A brief summary of the Coaching vs Counseling portion of this course is outlined below. You may wish to save it for your reference.

Coaching

  • Client is emotionally and psychologically healthy
  • Focuses on the present and future
  • Driven by goals and taking action
  • Works toward a higher level of functioning
  • Results-based and focuses on exploring solutions
  • Asks, “Where would you like to be and how can you get there?”
  • Acts on information
  • Done over the phone, internet or in person
  • Coach and client collaborate on solutions
  • Contact between sessions expected (accountability and wins)
  • Deals with a healthy client desiring a better situation
  • Deals mostly with a person’s present and seeks to help them design a more desirable future
  • Helps clients learn new skills and tools to build a more satisfying successful future
  • Co-creative equal partnership (Coach helps the client discover own answers)
  • Assumes emotions are natural and normalizes them
  • The Coach stands with the client and helps him or her identify the challenges, then partners to turn challenges into victories, holding client accountable to reach desired goals.
  • Growth and progress are rapid and usually enjoyable.

Counseling (Therapy)

  • Client is emotionally unwell and in needs healing
  • Focuses on dealing with the past
  • Driven by unresolved issues and feelings
  • Works to achieve understanding and emotional healing
  • Explores the root of problems and offers explanation
  • Asks, “How did that make you feel?”
  • Absorbs information
  • Done in an office setting
  • Therapist is the ‘expert’
  • Contact between sessions for crisis and difficulties only
  • Deals with identifiable dysfunctions in a person
  • Deals mostly with a person’s past and trauma, and seeks
  • healing
  • Helps patients resolve old pain
  • Doctor-patient relationship (The therapist has the answers)
  • Assumes emotions are a symptom of something wrong
  • The Therapist diagnoses, then provides professional expertise and guidelines to provide a path to healing.
  • Progress is often slow and painful.