The concept of professional trained coaches originated in the USA and although coaching is a new profession, it is one of the largest growing professions worldwide. Having emerged from the area of sports in the 1960s, moving on to business coaching throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it went through a lot of diversity before becoming extremely popular in the 1990s. In the 21st century, coaching is being undertaken in a wide variety of environments ranging from business to personal.
Coaching is similar to other forms of support like counselling and mentoring. They are all concerned with helping people.
What makes coaching different from the other forms of support is that coaches help you draw out information that will help you make actions plans.
Coaches are not here to judge or advise you, as you are the best person to know what is good for you.
Coaching sets out to assist you in finding your own course of action in achieving your goals.
Coaching is a way of helping people to move from where they are now to where they want to be in a way that is quicker and more effective than if they acted alone. It is a time to talk and time to be heard, giving you the time to focus on yourself.
What is NLP?
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP was born in the seventies in California when John Grinder, a linguist, and Richard Bandler, a mathematician, set out to identify the difference between the behaviour of people who are competent at a particular skill and those who excel at it. By careful and detailed observation, they modelled the behaviour of two top psychotherapists, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, the world famous hypnotherapist. Although these individuals had very different syles, they surprisingly similar underlying patterns.
From this original exercise and modelling others performers, Grinder and Bandler designed an elegant model of others to use to improve their performance, to become excellent communicators, and to undergo personal change.
Modelling has remained central to the development of NLP in business, personal development and therapy contexts. A lot of the original work could be described as having a 'behaviourist' approach, more recently importance has been placed on a person's identify, beliefs and values underpin his or her behaviour. The understanding of the relationship and balance of the conscious and unconscious minds is central to most NLP work.