FAQ
What is Coaching?
Coaching is a type of dialogue in which a coach helps a coachee have useful insights.
Coachees reach a new level of clarity. They see exactly what they should do and why. But they don’t reach this clarity through any advice the coach gives them, for coaches don’t give advice. Rather, they lead the coachee to see things more clearly for themself.
There is nothing mysterious or esoteric about coaching. Coaching works through creating the conditions for useful insight.
This works best through a structured process:
- The coach uses tools such as attentive listening and open questions to sustain the coachee’s attention on areas of their life where fresh insights might be useful.
- When the coach’s questions can’t be answered from within the orbit of habitual thoughts, the coachee is forced to think in bold new ways. They make new connections. They have fresh insight.
- The coach uses tools such as reflection to highlight useful insights, then guides the coachee to think everything through in terms of the best course of action to follow.
- At the end of every session, the coach helps the coachee commit to the best course of action imaginable.
Teachers take on the role of expert. As they teach, they pass on their skills and knowledge to the learner.
Coaches, in contrast, never play the role of the expert. They assume that the coachee is already an expert in the most important areas of their life. The coach’s role is to guide an enquiry in which the coachee has useful insights — insights that will make the coachee more expert still.
Therapy and counselling are both rooted in a medical model in which symptoms are to be overcome by curing some kind of dysfunction. They are aimed at people who are suffering because of problems in their past.
Coaching, however, works with healthy people. It helps them discover and follow the best courses of action available.
So coaching tends to be more forward looking than therapy or counselling. It focuses on the possibilities ahead and what a coachee must do to realise the best possibilities. Every session finishes with action commitments.
The best therapists and counsellors use some coaching tools and strategies with their clients.
Mentors are people who work in the same field as the mentee, but have much more experience. They guide the mentee’s progress and help them make sound decisions.
The best mentors adopt a coaching approach and, rather than giving advice, help mentees have insights of their own. So we advise mentors to take our level one and level two courses.
Consultants work for businesses. They analyse the business as a whole and make recommendations. Whereas a coach would focus on helping people in the business build up their own understanding, a consultant’s contribution comes through the quality of the recommendations that they make.
Coachwise Coach Training
If you work in a management position, or in any other role where you can help others do things well (such as a teacher, social worker, or doctor)Â yes.
Our level one and level two courses would help you adopt a coaching mindset and get the best out of others.
If you have the necessary personal qualities, you would become able to start coaching professionally after completing our level three courses.
We believe that our courses provide the best possible grounding in the skills and understanding a coach needs for their coaching to be effective.
There are two big differences between Coachwise coach training and that of other providers:
Most courses still use variations of coaching models from the 1990s, when coaching was first born. We don’t believe that these models are effective in capturing how coaching works or what a coach must do to be effective.
Our courses, however, are based on a mechanism-level understanding of how effective coaching works. It is our deep understanding that enables us to lead the way to next-generation coaching practice — a shift from Coaching 1.0 to Coaching 2.0.
Thanks to our deep understanding of coaching, we are able to focus on the precise skills a person must learn for them to become an effective coach. We have designed learning games to make it easy to master those skills.
We have also built the conceptual tools a coach needs for it to be easy for them to harness their skills to provide impactful sessions. The coach needs to be able to give the coachee their full attention while still guiding them on a well-structured and productive enquiry.
For each level of coaching there are theory and practical courses. There is a certificate for each course.
Once you have passed both theory and practical assessments at a given level of coaching, you become a certified coach at that level.Â
For the practical assessments, you must provide evidence of pieces of coaching that you have given along with explanations of why you did what you did during the coaching.
You would almost certainly enjoy the training.
You would have the satisfaction of developing new abilities and learning to understanding a new type of interpersonal interaction.
On the practical courses, you would develop your skills through playing learning games in a three-person learning team. There is often a lot of laughter during these games.
You might also enjoy becoming part of the Coachwise community. The learning teams tend to become close-knit, mutually supportive groups. And you can question and share with the wider community as much as you like.
Investing in Coach Training
Level one training doesn’t take much time. Both the theory and practical courses can be completed in half a day.
Level two training usually takes approximately 10 hours training time. So it can be completed over the course of a weekend.
Level three training takes longer as there are 16 skill-building games to play. When you from your learning team for the practical course, make sure you team up with people who want to progress through the course at the same rate as you do. If you are able to meet regularly (in-person or online), you will normally able to get through one game per sitting, which means meeting once or twice a week for several months.
Level four training takes up to a year to complete.
Getting Started​
You should start with the level one training.
There may be a workshop you can attend.
Or you could take our level one theory course, followed by the level one practical course. Both are free.
The Coachwise team is always ready to answer any questions you have, or help you with anything you are finding particularly difficult.
There are also discussion forums every step of the way, so you will be able to get help and support from your peers.
