WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COACHING AND COUNSELING?
Coaching allows an individual, couple or family to analyze where they are now, where they’d like to be, and what it would take to get to where they want to be. Within the coaching relationship, it is the coach’s responsibility to listen to that dream and help the client figure out the steps to accomplish that dream. A coach uses different techniques such as discussion, brainstorming, role playing, finding solutions, and social emotional learning (SEL), to guide the client in producing, defining, and working towards their goals.
While coaching takes a person from where they are now to where they want to be, counseling assists a person with their past as well. A licensed counselor uses different counseling techniques to help a person work through things they’ve experienced in the past so they can be better equipped to handle the present.
Both ways of helping people are extremely important and vital when someone is needing that extra support. As a Life Coach, I might ask you how you managed to live through the past but will then help you discern how best to move from where you are to where you want to be. The client “drives the train” during coaching and the coach is just there to help steer a little. Below are some examples of who might seek out a coach and why. While I offer individual coaching, my niche is for couple (married and engaged), family, and child/youth coaching.
INDIVIDUAL COACHING
Individual coaching – one-on-one coaching for an individual. Some examples are coaching for one’s career, anxiety, relationships, communicating with others, education.
COUPLE COACHING
Couple coaching – one-on-one coaching for engaged or married couples. Some examples are premarital coaching, ensuring couples enter a marriage with similar views on financing, conflict-resolution, etc, and can cope when life throws difficulties their way.; communication, getting past the funk, relationships, expectations.
FAMILY COACHING
Family coaching – this can look different depending on the situation. It’s extremely important to offer coaching to the entire family. When tension and distress is present within a family, it is vital to look at the family as one system instead of individual ones. Just as you and I learned traits and habits from parental figures who raised us, so do our children learn from us. Especially when coaching is requested for negative behavior of a child, coaching the whole family will provide more consistency and better results. This is what is called Family Systems – looking at the family as a whole rather than as individuals. Providing coaching for the parental figures, coaching for the child(ren) and coaching for the entire family.
Some examples for family coaching are communication, parenting, blended families, and making poor choices (both parent and children).
CHILDREN AND YOUTH COACHING
Children and youth coaching – this can look different depending on the situation. One-on-one coaching with the child or youth. Some examples are anxiety, making poor choices at school and at home, poor grades and/or disliking school, friendships, bullying. The parental figure will be involved when it’s apparent that this falls into the Family Systems category.
To learn more about Social Emotional Learning (SEL) go to https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/.
To learn more about Family Systems go to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/family-systems-therapy.