[...]... into the toolkit deployed by their managers & You can attend a course which offers a formal qualification such as a diploma & You can gain hands-on coaching experience – as a manager, as a volunteer or as a self-employed coach Employer training My first coaching skills training took place when I was a manager in a large voluntary sector organisation The organisation wanted to improve its pool of applicants... what coaching is at its best you need to work on your coaching offer In Chapter 2 you will have a chance to assess your own coaching skills, work out how to keep on developing as a coach and start thinking about how to keep your skills constantly updated 2 Developing your coaching skills This chapter will look at how you can develop your coaching skills both in formal training and in practice Coaching. .. that anyone with any form of mental illness was unsuited to coaching either as a coach or a client Depression is a mental illness, a very common one which most people experience at least once in their lives At the same time it is unfair to engage with a client who you believe to be too vulnerable or distressed to benefit from coaching and unethical to pretend that coaching is an adequate means of addressing... toughness and insistence on achievement that could be damaging to a person made particularly vulnerable as a result of problems with mental health However, it would be discriminatory to suggest that coaching is never appropriate for people with a recognised mental health problem Many people who are accessing appropriate support for their particular illness could also benefit from good quality coaching. .. client) and towards action Coaching is about what a client will do rather than why they haven’t done it yet & Coaching requires the coach to believe in the client’s capacity to achieve There are no conditions which are exceptions to this rule The only variables are when and how There are no ‘ifs’ in coaching & Coaching will be terminated if the coach is confident that the client does not have the will to. .. of his/her ability to make positive change happen 10 Chapter 1 What is Coaching? WHAT COACHING IS NOT & & & Coaching is not therapy Coaching is not counselling Coaching is not advice-giving Many people would describe their experience of being coached as highly therapeutic What they might mean by this is that the coaching has helped them to satisfactorily address what they perceive to be problems... might mean that coaching has helped them to feel happier or less stressed They might even mean that coaching has led them to feel healthier and more energised than they felt at the start of the coaching process All of these things can fall from coaching There is absolutely no doubt that coaching can help improve a person’s physical and mental well-being BUT COACHING IS NOT A FORM OF THERAPY Understanding... enough to open up and begin to Chapter 1 What is Coaching? 7 share their innermost thoughts, their dreams and their nightmares you have the raw material for making your coaching work effectively Clients will always open up to you if they firmly believe that you are listening to them and have their best interests at heart The trick is to make this happen quickly Clients want to feel they are moving forward... study full-time I am the author of just such a course and I know that through studying this way my students learn the basic principles of coaching, the ethical aspects of coaching and the basics of how to start a coaching business What I cannot offer them through this mode of learning is an assessment of their practical skills as a coach If distance learning appeals to you then you need to look for courses... to his groundbreaking work In Gallwey’s book The Inner Game of Tennis, first published in 1974, he argued that a player who could win the ‘inner game’ would tap into a natural ability which would unleash latent skills and help turn them into a winner Gallwey was an early proponent of the idea that internal, psychological obstacles to achieving are often more damaging to our performance than external . skip a few pages to Chapter 2 and start thinking about how to develop your coaching skills to the point at which you can run a successful coaching business. . Chapter 1 . What is Coaching? you remain clear about what coaching is and what it entails. Coaching makes demands on your clients and you have to work only