What Coaching Actually Is
(and What It Isn’t)
A few years ago, I knew very little about coaching. What I instantly liked about it was its none-prescriptive, none-directive nature. Coaching doesn’t offer answers, diagnoses, formulas, or ready-to-use miracles in a box. It doesn’t see people as ‘broken’, or ‘defective’, nor it suggests we need fixing or external guidance. On the contrary, coaching begins with the belief that every person is whole, resourceful, and capable of achieving what they truly desire. The coach-client relationship avoids creating dependency or relying on the coach’s authority.
Since coaching invites us to explore our inner world, unlock our potential, and bring about meaningful, positive changes in our life, it sits within the broader family of helping professions – each with unique blends of approaches, focus, and professional standards.
So, what is coaching at its core, and how can we tell it apart?
What is the goal?! That journey from point A (our present situation) to point B (our desired future state or outcome) is one of the key elements that sets coaching apart from other helping professions.
The 5D Model
It was around the middle of my studies when a brilliant coach and mentor at The Coaching Academy shared a simple way to distinguish coaching from other similar professions. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the creator of this model – otherwise, I would be delighted to acknowledge their contribution. I believe the 5D Model is one of the most useful tools for understanding the distinctions between various helping professions.
For example, mentoring – often considered coaching’s closest relative – focuses on Direction by providing guidance and sharing personal experience and expertise in a specific field where the mentor is considered an advanced practitioner or master. On the other hand, when addressing complex business or organizational issues, a consultant uses their knowledge and expertise to Diagnose the situation and propose solutions.
Helping people bounce back from stressful situations and challenging times by providing emotional support is the realm of counsellors. Their focus is on Distress. When someone needs help healing emotional wounds or working through past traumas, therapists address the Damage done.
Distinctly, coaching focuses on the present and future, working with what people Desire.
Coaching supports people in personal and professional growth, motivating and empowering them to achieve their goals. While accurate, this definition only scratches the surface, barely accounting for the diversity of coaching approaches or the profession’s technicolour, holistic nature.
Coaching is about working with personal potential.
It’s a journey of recognizing the gifts, talents, experiences, and life lessons that can be reintegrated into one’s personal story as resources, wisdom, and self-awareness. Coaching helps clients explore their creativity, motivation, and capacity for positive change.
Coaching is about working with the values that drive us.
It supports clients explore their values, recognizing them as universal, social, cultural, familial, group, team, organizational, professional, or individual signposts that guide us along the path of life, influencing our choice of direction and goals. These values play a vital role in everything we do, impacting our decisions, often without us even realizing it.
Coaching is about working with character, predispositions, and preferences.
It’s about becoming aware of who we are as individuals, how we connect with others, the emotions that guide us, and the thought patterns that shape our reality. It’s a holistic exploration, but by no means limited to this alone.
Coaching is about personal responsibility.
It creates a space to reflect on what serves us, what limits us, and what no longer has a place in the life we desire. This process often uncovers beliefs or behaviours imposed from the outside or lingering from inertia – barriers that need examining to move forward.
Coaching is inner work with the mind and heart.
It engages all our senses, blending pragmatic knowledge with the wisdom of the heart. Intuition. Instincts. The butterflies in the stomach. The gut feeling. The thoughts that keep us awake at night. The spark that motivates us to rise and move forward each day. Impulses, drivers, feelings, emotions. Each has its role, yet none alone reveals the whole picture.
Coaching is an equal partnership.
Whether it’s about a client changing jobs, altering a career path, ending a relationship, or navigating a life labyrinth, a coach’s role is to remain neutral, listening with intention – without judgment, interpretation, or advice. Coaching doesn’t claim to “know” the client, their problems, or the solutions. Instead, it employs deep listening, reflects insights back to the client, structures the process, and asks thought-provoking questions that inspire reflection, clarity, decision-making, and purposeful action.
Coaching is about filling the gap between us and our goal.
Goals are central to coaching, guiding the process toward meaningful, desired outcomes. Without a goal, there’s little space for coaching to thrive. Importantly, coaching doesn’t define goals – it works with the ones the client brings to the table. Coaching doesn’t prescribe, diagnose, or offer formulas. It doesn’t provide ready-made answers, nor does it work where there’s an expectation of rescue from the outside.
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Finally, if I were to rate my personal Top 3 benefits of coaching, based on what I see in my practice, they would be: the positive, inspiring, and thought-provoking process that shines a light to the ‘brakes’ we often put on ourselves; its empowering focus on the craftsmanship of goals; and the profound learning journey it unlocks – from developing the ability to truly talk and listen to ourselves, to gaining the clarity to see through pain and discomfort and decide if, and how, to transform it.
Contact me today to explore how coaching can support you in navigating personal and professional transitions or help you create meaningful change within your organization.
