Coaching

What is coaching?

Coaching is built around a goal you choose. A coach helps you get clear on what you want, what stands in the way and the next step. The focus is forward.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy draws the line. Counselling is reparative: it works to resolve emotional conflict. Coaching is developmental, working on behaviour and what you do next.

That difference shapes the rest of this page. If you want to understand why you feel the way you do, a therapist is the right place to start. If you know roughly where you want to go, a coach may be.

Source: BACP: coaching

How it works

Most coaching runs as a series of conversations, often six to twelve, each about an hour. The coach asks questions rather than giving answers. You do most of the talking, and you leave with something to do before the next.

A coach will not tell you what your goal should be. They will hold you to the one you set, and when you slip they ask what got in the way. Between sessions, the work is yours.

Coaching can happen in person, by video or by phone. Many coaches work with people across the country, so where you live matters less than it might.

Sources: ICF: core competencies, BACP: coaching

The main coaching styles

Coaches train in different traditions, and the label tells you something about how the conversations will feel.

• GROW coaching. A structured model with four steps: goal, current reality, options and what you will do. Practical and short-term, with a clear plan at the end of each session
• Co-active coaching. Starts from the idea that you are creative, resourceful and whole. The coach works alongside you on your whole life, not one task, and uses the relationship itself as the tool
• Ontological coaching. Works on how you see yourself and the world, through language, mood and the body. Suits a change of identity, such as stepping into leadership, more than a single fixed goal
• Somatic coaching. Pays attention to what your body does under pressure. New responses are practised physically as well as in conversation
• Strengths-based coaching. Starts from what you already do well and builds the plan around it, rather than fixing weaknesses

Many coaches blend two or more of these. The question to ask is which one they lean on, and why.

Sources: Performance Consultants: GROW model, Co-Active: overview, Newfield: ontological coaching, Strozzi Institute: pathways, van Zyl et al. 2020, Whitmore 2017, Kimsey-House et al. 2018, Strozzi-Heckler 2014, Linley 2008

Positive psychology coaching

Positive psychology studies wellbeing and the conditions in which people do well. Positive psychology coaching brings that research into the coaching room.

One review describes it as short to medium term work on your own strengths and resources. The same review found no agreed definition of the term.

Two frameworks come up again and again. Martin Seligman's PERMA names five parts of wellbeing: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

The VIA classification sorts 24 character strengths under six virtues. Its publisher says the survey shows what is strong, not what is wrong.

An early meta-analysis of positive psychology exercises reported moderate gains in wellbeing. A 2019 re-analysis corrected those studies for small-sample bias.

It found the gain in wellbeing small, and much smaller than first reported.

A review of workplace coaching pooled twenty studies. No single framework beat the others, and coaches who blended frameworks did no worse.

In Britain, the University of East London runs a master's degree in applied positive psychology. The British Psychological Society runs a Division of Coaching Psychology.

Its forerunner began in 2002, in response to concerns about poorly trained coaches.

Sources: van Zyl et al. 2020, Butler & Kern 2016, VIA Institute: character strengths, Sin & Lyubomirsky 2009, White et al. 2019, Wang et al. 2022, UEL: applied positive psychology, BPS: coaching psychology

Neuro-linguistic programming

Richard Bandler and John Grinder built neuro-linguistic programming in the early 1970s. They studied communicators they judged effective, among them Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson.

NLP is a set of techniques, not a therapy. Its professional body says an NLP practitioner is not automatically a therapist.

The same body says NLP and coaching are not the same thing. Many coaches use it as one tool among several.

One of its best known models says each of us leans on one sense: sight, sound or feel. NLP holds that words land better when they fit that channel.

The research base is small, and independent reviewers have not been kind to it. A critical review in the British Psychological Society's coaching journal found unique NLP practices poorly supported by research.

Its authors found no randomised controlled trial in the coaching literature they searched. That issue was built as a debate, and a paper arguing the case for NLP ran beside it.

A review of health research reached a similar verdict. Its authors added that this reflects thin research rather than proof of no effect.

One meta-analysis reports a pooled effect in NLP's favour. Its authors practise neuro-linguistic psychotherapy, and it pooled twelve mostly observational studies.

No law regulates NLP practitioners in Britain. Its own professional body says NLP is not a state-regulated profession.

One route does reach a recognised register. A neuro-linguistic psychotherapist accredited through the NLPtCA joins the UK Council for Psychotherapy register.

The Professional Standards Authority accredits that register. An NLP certificate on its own does not put anyone on it.

NLP's own professional body asks practitioners to avoid overstated claims. It says NLP should not stand in place of medical, psychological or psychiatric support.

Ask a coach who offers NLP what they use it for, and what they do not.

Sources: ANLP: NLP FAQs, Passmore & Rowson 2019, Sturt et al. 2012, Zaharia et al. 2015, ANLP: what we don't do, NLPtCA: about, PSA: UKCP register

Who is it best suited to?

Coaching tends to fit when you:

• Have a change in mind and want help making it stick
• Are moving between roles, careers or stages of life
• Keep putting something off and want a steady push
• Want to lead, present or perform with more confidence
• Feel well enough to act, and want a plan rather than a place to unpack

It works best when your energy and your mood can carry the work between sessions. If they cannot right now, that is a signal in itself, and the next section is for you.

What to look for in a coach

No law in the UK controls who can call themselves a coach. Anyone can use the title. That makes the coach's own accreditation the thing to check.

ViaCara accepts coaches accredited by the International Coaching Federation. A coach with another accreditation can register it, and we verify it before clients see them. Ask which body they belong to, and at what level.

Ask how they work and what a typical engagement looks like. Ask what they do if you bring something coaching is not built for. A coach who answers that last question well is one who knows their limits.

When coaching is not the right fit

Coaching is not designed to work on the past, on trauma or on a mental health condition. Some coaches do specialise in working alongside people with mental health problems. The coaching itself still stays on goals and action.

If low mood, anxiety or something that happened is what stops you moving, start with a therapist or counsellor. A person-centred therapist gives you space to explore without an agenda. Structured and practical CBT is built for anxiety and low mood in a way coaching is not.

If you are at risk right now, crisis support comes first. Coaching can wait, and a good coach will say so.

Not sure which you need? Our guide to therapy, coaching or hypnotherapy sets the three side by side.

Source: BACP: coaching