So what actually is coaching ?
Despite coaching being wildly practiced today, many people still find it difficult to define what the word coaching actually means?
The dictionary provides two definitions:
- Travel: A comfortably equipped single-decker bus used for longer journeys/an old- fashioned carriage pulled by horses
- Instruction: Sports instruction, training, extra tuition
Surprisingly, as Sir John Whitmore evokes , the first definition is much nearer to the truth than the second. Coaching is not about instruction or teaching. But it is very much about a journey. A journey where one travels towards a specific destination or goal. In motion. In movement.
It is not so much about being taught as it is “stimulated”. New skills, perceptions, new behaviors etc are not instructed but are drawn out from deep within a person through the coaching process.
Effective coaching is a powerful tool to triggering off and releasing new ideas, energy, new thought patterns that come from within, leading to a release of higher potential and results.
We as coaches, are convinced that everyone has the necessary resources inside of themselves to find their own solutions to their questions, their problems and to reaching their aspirations.
Aristotle uses the metaphor of acorns. Like acorns, which have the potential to become magnificent oak trees, so do us humans have the potential to grow into great, successful, and fulfilled individuals.
The oak tree is within us all. All we need to find it and especially release it, is nourishment, encouragement, and the light to reach toward.