Professional Coaching – What is it, and do I really need it?

By Zhennovate | 5 minute

Effective professional coaching offers an opportunity to actualize your potential relating to personal and professional matters, such as your personal well-being, work performance, career advancement, leadership skills, navigating transitions, and work life satisfaction. 

This article will provide a brief introduction to the art of coaching, explain the difference between a coach, manager, and mentor, and explore some key benefits of coaching. 

Managers, Mentors… and Coaches?

As a professional, you may be lucky enough to have access to several individuals who are able to support your professional development. However, a coach plays a specific role that is distinct to that of a manager, mentor, or coworker.

When seeking advice within your organization, a manager is likely the best port of call for questions relating to your job role, duties, or specific projects that you are involved in at work. It may also be appropriate to discuss opportunities for career progression, additional training, and feedback on your performance. 

A mentor, on the other hand, may be an individual outside of the organization that you work in, whom you look to for advice, support, or networking. They are often somebody who you look up to, or who work in a similar area to that of your professional interest, and may provide you with career inspiration.

A mentor may share from their knowledge of how to get from point A to point B, and that advice may or may not work for you given your unique circumstance and personality. This is why it often helps to work with multiple mentors who can offer diverse perspectives around a given situation. Mentors are great at helping explore options to the “how-to” questions.

A professional coach is a qualified professional who provides confidential support relating to goal-setting, mindset shift and behavioral change. A coach makes use of evidence-based approaches and works with you to identify and overcome obstacles, explore areas for growth and goal-setting, become a more effective leader, progress in career, or elevate satisfaction in life. 

Unlike your manager, your coach exists outside of your organization, allowing them to bring an objective and trusted perspective to your situation. Your coach holds your interests in mind – everything is about you, who you are, what you want, what’s possible for you, what’s holding you up – you and you alone. 

In addition, unlike your mentor, your coach specializes in helping you overcome your mental blocks and align your beliefs, thoughts and actions so you can achieve your intended results. In a coaching session, rather than being advised on what to do, you are guided to see where misalignment exists; along with setting a clear intention, you come to realize what new intentional actions to take. Behavioral shifts naturally take place, and with a coach’s empowering reinforcement over time, your consistent behavioral shifts solidify into a new habit.

A coach can also be your unbiased sounding board and a mirror to help you distill your internal truth amidst overwhelming external expectations. For this reason, a coach can be great at helping explore your “why” and “what” questions – important questions that no one else can help answer but you.   

The Benefits of Coaching

In recent decades, over 80% of the organizations in the United States employ professional coaches to help their executives expand on existing ways of thinking, manage stress and change, navigate uncertainty, stay resilient, build, develop and manage people and teams, lead by values and example, and foster organizational culture. 

While the coaching process is distinct from and serves a different role to therapy, it can provide insight and is associated with benefits such as decreased stress, increased motivation, and greater work life satisfaction. In addition, coaching is focused on the creation of tangible action in the present to positively affect the future – it does not dwell on past decisions. 

In conclusion, professional coaching is a unique form of personalized support to empower you to achieve your goals. Working alongside a coach can compliment any existing support you may have from a manager, mentor or therapist and can provide strategic thought partnership to help maximize your potential – thrive and lead from the inside out!