Football coach,in fact despite that nowadays the term is way bigger than that, but these people they are actually, right, they just missed to be updated.
The origin of this life changing industry started with a tennis instructor, called Tim Gallwey.
Tim had an Aha moment when he figured out in the 70’s that instead of keep on instructing his players, do this , do that, increase the speed, jump higher ; in other words asking them only to follow his advise, he may involve them in defining the right thing to do, the right move. Pushing them to think and involve their brain actively in the physical activity.
Tim discovered that the team was performing better, when he ask them , instead of instruct them, when he partner and involve them in identifying the right strategy.
In fact Tim took one step further to test how important is to reduce his influence on the players, and hired a couple of Ski instructors with zero background about tennis to instruct his tennis team, without informing the players.
The results were stunning, the team performance increased more, as the new instructors, were asking, just basic question to understand how things work, and gave more space to the players, to think and act according to a new concept of coaching, where the solution is coming from them, not the other way.
Tim published his new methodology first in a book called, the inner Game of tennis then took the concept and applied it for the development of personal and professional excellence in a variety of fields, business, politics, education, … He published then another series of books, the Inner game of Work, the Inner Game of Stress, the Inner Skiing, … putting the first blocks for the multi billion industry of coaching we’re part of it today.
In fact when applying the same concept and methodology of coaching to increase the corporate performance, results were easy to measure and bringing no doubt that this new skill is what companies needs to unleash the true potential of their teams.
I want to add today something related to the same subject, which is the confusion between some of the techniques ad skills .
Coaching is not mentoring,
While mentoring is sharing his experience with the team, or the client and giving them answers and solutions, which logically mean that you are well equipped and expert in the subject field. Coaching is the total opposite in terms of share. In coaching we believe that all the answers are within the other person, he is full of potential, and a coach is there just to help him think and discover these answers. In fact in coaching the more the coach is far in term of expertise, from the sessions subject the higher are the chance he can help better the client.
Coaching is also not counselling
Coaching is also not counselling, and this is again another confusion that happen in so many cases, in fact while counselling is about something in the past to cure or to heal, coaching is about today and tomorrow. A coach is not a therapist, and should not act so, if he found that the client is in fact needs a therapist, he should directly decline dealing with him and inform him about the service he really needs.
Coaching is also not teaching,
As the answer is within the client , the coachee, not a course that will be taught by the coach.
That’s what eve