1. What exactly does a Coach do?
Coaching is a profession that helps you produce extraordinary results in your life, career, business, or organization. Though the process of coaching you will deepen your learning, improve your performance, and enhance the quality of your life. Specifically, a coach works with you to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what you want to achieve
• Encourage your own self-discovery
• Generate your own solutions and strategies

2. How is coaching different from consulting, therapy, sports coaching, or a best friend?
Consulting - Coaching is a form of consulting. But the coach stays with the client to help implement the new skills, changes and goals to make sure they really happen.

Therapy - Coaching is not therapy. We don't dwell on "issues" or get into the past or deal much with understanding human behavior. We leave that up to the client to know and figure out while we help them move forward and set personal and professional goals that will give them the life they really want.

Sports - Coaching includes several principles from sports coaching, like teamwork, going for the goal, being your best. But unlike sports coaching, most professional coaching is not competition or win/lose based. We strengthen the client's skills vs. help them beat the other team. It's win/win.

Best friend - A best friend is wonderful to have. But is your best friend a professional who you will trust to advise you on the most important aspects of your life and/or business? Have a best friend and a coach.

3. What happens when you hire a coach?
Many things, but the most important are:

• You take yourself more seriously
• You take more effective and focused actions immediately
• You stop putting up with what is dragging you down
• You create momentum so it's easier to get results
• You set better goals that you might not have without the coach

4. Who should hire a coach?
Hire a coach if you want better results. Organizations and individuals; executives and parents; spouses and managers-all have hired coaches. If you or your organization is ready to stretch, grow, and discover, you're probably ready to work with a coach.

5. Do coaches work with individuals or organizations?
Either, or both, actually. And, with the line between personal and business life blurring, coaches are the only professionals trained to work with all aspects of you.

6. Are there different kinds of coaches?
Yes. While some coaches are generalists, most work in particular niches, including business, children, executives, organizations, parents, or relationships. There is a coach to meet your particular interests.

7. Why is coaching becoming so popular?
Because better results matter. We've long understood the need for an athletic coach, a music teacher, or a personal trainer. Coaching enables you or your organization to have those same benefits to reach new levels of success. And who doesn't want more success?

8. Why does coaching work?
Coaching works for several reasons:

• Synergy between the coach and client creates momentum
• Better goals are set -- ones that naturally pull the client toward the goal rather than goals that require the client to push themselves to the goal
• The client develops new skills, and these skills translate into more success.

9. How do coaches work with clients?
Every coach has their own unique style and method of working with clients. There are however, some commonly used methods. Coaching often consists of weekly 1-to-1 telephone or face-to-face conversations, in 30, 45 or 60 minute intervals at pre-scheduled times with their coach. In addition, many coaches provide between session support and accountability, via e-mail or short, just-in-time telephone coaching calls.

10. Do coaches have credentials?
Yes! Coaching is a new profession, but the best coaches recognize the need to be credentialed. Look for a coach that is a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF). ICF has established Standards of Ethical Conduct for all coaches to ensure consistent professionalism. There are also specific training programs for coaches that are recognized by ICF. Additionally, many coaches are working toward or hold one of ICF's credentials. These include: Associate Certified Coach (ACC); Professional Certified Coach (PCC); or Master Certified Coach (MCC).

11. How can the success of the coaching process be measured?
Measurement may be thought of in two distinct ways. First, there are the external indicators of performance: measures which can be seen and measured in the individual’s or team’s environment. Second, there are internal indicators of success: measures which are inherent within the individual or team members being coached and can be measured by the individual or team being coached with the support of the coach. Ideally, both external and internal metrics are incorporated.

Examples of external measures include achievement of coaching goals established at the outset of the coaching relationship, increased income/revenue, obtaining a promotion, performance feedback which is obtained from a sample of the individual’s
constituents (e.g., direct reports, colleagues, customers, boss, the manager him/herself), personal and/or business performance data (e.g., productivity, efficiency measures). The external measures selected should ideally be things the individual is already measuring and are things the individual has some ability to directly influence.

Examples of internal measures include self-scoring/self-validating assessments that can be administered initially and at regular intervals in the coaching process, changes in the individual’s self-awareness and awareness of others, shifts in thinking which inform more effective actions, and shifts in one’s emotional state which inspire confidence.

12. Within the partnership, what does the coach do? The individual?
The role of the coach is to provide objective assessment and observations that foster the individual’s or team members’ enhanced self-awareness and awareness of others, practice astute listening in order to garner a full understanding of the individual’s or team’s circumstances, be a sounding board in support of possibility thinking and thoughtful planning and decision making, champion opportunities and potential, encourage stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations, foster the shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge blind spots in order to illuminate new possibilities, and support the creation of alternative scenarios. Finally, the coach maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.

The role of the individual or team is to create the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals, utilize assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others, envision personal and/or organizational success, assume full responsibility for personal decisions and actions, utilize the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives, take courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations, engage big picture thinking and problem solving skills, and utilize the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach to engage effective forward actions.

13. What does coaching ask of an individual?
To be successful, coaching asks certain things of the individual, all of which begin with intention…

Focus - on one’s self, the tough questions, the hard truths--and one’s success

Observation - the behaviors and communications of others

Listening - to one’s intuition, assumptions, judgments, and to the way one sounds when one speaks

Self discipline - to challenge existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and to develop new ones which serve one’s goals in a superior way

Style - leveraging personal strengths and overcoming limitations in order to develop a winning style

Decisive actions - however uncomfortable, and in spite of personal insecurities, in order to reach for the extraordinary

Compassion - for one’s self as he or she experiments with new behaviors, experiences setbacks—and for others as they do the same

Humor - committing to not take one’s self so seriously, using humor to lighten and brighten any situation

Personal control - maintaining composure in the face of disappointment and unmet expectations, avoiding emotional reactivity

Courage - to reach for more than before, to shift out of being fear based in to being in abundance as a core strategy for success, to engage in continual self examination, to overcome internal and external obstacles

14. How long does a coach work with an individual?
The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual's or team’s needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, 3 to 6 months of working with a coach may work. For other types of coaching, people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or teams like to work, the frequency of coaching meetings, and financial resources available to support coaching.