Slides: Life Changing Coaching

Steve Elzinga

Coaching is not …

Pastoral Care — General care offered by a Pastor and/or staff

Being there in the good and bad times

Keeping communication lines open 

Emergency suffering control

Prayer

Applying the word of God to problems

Relationship issues, comfort, challenge

Client wants to be cared for

Coaching is not …

Counseling — A more professional, specific care offered by a Pastor or Counseling staff

Focus on past

Focus on fixing problems through understanding past influences, experiences, and tendencies.

Often ongoing 

Usually client has a problem or issue that is causing pain and they want it to go away

Client wants to be fixed

Coaching is not …

Teaching/training/discipling = helping people learn how to do something.

Focus on skills

Focus on behaviours

Client wants to learn

Coaching is not …

Mentoring — A process of helping someone acquire skills, attitudes, behaviors already mastered by the mentor

Focus on the all the positive skills, traits, behaviours found in the mentor

There is a lot of teaching, modeling, practice involved in good mentoring.

Client wants to be like the mentor

Coaching includes …

Caring (like pastoral care) but more about challenge than comfort

Care to a specific need (like counselling) but is more about the future than the past

Coaching incudes …

Teaching/training/discipling but is more about helping the client teach themselves than the coach teaching the client

Mentoring but is less about the client becoming like the mentor and more about the client becoming what he or she could become with a little bit of help

Other thoughts on Coaching:

Coaching is about action, not understanding

Coaching is client directed, not teacher directed

Coaching is not about getting the client to do what the coach wants but what the client wants

Coaching is not about the coaches' life stories but the client’s life stories.

Coaching is not about motivating the client; it is helping the client motivate themselves.

Three things coaches do

- Help client figure out what they want to do (decision)

- Help client figure out how to do what they want to do (plan)

- Help client do what they plan to do (management)