Coaching as a profession dates back to the 1980s, when Thomas Leonard, a financial planner figured out that his clients needed more than just financial advice. They were looking to live better, manage things in life better, and many more. That prompted Thomas to codify, popularise, and globalize the discipline of coaching.
Now shifting our focus to the question that needs to be answered. Why do we really need a coach? Well, when I began my career in coaching I knew coaching had a positive impact on the personal lives of people but to my own surprise, it is much more powerful than I had imagined. Coaching leaves a tremendous and lasting impression on personal life, businesses, and organizations. Here is how a coach can help you.
1. Improve your goal setting ability
With different tools and techniques, a coach can help you set a well-defined goal. Setting a goal is not easy, and does require a focussed and systematic approach. Coach is trained to help you improve goal-setting ability.
2. Make you more accountable
Once you have set your goals, execution is the next step. Coach makes you take ownership of your actions and continuously track your progress. Without accountability, even the best of plans fail. A coach helps you go past procrastination, limiting beliefs, personal hurdles to achieve your goal. The most important thing to note is, Coach is just a catalyst, it is you who is accountable for the outcome.
3. Help you identify your blind spots
The foundation of coaching is asking powerful questions, which help figure out the things that you never knew about. Coaches don't have any vested interest in the outcome, are trained to be unbiased, and thus can be brutally honest with you.
4. Make you more emotionally intelligent
Many coaches are practitioners of emotional intelligence and hence will help you know, understand, and manage your emotions. I have personally experienced it and hence believe in it absolutely.
5. Grow your leadership skills
As mentioned earlier the foundation of coaching is asking powerful questions. By having a coach, you can pick this art and also learn the listening skills that coaches heavily depend on. The tools and techniques that are used by coaches can be used by you to help other people.
6. Manage your relationships better
Being a good listener, identifying your blind spots, asking powerful questions while communicating helps you create great rapport with others. Coach himself uses the same technique to get rapport with you, and hence you can use the same with others.
7. Make your life lively and happy
Above all, having a constant companion in the form of a coach will help you lead an emotionally balanced, productive, successful life. The coach will help you look inwards rather outwards. She/he helps you find your true passion and interest, in short, will help you to find yourself.