What is life coaching?
If you ask people what coaching is, you will get different but similar answers. In business, people often confuse coaching with mentoring or managing. Furthermore, few people understand the difference between coaching on the surface level which is targeted at behavioural change and transformative coaching which goes deep into our belief systems and worldviews. At As You, we firmly believe in the value of transformative coaching. We have seen the significant impact it has made in our clients’ and our lives.
Transactional Coaching
We probably all have experienced coaching on a behavioural level at some point, typically through one-on-ones with our managers at work. This is like a transaction - a coachee comes with a problem, the coach helps the coachee problem-solve, the coachee takes an action and hopes the problem is resolved. For example, a coachee might come along and say: “I want tips on how to be more motivated.” The coach might then ask, “So, what actions have you tried so far and what else can you do to be more motivated?”. What we might not have realised through this exchange is that the problem at hand might be “solved” but the underlying root cause might not have been addressed, so a similar issue is likely to surface in the future.
Transformative Coaching
Transformative coaching is about the growth of the person. Like an iceberg, what we see of any person is the tip, their behaviours and results. What remains underneath is everything that drives their behaviours - their experiences, perceptions, beliefs, values and identity. So in the case of a coachee wanting tips on motivation, a coach might respond with, “I hear that you want to be more motivated, what makes ‘being motivated’ so important to you?” and “When you say ‘being motivated’, what does that mean?”. Coachees generally have to pause and reflect to answer these questions. They embark on a journey of bringing their unconscious to the conscious. With their new gained knowledge, coachees can then design actions that will bring about positive lasting change.
At As You, we believe in the impact this style of coaching has based on personal experience and through helping others. There are 3 key steps to our Transformative Coaching process:
1) Explore the topic presented by the client
2) Discover what are the client’s barriers to change, typically their internal beliefs and values
3) Design actions and accountability for the client’s journey of change
The benefits of Transformative Coaching over Transactional Coaching
Transformative coaching focuses on the coachee being the reflector, a third person viewing themselves and the situation objectively whereas transactional coaching focuses on the coachee being the actor to problem-solve. The latter naturally leads to people needing to get better at problem-solving, which generally does not yield any new results as people are already quite good at problem-solving. With transformative coaching, the coachee instead gains perspective and clarity of what is the real issue, learns about their gaps and takes aligned actions. This is what brings drastic and sustainable results.
Sounds convincing, keen to give it a go?
Transformative coaching requires the coach and coachee to form a trusting partnership. The coachee needs to be vulnerable enough to open up and reflect on life deeply and we as coaches need to believe the coachee has all the answers. This equal partnership means walking alongside each other, no one is ahead or above another.
Go on, contact us for a chat today! At As You, we believe that the more aligned we are to our true selves, the more we can discover our potential and the better the world will be.