What Sets Life Coaching Apart From Counseling, Consulting and Mentoring?
When purchased for your employees, the life coaching relationship is a unique solution focused in that your employee is supported to take action and achieve goals. Individuals often have an idea of what they should be doing but don’t necessarily follow through with the required actions. Life Coaching connects knowing to doing. Through trained listening and questioning skills, life coaches will support your employees to clarify goals, take action, and achieve outcomes.
Life Coaching is often confused with mental health counseling, business consulting, and mentoring; but it is distinct from those.
Historically, counseling is based on a mental health model of dysfunction; starting with the premise that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Counselors help individuals, in part, through emotional or cognitive issues often by looking to the past for triggering events.
Business consulting involves bringing in an expert to analyze a situation and either make recommendations on how to correct it or fix it themselves. Consultants analyze and advise.
Mentoring is provided to professionals by someone farther along or more successful who shares their knowledge to help individuals progress in their work and career. A mentor is someone who understands how to guide and assist in growing talent and solving work problems and is not typically compensated.
Life Coaching is a strengths based approach aimed at managing change and generating results. It assumes that everyone is capable of deciding on desired goals, creating and maximizing opportunities. Coaching focuses on potential and closing the gap of where the individual is now and where they want to be.
The life coaching relationship is often described as a partnership. Life Coaches primarily work in the life purpose and well-being or business, leadership, and professional growth arenas. Individuals find the support, accountability, and structure of coaching empowering.
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