What is coaching? I'm talking about coaching in life and work, not in the world of athletics, although they have much in common. Some people use the word coaching interchangeably with mentoring - more about that later.

If you like definitions, here's one. According to Myles Downey (1999) coaching is “The art of facilitating the performance, learning, and development of another.”

Although people can coach teams (which gets close to facilitation or training), coaching is usually time spent in conversation with someone one-to-one to enhance their skill, knowledge or performance. Coaching is about a relationship of trust in which conversations are confidential. It is primarily about asking the right questions, rather than giving advice, which is to say it is non-directive and the coach needs to have skills in building rapport, listening deeply, asking good questions, and helping the client to choose actions to put this into practice. I often use a model such as GROW (What is the Goal, the Reality now, the Options, and What will you do) and it is my experience that if the bulk of the time is spent in becoming clear about the goal that is a good investment because the solution ofen becomes clear quickly.

Although a single coaching session can be transformative, usually coaches and their clients meet for an hour or two every few weeks or months as the individual sessions build towards a goal for the series. Coaching is about helping people to develop or resolve issues and take appropriate action. Although self-understanding will develop during coaching (particularly if personality tests are used as a tool) the output of a session is a set of actions to produce future results. The coach will take time to agree with the client (and perhaps his or her employer too) what results are required. Coaching is not the same as those forms of counselling which expect present problems to stem from difficult events in the past.

So, what is mentoring? The word mentor comes from the Greek word meaning a wise, trusted and experienced counsellor. Using the business world as an example, a mentor would be a person who has had experience of doing the work you want to do, so he or she can teach you how to do it, which should include good Socratic teaching that is listening and questioning! By contrast the coach has developed skills in coaching, which means that the coach can help you to develop at work without his experience of your work being a ceiling. To use an example from sport: a coach for a 100 metre sprinter may not have won many races but knows how to help his client excel. This is a clear distinction, but there is also overlap. Furthermore some people use the words coach and mentor the other way around - so don't rely on the words, find out what people do. If you are looking for a coach, mentor, or business adviser listen to my short video here.

Coaching is great for helping people to see the wood for the trees, get on with things they know they need to do but are "blocked" about doing so or don't know how to. It is also great for embedding conventional training: that is applying what you have learned on a course. So often people go on a course, put the notes on a shelf, and do little.

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