Today I’d like to dispel three myths about the coaching industry that may be holding you back from experiencing change more easily. I hear these myths from friends or people I’ve just met.
1. Myth: Anyone can be a coach, so you can’t trust coaches.
In a way, I agree. Anyone can call themselves a coach. The coaching industry today is unregulated. But two organizations are working to change that, to bring clarity and organize to the profession. They are: the International Coach Federation (ICF, at CoachFederation.org) and Center for Credentialing and Education (sorry, I stated it wrong in the video).
For the past 25 years, both bodies have been putting together such necessities as a code of ethics and training requirements. They are building a set of credentials to help both organizations and individuals select the right coach for them.
In 2011, I went back to school for a year to learn about coaching. Coaching is not a talent you are born with; you must learn the skills. It’s much more than asking empowering questions. A coach needs to understand how to avoid getting involved in the process of empowering clients for their own benefit.
For this reason, it’s crucial for coaches to get appropriate training. And it’s important that people who want to hire coaches to check the registry of the International Coach Federation, where they will find credentialed coaches that have actually had good training.
Does that mean that all coaches on this list are good? Not necessarily. But you will at least be guaranteed that they went through a proper training. They have been mentored for at least 10 hours by a mentor coach who has been certified for many years. You can be sure that they have the sorts of tools and training as well as feedback or testimonials that you can use to learn about them.
2. Myth: Coaching is basically the same as therapy.
Here I disagree. There is a huge difference between coaching and therapy, especially from the view of a practitioner. Therapists need to be licensed, yet I do not have any licenses. Nor am I even doing therapy. I am not interested in looking to my clients’ past. Of course, on occasion stories from the past arise, but I often refer out to licensed therapists if my client wants one.
Coaching is more about helping people to look forward. It’s not about understanding what happened on the past, even if a past event has an impact in your life or on the present. It’s much more about how you can look forward, take the next step and move forward towards what you want to see happening in your life.
Therapy is needed when people have trauma that holds them back, or when they are running in circles, and they want to break free of those patterns. When my clients raise such an issue, I definitely refer them to a therapist and may even work with that therapist to avoid overlap or to avoid touching on topics that are not beneficial for my client.
3. Myth: Coaches tell you exactly what to do.
No, this is a misunderstanding. Coaches do not know what you must do. You know what you have to do. You just may need to be more empowered to take those steps. Or you may need to identify your core values and learn to make decisions that align with those values.
Coaches help you align with and act as the person that you want to be. Working with the person you were in the past falls into the realm of therapy.
Your coach’s goal is to facilitate changes in your life. It’s not at all the place for a coach to tell you what he or she would do if they were you. It’s not our role to tell you what we think you “should” do. Coaching is much more about helping you to find your own solutions.
Today, I’m Belinda Brown with my own background and personality. What works for me will definitely not work for others, for example for an introvert. Because of my personal background of living in another country and traveling internationally so much, I likely have a very different lens than someone who has been in the US for their entire life.
I hope you will educate yourself about executive coaching. I wanted to touch on these myths so that you better understand what coaches can genuinely do for you, what credentials you want to look for, and where you can find those resources to find a great coach for yourself, your team, your business, or your relationship.