What Coaching Is Not
A lot of people confuse coaching with counseling or mentoring. Coaching is different from these practices in several ways.
Coaching does not offer therapeutic outcomes like counseling. Merriam-Webster defines counseling as “professional guidance of the individual by utilizing psychological methods, especially in collecting case history data, using various techniques of the personal interview, and testing interests and aptitudes.” While counseling does offer a hefty amount of introspection, it also spends a lot of time looking toward one’s past, whereas coaching is future-oriented.
Mentoring is a self-directed, mutually beneficial, long-term relationship between two individuals for long-term career movement where the mentor does most of the talking and offers advice. While coaching is a true partnership among equals, mentoring most typically consists of a more experienced person directly guiding the mentee through an experience that the mentor has already been through.
Coaching, on the other hand, is a conversation focused on helping other people (coachees or clients) move forward relative to their goals, hopes, and curiosities—not to dig into their past. For coaching to be helpful, it should be directly tied to what the client wants to accomplish, through a process that is directed by the coachee, where the coachee is empowered to uncover and develop their own path to achieving their goal and does the majority of the talking.
Because coaches are dealing with such personal and sensitive information, they should abide by ethical guidelines. Some professional organizations, such as ATD and ICF, have developed such guidelines and codes of conduct that apply to the practice of coaching. Included in those guidelines are honesty, fairness, lawfulness, compassion, respect, loyalty, and dependability.
