My definition of coaching

I just wanted to update my progresses on the credentialling process to ICF, but then I ended up giving my personal definition of coaching, I hope you find it interesting.

As you may already noticed, my LinkedIn articles are about my Professional Coaching learning path while posts are more related to the day-to-day ophthalmology related adventure. Articles are in english, Posts are in italian (but LinkedIn offers you the translation button which makes them easy to read in your own language).

In the last months I kept on both coaching and being coached as there is no better way to know how to coach than being coached yourself. I definitively dedicated dozens of hours to coaching, which more clients in more languages.

Coaching is not my daily job and maybe it will be one day, however I had to put myself down to look for clients and it was not easy. Italy it's not a country that knows what professional coaching is; many used this word in different contexts: cooking coach, yoga coach and I don't feel that the word "coaching" as a positive grasp between individuals.

The coaching profession is not recognized in Italy and it's very different from the British concept where coaching is very close to counselling which is very close to professional psychology. Some people in Italy also fight against coaches because there feel there are some overlapping spaces. Honestly I don't see them: all counselors can do coaching, coaches cannot do counseling... so I don't really see the conflicts.

After finding some clients, one of the hardest things to find was the right definition of coaching that works for me. The International Coaching Federation has its own definition of coaching, the Italian and the european their own... and I stick to those, but when you are having a spritz with friends and they ask you what is coaching, then you cannot spit out those strange definitions about creating a partnership...

Instead of providing the definition, I tend to provide an example: do you remember when at school you used to repeat the lesson with a friend ? Here is what coaching is.

Having someone that is not judging you, on your side, ready to help and listen, that may may not know the lesson better than you but that will be there to ask which lesson you want to repeat and will ear every word you have to say.

Compared to a friend, a coach is trained to help the client on the process and to make the time spent valuable.