Types of Coaching

Coaching has gained a lot of popularity over the last few years. It has become common for people to seek help through coaching. This is because the stigma around seeking help for problems is slowly being dismantled. You will often hear someone say that they were able to improve their performance at work through coaching or they were able to fix their relationships through coaching.

 If you are feeling stuck and need help then you may be considering coaching as an option to help you as well. However, there exists a variety of different types of coaching and it can quickly become overwhelming trying to identify the type of coaching that fits your needs.

This article aims to break down the 10 most popular types of coaching in hopes to help you find the coach that will fit your needs best. If you feel like none of these fit your needs then do not worry, there are plenty of other types of coaching available out there.

 

Life Coaching:

This is one of the topmost trending types of coaching and is especially important if you are feeling stuck and feeling like you are at an impasse in life. Life coaching can help you change the trajectory of life and help you gain a fresh perspective on what you want and how to achieve it. By helping you identify the problem areas in your life that are holding you back from reaching your true potential, your coach will help you unlock new skills and tools to solve your life’s problems. Whether these problems are related to your personal relationships, finances, problems at work or even just a general feeling of monotony, your life coach will help you navigate around these problems and help you gain fresh perspectives to enhance yourself, so that you can take on life with new vigour and enthusiasm.

Life coaching can be a necessity for individuals that desire to expand their personal reach, accomplish specific goals, and truly want to deepen their individual discovery and growth through coaching. 

Caselet: A senior manager has a heated argument with his client. This general manager is worried that he will lose the client, get reprimanded by his superiors and ultimately lose his job. The general manager hires a life coach to work with and discuss the situation. Through his coaching journey the general manager gains deeper insight into his anger management issues and negative beliefs. With the help of his coach, the manager is able to learn steps to manage his anger in heated situations. 

 

Wellness Coaching:

You may be at a point in your life where you feel like you need to improve your mental and physical health, either due to health problems, stress or just a general decline in the quality of your life. While you may be aware that you need to improve, you may not know how to do so. Seeking help from a wellness coach will help you find the solutions you need.

Your wellness coach will help you identify unhealthy thought patterns and behaviours that may be leading to self-destructive tendencies and affecting your personal and professional life. Your coach will work with you, help you build sustainable strategies, and work with your strengths and values to help you create a plan for your long-term wellness, health and general well-being. Your wellness coach will help you alter your diet, exercise schedule, and help you make lifestyle changes and provide guidance and support along the way to ensure that you reach your goals and make positive changes to your life.

A wellness coach is useful for anyone who is struggling to find motivation, has a lot of stress, wants to improve their physical and mental health and change unhealthy habits and behaviours. 

Caselet: An executive of a company hires a wellness coach because he is having trouble meeting the goals he sets for himself, staying organised, keeping his apartment clean and eating well. Because of this neglect, the executive found himself falling sick frequently and feeling unproductive and sluggish. With the help of his wellness coach, the executive realises that he has been unable to give attention to these areas of his life because he has been very stressed and overworked by his demanding job. With the help of his wellness coach, the executive learns techniques to regulate stress, manage work and home life, give time to his family and meet his personal goals. 

 

Executive Coaching:

This is slowly becoming one of the most popular types of coaching out there. Your executive coach will help you enhance your skills so that you perform at your best in your workplace. Your coach can help you become a better leader, help you improve your management skills and help you unlock new levels of potential that will allow you to take your company to greater heights. By facilitating your growth, your coach will help you accelerate team action, give effective feedback, identify problems and set effective goals to fix them. Executive coaching will help you identify the best talent to help your company unlock its greatest potential. Through executive coaching learn new skills and change ineffective belief systems to enhance your performance and achieve success. 

Executive coaching is useful for leaders who are struggling to manage their teams, grow their company, feeling under confident and lacking skills to grow their enterprise. 

Caselet: The CEO of a tech firm hires an executive coach because he feels like his organisation is floundering. His sales are dropping at a concerning rate. The CEO tells his executive coach that his employees show very little accountability, they don’t listen to him and do not meet his expectations. With the help of his executive coach, the CEO learns effective techniques to engage his clients, motivate them and ensure they are all on the same page. By the end of his coaching sessions, the CEO notices higher productivity among his employees and an increase in sales in the company. 

 

Business Coaching:

Whether you are running a small business or a large corporation, the benefits of business coaching cannot be undermined. Running a business can seem like a very stressful venture, you may feel unsure about the decisions you are making and may often get stuck at a crossroads. In times like these a business coach can help guide you in the right direction. By helping you enhance your business acumen, your coach can help equip you with creative problem-solving abilities and help you adapt new perspectives to help you overcome hurdles and solve problems. Your coach will teach you to make the right decisions confidently and help you identify the pitfalls and blind spots that you may have missed. By helping you define your mission, vision and values, the coach will help you make decisions in the best interest of your business, while ensuring you maintain the culture you built your business on.

Caselet: The founder of a startup came for business coaching because he was struggling to gain momentum and traction. While he had a strong team working with him, he felt like he couldn’t gain footing with clients and was struggling to define his business goals. With the help of his business coaching, the founder was able to define his mission, vision and values of his company. Once he had those in place he was able to identify the goals for his company and map out a clear direction he wanted to grow in. Once he did this, he found his target clientele and consequently saw an increase in sales. The founder was able to use his business coach as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, thus allowing him to test their feasibility. Business coaching helped the founder gain insights into his own company that he did not have before. 

 

Leadership Coaching:

As a leader, you may sometimes feel ill-equipped at leading your team or company to success. When faced with certain tricky situations, you may find yourself lacking in the skills needed to guide your team through. You may struggle to handle conflicts and problems that are bound to arise in any workplace.

With the help of a leadership coach, you can learn effective leadership skills and find the leadership style that works best for you. Whether you are leading a small team or a big organisation, it becomes imperative for you to lead with confidence and maintain the right balance between authority and approachability. Your leadership coach can help you find that balance; allowing you to lead your team on the foundation of trust and conviction. Your leadership coach will help you establish healthier communication styles and teach you conflict management techniques that will not only allow you to establish a better relationship with your team, but will also create a healthy environment where everyone can learn and grow, ultimately allowing you to reach your goals and milestones with ease.

 A sales representative was suddenly promoted to the role of a team leader and found himself struggling to manage the team under him. He felt like he lacked the skills need to be a good leader. He was having trouble delegating work to them and found that there was no follow through when he did. With the help of his leadership coach the sales leader learned effective communication skills that allowed him to speak to his team articulately and with authority, identified his leadership style and learned goal setting strategies which in turn helped him lead his team with confidence. In a few months, the sales leader noticed a difference in his team’s attitude towards him, was able to handle conflicts with ease and was happy to see that all deadlines were being met on time.

 

Performance Coaching:

If you find yourself feeling stagnant or stuck in your job it could be because you are not performing at your fullest potential. If you are trying your best but still find yourself struggling and trying to keep up with other employees then you may need help enhancing your performance. Your low performance levels could be affected by a lack of appropriate skills or due to lack of motivation. Performance coaching focuses on strengthening performance effectiveness. It aims to help you reach your fullest potential by teaching you skills and helping you adopt healthy beliefs and perspectives. Your performance coach will help you identify the obstacles that are holding you back from performing at your best, he/she will help you identify and maximise your strengths, overcome weaknesses, help you find the motivators in your life and help you learn effective ways to alter negative thoughts and behaviours. By giving you feedback, your performance coach will help you adapt new perspectives and build new skill sets. Furthermore, your coach can help you identify the competencies required for your job role and help you build them. By helping build your motivation levels, your coach will ensure that you are constantly striving to improve yourself and reach greater heights.

Caselet: A Sales Director of a big organisation comes for performance coaching because despite being successful in her career, the Director felt lost and stuck. She didn’t want to wake up in the morning and go to work, she felt burnout and overworked. She found herself struggling to concentrate during meetings and she did not feel like solving problems that arose at work. She felt very frustrated because of this. With the help of her performance coach the Sales Director was able to identify that these problems were coming from low motivation and a lack of energy. With the help of her performance coach, the Sales Director was able to understand her strengths, core values and motives which helped her realise her potential to achieve even greater heights than what she had already achieved, build a career strategy to excel in her field which helped motivate her and helped her get rid of the feeling of being lost and stuck, and helped her find new perspectives which helped give her a fresh frame of mind to approach work with. 

 

Career Coaching:

It is normal to feel confused about the career path you have chosen for yourself. You may have realised that the career you had chosen is not the career that fulfils you. When you come to this realisation it is always better to stop and evaluate where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Career coaching can empower you to make the career decisions that suit you best.  It will help you gain clarity on your career progression, helping you focus on the results that you want, ultimately leading to your happiness and satisfaction. Your career coach will help you gain clarity on the career that is the right choice for you. By helping you explore yourself, creating self-awareness and learning more about your strengths and weaknesses, the coach will help you find the career that is not only best suited for you but also one that makes you happy.

Caselet: An operations manager was fired from his role due to an error in judgment on one of his projects. The operations manager was blindsided by this sudden job loss and found himself struggling with low self esteem, low self confidence and was questioning his career. Every time he would look for a new job his own anxiety and negative internal monologue would sabotage him, causing him to botch the job interview. With the help of his career coach the operations manager gained deeper insight into his core values and needs. He discovered that he desired a low-pressure job to help him get back on his feet. His coach helped him turn around failed goals into stepping stones to move forward. The coach helped the coachee discover strategies to handle stressful situations that might cause the manager anxiety and challenged the manager’s negative beliefs that were causing him to doubt himself. In a matter of months, the operations manager learned to think more positively about himself, got back on his feet and found a job that was low pressure and stress free. 

 

Skill Development Coaching:

In today’s world it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the new skills required to perform certain tasks. If you are not familiar with these skills it can cause you to lag behind at work, leaving you scrambling, asking others to help you or googling how to get tasks done. A skill development coach can help you if you feel stuck due to a lack of skills, low self-esteem, self-limiting beliefs or fear. Skill development coaching helps you hone the skills that you require to perform your job seamlessly, allowing you to excel and unlock new feats of performance. The coach will help you challenge the beliefs that are holding you back and help you learn new skills that will help you gain more confidence and allow you to excel. Your skill development coach can help identify the skill sets and competencies you need to enhance yourself and help you adapt the new skills to ensure that you become the best version of yourself. Your coach will help you identify your strongest competencies, the competencies required for your job and help you build on the competencies you will need to perform your job with confidence.

Caselet: A human resource manager left her job when she was at the peak of her career to raise her children. After a gap of 10 years, the HR manager wanted to pursue her career again. But when she tried to get a job she found herself lacking in the skills needed to excel in this field. She faced countless rejections in job interviews and found herself saying ‘no’ whenever she was asked about new skills she did not have. She found herself doubting her capabilities and was considering giving up. That is when she decided to come to a skill development coach. With the help of her coach, the HR manager learned to reframe her thinking towards an empowering perspective, she set new goals to help her feel more confident, she also formulated action plans that included learning the skills she needed, improving her CV and managing her stress. With motivation from her skill development coach, the HR manager was able to overcome her “fear of failure” underlying belief and start believing in her abilities again. 

 

Team Coaching:

When you are working with a team of skilled and capable people it becomes essential to ensure that there is unity among the team members. You have to ensure that all team members are on the same page and when push comes to shove, the people in the team will have each other’s backs. However, this can often prove to be challenging. If your team does not know how to effectively communicate with each other, or struggles to collaborate on group assignments then you may need help in strengthening the bonds within your team.

Your team coach will work with the whole team to increase unity, improve communication skills and strengthen bonds. Your team coach will create a supportive, non-judgemental environment where each team member will feel safe to open up. A team coach will help clarify the team’s purpose and ensure that all team members are working in accordance with the mission, vision and values of the company. The team coach will work to improve overall performance of the entire team. By conducting various exercises, the coach will help build trust among all the team members and ensure that all members have each other’s backs.

Caselet: The team wanted to change it’s behaviours into healthier, positive behaviours as they lacked trust and communication among themselves. This was leading to a lot of conflicts and blaming within the team. With the help of their team coach, the team learned to recognise the strengths and working styles of each team member, shared their grievances with each other and learned communication skills to help them communicate more effectively with team mates. With trust building exercises, the teammates built trust and bonding among themselves. With the help of their team coach, the team was able to strengthen itself and as a result was able to reduce conflicts and tensions within the team.

 

Entrepreneur Coaching:

If you have been wanting to start your own business then entrepreneur coaching can be very useful for you. The coach can guide you to create a successful business that not only meets requirements but also thrives. The coach will guide you through the challenges of setting up a new business. The coach, an experienced professional in his field, can help you identify the weak spots in your business plan, give you counsel and hold you accountable to your goals, ultimately helping you set up your business with confidence and helping you watch your dreams come true. Your coach can provide guidance based on knowledge and experience to ensure that you make the best decisions for your business. Starting your own business can be very daunting, and trying to ensure that you make decisions in the best interest of your company can be a hard task. Your coach will act as a sounding board, helping you gain clarity on the best decisions for your company, helping you ensure that your company grows while also maintaining the vision and values you had started with.

Caselet: An entrepreneur wanted to start a new business but found the task very daunting. She knew she had a great idea but felt very lost when it came to executing that idea. Everytime she would try she would get overwhelmed and give up on the idea. Then the entrepreneur decided to try coaching. The coach helped the entrepreneur find direction, and helped her create small steps and goals to start her business. The coach helped her take her concept from an idea and helped her develop it into a proper business. Everytime the entrepreneur was faced with a challenge, she would go back to the coach, and the coach would help her gain the perspectives she needed to move past the hurdles blocking her path. With the help of her coach, the entrepreneur was able to take her idea and turn it into a business that was not only growing but also thriving.