Before I start, I want you to know that this whole post came to fruition, actually when trying to find a different word to convey the same meaning in a way that I would feel comfortable and the audience would understand without falling out of the coaching definition and without having to find a lighthouse to bring it back to sense, so bear with me.
1. What is a coach?
Unless you have done your research on the topic, had a coach as your sounding board, or read one of the thousand books available in the market about coaching, you probably will be thinking of a sports coach, someone yelling, ok, shouting, at the field, organizing moves, planning the game ahead, adjusting as it comes, doing pep talks, and all the good stuff they do to win over the adversary team while making their team stronger and towards the top. Well, yes, that is one type of coaching; however, this term conveys much more than that, with a whole different substance and methodology applied to businesses, career and personal development, life, and many other areas that keep adding to the list day by day.
2. In the search to convey meaning
I typed the word coaching in the Merriam-Webster dictionary plus thesaurus and found out that coaching synonyms were divided into two main categories: “teaching” and “guiding,” and at first glance, over 50 words with different connotations appeared on the list. Wow! Wow! Stop for a second; this is out of the several coaching definitions right away, isn’t it? How can they be synonyms? Is the dictionary implying that coaching contains teaching? guiding? perhaps mentoring?
If you are into coaching, you know that we place strong emphasis on not providing “advice” during a coaching session. This is to prevent us from interfering with the coachee’s thinking process and allowing them to lead the conversation and come forward with their own path. But have you ever had the feeling that this part of the coaching methodology strikes a bold line over the “teaching” and “guiding” holistic approach behind it, leaving clients (coachees) wondering what coaching really is? I can almost hear them thinking during and after the initial explanation, something like, “I do the talk, come forward with my thoughts, manage the agenda, and get no advice, no teaching, no guidance, no consultation, etc. except to answer the questions.”.
3. What is true about this perception?
It really depends; the responsibility here is double-sided, coach to coachee and coachee to the coaching session and overall process. The coach becomes a catalyst for the person’s thoughts, a sounding board, and a master of his craft in carefully assembling the right question at the right time without interfering with the coachee’s agenda, hence helping to remove blockages, provide perspectives, and unlock the coachee’s higher and sometimes unknowing levels of performance. Pretty cool, ah? among other cool stuff that happens in a coaching session.
Having said that, I know it can still sound like a simple talk or chat; at least at first thought, it resembles a conversation between two people, but it just doesn’t happen by itself or in an elevator or coffee talk. This one-to-one coaching conversation is really special; it is a real connection, like a wireless connection, and if you have experienced it, you might agree with me that no single synonym will fit the whole coaching effort that together coach and coachee walk through to bring professionals to the top and people to fulfilled lives.
4. Drawing a line
Sometimes the line can be clear and others can become very thin. During my search for the closest synonym, one thing was clear: I did not find any similarities or synonyms that could associate coaching with therapy, counseling, or other types of treatment, which I think notably draws a line on where in time and space coaching happens, and this might be part of that powerful and provoking thinking process that happens during the session. It is a laser focus on the actual present, not the past.
If you are still wondering about the synonyms, rest assured that I found many others, such as nurture, improvement, drilling (this one I associated with a laser focus on uncovering the real challenge), enlightenment, cultivation, etc., but to my opinion, none of them are capable of providing a fulfilling level of understanding of the word coaching by itself, and this is fine; I think it probes the reason behind how and why unique words are created, conveying several actions or concepts to simplify them into one single word.
5. Into the coaching session.
Obviously, I am not trying to convey a definition here; you can find several well-crafted definitions for coaching, such as the one provided by the International Coaching Federation, (If you would like to read about it, click here.) I am just writing about how a coaching session can take so many different paths and branch out on the search for a creative solution, sometimes starting in a totally different place but at coachee’s discretion to shift onto a different lane. Does it look like a one-to-one conversation? Maybe from the outside it does; this is a very special and laser-focused one-on-one conversation that includes goal setting, active inquiry, self-reflection, aha! moments, realization, commitment, and growth, so… maybe sometimes definitely not always; at least to my experience, informal conversations do not follow that path; they are not goal-oriented (that would be strange, don’t you think?) and results are not always growth. As a matter of fact, there is one other big difference that I have noticed: common conversations focus on the topic or matter, not on the person.
I think coaching relationships are simply unique, and once you get used to your coach most of the time as a coachee you will want to keep working with him or her. You are not bound to, but once trust is built, the flow starts to happen. It is like a sounding board; you know that if you change the wood of a sounding board, then it might sound differently, and you like the actual tone. It is like there are so many branches that you need to sort through to get up there where you want to be, and that particular coach methodology, style, etc. can get you there to the top of that tree where there is light and you can see from above what is surrounding you or ahead of you.
6. Space for coaching
Is the “coaching methodology” simply another way of teaching or guiding? Should we think of coaching as a more elevated way of helping others? I will leave that answer for you to judge. The truth to the matter is that you must be intentional, want to be there, pursue a goal, be open to exploring, kind of learn from yourself, push the boundaries of your thinking, produce something, accept active inquiry, and navigate through this “space for thinking.”.
7. Final thoughts
I admit, I didn’t find that specific word I was looking for. I guess coaching is the word to define that teaching-guiding experience based on client knowledge that fell short somewhere in the road when trying to be explained as something that wasn’t exactly teaching or guiding because there was no need for the coach to be knowledgeable of the subject matter. I realize that during a coaching session, many synonyms can show up as part of the process. It might feel like this, but at the end, the coach is neither teaching nor advising. It is the coachee who is learning through provoking questions and self-reflection, coming up with creative solutions, exploring, and becoming a better leader and person.
If I had to convey the meaning in just a short single sentence, maybe three to five words, that would probably be “a forward-thinking relationship to maximize potential” or something around these words. Have you tried a coaching session already? What is your shortest definition of it?
