Who needs Coaching?

Ha!! Coaching. That is the newest catchword in the Internet world right now. At least Coaching is one of the really hot topics I have seen bandied about on the Internet. I receive a lot of e-mails about becoming a personal coach, I get people suggesting that I sign up with them to be coached. As you watch, more and more people are talking about coaching, heck we at Hawgwash, LLC are "Second Income Coaches". That begs the question, exactly what is coaching and who needs coaching?

Traditionally, the first use of the term coaching was meant as an instructor or trainer. The term showed up around 1830 in Oxford University. The act of coaching refers to someone developing abilities and skills in another person, originally related to sports. Your coach in sports was the person who observed what you did, and helped you to improve your game. There are different coaching techniques, some coaches yell and scream at their players (as you may have witnessed at various professional football and basketball games) and other coaches take a much quieter approach. No matter the approach, coaches are there to identify your strengths and weaknesses and then to help guide you to improve your strengths and reduce your weaknesses.

Coaching is helping to identify the skills and capabilities that are within the person and enabling them to use those skills and capabilities to the best of their ability. This then increases the independence within the individual. The modern version of coaching uses skills to help clients to shift their perspectives on issues or problems and then possibly discover alternative solutions to those issues or problems. Coaching in the modern sense is a method to help others discover what is already inside, and to help the client develop those abilities. A coach is not a manager or a trainer.

• Managers make sure people do what they know how to do.
• Trainers teach people to do things they don't know how to do.
• Mentors show people how others do something well and help them to do the same.
• Coaching helps identify the skills and capabilities that are within that person, enabling them to use the best of their abilities.

Then that begs the next question, who needs coaching? Actually we all need coaching at some time or another. How can we improve ourselves, better our ability to do business, if we don't have a coach observing and helping us to identify additional skills and abilities to continue to develop. We cannot improve ourselves without outside influences, and sometimes we can get all tangled up in specific problems and not be able to find a viable solution out of those problems or concerns. A coach would be someone who has the ability to stand back and observe the situation and help you to discover alternate solutions that you may not have realized were there.

We will continue this discussion on who needs coaching tomorrow. If you would like to see what we have to offer in second income coaching, please feel free to visit our website at http://www.hawgwash.net/.

Until tomorrow...