In this post, you'll find answers to some of the questions that arise if you're considering finding a coach. We'll cover what a coach is, what coaching is, how coaches can help, what methods they use and how to find a good coach. Let's start with the big question:
What is a coach?
A coach is a person who uses various conversation techniques to help their clients (also known as coachees) achieve their goals, solve their problems or manage different life situations.
How much does a coach cost?
A coach is typically in a financially dependent relationship with their clients, where the clients pay the coach for their service, typically in the form of sessions or courses. In Denmark, a coaching session typically costs between DKK 300 and DKK 2500, depending on how experienced, sought-after and skilled your coach is.
A classic confusion about the word coach
One confusion that can arise about the term "coach" is the difference between the English term for "trainer" and the profession of "coach".
When the term coach is used, it can simply mean a person who helps another person to become more skilled. Typically this is in a skill such as sport, music, entrepreneurship or education. In this context, coaching means consulting and sparring with your coach.
Your coach may have a specialty
Someone who works as a "coach" sometimes uses other titles, such as "personal coach", "business coach", "life coach" or "career coach". Here, coach typically refers to the fact that they possess some conversational techniques, questioning techniques or methods that help paying clients with their goals and challenges. The coach's specialization typically indicates which journeys or processes the coach has the most insight or experience with. Occasionally, these coaches use targeted questioning techniques or thinking tools that relate to their specialization.
What is coaching?
Coaching is a powerful method for personal development and goal-oriented learning. It is a process where an experienced coach works with the client (coachee) to help them achieve their goals, overcome challenges and gain new perspectives on their life situation. Coaching is not therapy, but rather a forward-looking approach that focuses on identifying and realizing the client's potential.
Think of it as a conversation with an experienced friend who helps you get clear on what you want to achieve and how to get there. In coaching, the coach listens intently to you and asks questions to help you think more deeply about your thoughts and goals. It's like having a guide to explore your inner compass and find out what really matters to you.
Coaching can be useful in many situations, from finding your dream job to improving your relationships or overcoming personal challenges. It's about getting support and guidance to make the best decisions for yourself.
Most importantly, coaching is not about being told what to do. It's about finding your own answers and discovering your own path forward. It's a way to gain confidence and belief that you have the potential to achieve your goals.
How do sessions with a coach work?
You and your coach will typically meet for a single session or a series of sessions. Typically, a session lasts between 45 and 90 minutes. Sessions typically take the form of a conversation with you as the focus person and focal point of the conversation.
Typically, you will find that a coaching session feels like a kind of interview, where the coach asks you a lot of questions about you, your life, your reflections and thoughts. Some coaches also use different tools such as paper, ink, music and the like.
Coaching tools and exercises
Coaching sessions can also include various small exercises, reflection models or stories that the coach uses as a tool to help you reflect and bring new perspectives into focus.
One exercise that can be used during coaching is the "should/do" model shown below. Your coach may ask you to fill out the form to collect or create an overview of your reflections during the session.
The should/do model, which can be used to create an overview of your current habits and actions in relation to achieving your goal.
The framework for coaching
Coaching sessions typically take place in a room provided by the coach, at your home or on a walk. Some coaches also offer online sessions that take place via video call. It is typically in the coach's interest to create a space where you feel comfortable and calm, as this creates the best environment for reflection and learning.
What tools are used in coaching?
There are a multitude of methods that coaches use in their coaching. Below we have listed some of the methods and tools that coaches use in their work. Maybe you recognize them if you've had a coach before?
Positioning
Many coaches consciously work to help you look at your own situation from other positions - or other people's perspectives. This is where they may ask questions:
"What would your boss advise you to do right now?"
"Who do you think knows the solution to your problem? And what would they advise you to do?"
"Who are the key people in your situation? What interests do they have?"
"If B.S. Christiansen was in your situation right now, what would he do?"
Externalization
This approach involves separating the situation, problem or feeling from the person. This way, we can view the "confusion" as an object, instead of talking about you as a confused person. The principle is similar to positioning, where it's easier to look at your situation anew if you're not standing with both feet planted in it.
Furthermore, externalizing problems provides better opportunities to treat or reshape the problem, as it becomes easier to take new actions in relation to the problem.
Hypotheses
"Imagine you're standing here in 3 years' time and you've found your dream job. What do you experience? Who are you working with? What kind of tasks do you have?"
Sometimesyour coach may try to get you to take your eyes off your immediate problem and look further out on the horizon. In doing so, you may find inspiration or new conclusions that can help you decide on your next steps.
Appropriate interruptions
An appropriate disturbance should throw you off balance for a brief moment and then you should regain your composure.
As the late biologist and theorist Humberto Maturana said, learning happens as a result of appropriate perturbations. The boat needs to be rocked for learning to happen. It's like when you push a tilting dummy and, after a bit of rocking back and forth, it comes back into balance.
This means that your coach will try to "push you a little" to get you to think in new ways that you may not have been encouraged to explore before. It may feel like your coach is being confrontational through their questions or statements. However, it's important that your coach strikes a balance between no interference (which doesn't create fertile ground for new reflections) and inappropriate interference (which is too confrontational and therefore puts the client on the defensive) - hence the word appropriate interference.
What can coaching help you with?
Coaching sessions or programs typically help you achieve a goal that you struggle to achieve on your own. Coaching can also help bring new perspectives to stuck situations in life, such as career, relationships, diet, health, education, etc.
Below you will find a list of typical examples of what a coach can support you with:
- Find a new career path
- Prioritize your goals in life
- Achieve your weight loss goal
- Strengthen and clarify your closest relationships
- Train towards a sporting goal
- Develop yourself as a leader
- Get better at collaborating with important people in your life
- Starting a business
- Managing your emotions during a difficult time
- Be your support on a learning journey
Your personal "project manager"
In addition to creating reflection through questioning techniques, coaching sessions often have the implicit effect of being a kind of facilitator for your personal project. This can help you stay focused when you know that you're going to see your coach on Tuesday and that she'll ask you about your progress. In this way, the relationship with your coach can itself be a structure that helps you succeed.
Specialist knowledge
Coaching can also help you gain access to new skills or expertise that you don't have access to on your own or in your close network. This type of knowledge is typically more important if you have a very specific goal in a complicated domain. Do you want to create the next billion dollar company? Then it might be a good idea to seek advice from someone who has experience in starting businesses.
Who can become a coach?
"Coach" is not a protected title. This means that anyone can create a website and call themselves a coach. However, most coaches have some form of training or certification that has contributed to their skills and techniques as a coach. There are coaching training and certification programs and certifications of varying lengths, from a few weeks to years-long programs with hours of supervision. However, neither a short nor a long training course is a guarantee that a coach can create results for you. However, it can help to say with what certainty they have proven to possess a toolbox in both the theoretical and practical field.
But remember that anyone can create a Facebook page, add their private mobile number and receive payment on Mobilepay. It's a good idea to pay attention to your gut feeling and try to compare yourself and your problem with those that the coach typically helps.
Criticism of the coaching industry
This lack of scrutiny or certification has helped give coaching a slightly tarnished reputation. One point is that the coach can typically get into some very vulnerable conversations with their clients, and here the coach's ethical foundation and values become very central to the direction in which they drive conversations and reflections.
One criticism is that as a relatively inexperienced coach, you shouldn't be fumbling around with the psyche of the vulnerable people in their hands.
The pointis: Find someone you trust to hold your hand.
How do I find the right coach?
Finding the right coach isn't always easy, but there are three things that can guide you in your search:
Get a recommendation from a friend
If you have a good friend, family member or colleague who has been happy with their coach, you can start your search there. Someone who knows you might be able to assess whether you'd be able to work well with a coach they know. However, there are no guarantees that this will lead you to the right coach.
Find a coach with the right specialization
If your goal is in a specific domain; career, health, relationships, try searching Google for these words in combination with the word coach. You'll most likely get a number of suggestions for a coach who has worked with clients in the same domain as the one you're interested in. This can help give you some direction in your search.
Book a session to test your chemistry
Now that you've found a potential coach, before you sign up for a 14-week coaching program, it's a good idea to book a single trial session to find out if you trust your new coach. These two things are particularly relevant to clarify:
1) Do you trust that your coach will do their best to help you?
2) Do you trust them to challenge and guide you sufficiently.
Look at recommendations
Maybe your new coach has a website, a Facebook page or something else where you can find recommendations from previous coachees and clients. It's even more trustworthy if you can find recommendations on a third-party site like Trustpilot, Google or maybe coach.dk. Sometimes you can also find recommendations on various online forums.
What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
We could write a whole novel here, but we'll try to simplify it a bit. There are a number of differences between coaching and therapy. Typically, therapy (depending on the type of therapy) deals with your past, whereas coaching is more about looking forward and focusing on actions in the future.
Therapy in a nutshell
Therapy is typically based on your history of forming relationships, your attachment, your existential considerations and to create new interpretations, understandings and connections that can help shape your future. You may find peace with your existential anxiety, find the courage to enter into long-term relationships or learn to set your own boundaries and stand by them.
Read about mental health in the workplace here.
Coaching in relation to therapy
Coaching is typically about looking forward and looking at how you can change your situation for the better in the future. What angles, perspectives, motivations can be brought into play that can help guide your choices and decisions in the future. Coaching can help you plan and commit to doing things in a new way.
Whether therapy or coaching is right for you is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, we recommend that you call some potential coaches and therapists to see what their approach would be to help you move forward in life.
What is the connection between feedback and coaching?
A typical understanding of feedback is that it's about giving advice to another person on how they can do things better next time. Feedback can also be about sharing your reaction to another person's behavior.
As mentioned, coaching is about inviting the client to see things from new perspectives through questions, positioning and all the other methods mentioned earlier in this article.
What feedback and coaching have in common is that they both aim to create learning in the recipient. This applies to both coaching questions and feedback advice.
To bring the two things together, we usually say that dialog is the most important thing. Creating a reflective conversation between you and your colleague, friend or employee. Sometimes a learning situation calls for a coaching approach, other times the best you can offer is concrete advice.
How do we use coaching in Feedwork?
At Feedwork, we are certified teachers of the Academy's management module "Coaching in organization", which gives 10 ECTS points on the Academy's management programme. However, coaching plays a larger role in our other education and training programs.
Coaching to support learning journeys
Here at Feedwork, we use coaching as a tool when we create education and training programs for managers and employees. We often use coaching to support participants individually in their learning process. In this way, the individual manager can gain sparring and new solutions from the coaching sessions, which she can then use in her own management. The training courses often focus on leadership, feedback or learning. In this way, the course forms the framework for the coaching sessions. We find that the combination of attending some group sessions and then having the opportunity to talk to a coach about individual challenges and motivations is a really effective way to create learning and engagement in the training programs.
We would recommend the same if you are participating in a training program. Consider what options you have for a coach or sparring partner. This could be a good external coach, a skilled coach from your HR department or similar.
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