From "The Sky's The Limit : A Road Map from Therapy to Coaching" - The Family Therapy Networker, January/February 2001

"…So what exactly is coaching? How does it differ from psychotherapy? In my 18 years as a therapist, coach and, most recently, trainer of clinicians who want to become coaches, I have found it challenging to rigidly separate these two disciplines. Both use numerous skills in common, such as active listening, reframing and empathy, which is precisely why I believe therapists are so well-suited to coaching.

To me, the key difference between coaching and therapy has more to do with mindset than method. While both coaching and therapy can help people make major life changes, coaching liberates therapy from its medical, pathology-based underpinnings and focuses wholly on human strengths, positive passions and the nurturance of untapped possibilities. ..The goal of a coaching …is to help people tap into, and actualize, their deepest vision of who they are. Rather than serving as a healer, a coach acts as a facilitator for a client's full flowering as a person - a kind of gardener of the spirit.

Because coaching is so squarely aimed at self-empowerment, some culture watchers predict that coaching is poised to become a pivotal human services profession of the 21st century. According to William Rowley, M.D., of the Institute of Alternative Futures in Alexandria, Virginia, today's consumers are increasingly concerned with maximizing health in the most encompassing sense - yet they often falter in the follow through. "We've committed ourselves to staying well in our emotional, physical, spiritual, family and community lives, but the choices and resources out there are proliferating at a bewildering, even overwhelming rate," says Rowley. "To help guide us toward our new vision of health, our first line of defense may become the 'life coach'."

Moreover, the coach of the future is likely to appeal to people at all stages of life development, Rowley predicts…Coaching is already evolving in the direction of broadly defined health enhancement. Ten years ago, coaching was largely still a business perk for CEOs who wanted to boost their profit margins; today, perfectly ordinary people are seeking out coaches to help them pump up their creativity, lose weight, increase their emotional intelligence, learn to meditate, attract a life partner. .."

Back to Top