What Is The Essence Of Coaching?

NLP Fusion founder Orlando Zucchetto explores this developing profession.

Believing In Better

My first ‘official’ coach, was Steve. Goalkeeper of the NZ Underwater Hockey team and our high school underwater hockey team coach. His approach was, guiding our beliefs of what we could achieve, while teaching practical skills we would employee immediately and practice to excellence.

He held constant his passion for the game and his belief we could do better. That was, in hindsight, integral to our inexperienced, eclectic group, achieving better results that any of us had imagined the season prior. We played and bested teams that on paper and past results, we had no business doing well against, let alone winning!

His focused determination, commitment and unshakeable belief we could do better, created a space where we could begin to believe in ourselves, take ownership of our practice schedule, our attitude and improve our individual skills to bring to the team on game day!

The Father Of Modern Coaching

The word coaching for many, inspires memories and thoughts of sports coaches.

Tim Gallway, author of “The Inner Game of Tennis” is now often regarded as the ‘father of modern coaching’. He took what he learnt and developed from teaching and coaching tennis players and began applying it to what we now refer to as coaching.

A Morphing Profession

Today coaching as a profession has morphed to business coaching, life coaching, executive coaching and many more. Just like the definition of what coaching is or is not, as the profession continues to grow, so to the variety of definitions will grow and no doubt I will change and adjust my own. As the profession of coaching is very young, I foresee there will continue to be many different definitions before a single is universally accepted.

Why Do People Seek A Coach?

To me, the essence of coaching is helping another person get what they need, so they can get what they want.

People seek a coach because they want to improve an area or areas of their lives more efficiently than they foresee doing on their own. Often seeking either someone who has achieved what they want, or someone that has successfully coached others to achieve what they want. Being a great player does not automatically make a great coach. My promotion to sales manager was due to success in sales, day 1 of management taught me there was an entirely different skill set to the new role!

Continuous Evolution

Different models and approaches to coaching continue to evolve, due to the wide range of activities and endeavours human beings engage in. The profession of coaching continues to widen to meet the demand as more people experience the benefits of coaching in their own lives. This is very exciting to me, as with each different evolution, we can all benefit by taking what works for us, from each of these models and incorporate them into our own professional delivery, to further benefit our clients and ourselves.

The Essence Of Coaching Overall

My approach to coaching has developed and changed over the years and continues to do so. To me great coaches and trainers are avid learners, focused on the process of learning and the uniqueness of each client or student.

When the focus is on what the client can learn, it is then they find out they are capable of more than they ever imagined.

So what would change for you, if you were doing things you never imagined you were capable of?