As someone who works in the area of stress coaching, empowerment coaching, and helping others live their Best Life, I have been asked this question so many times that I think it might be wise to create a post about this and direct anyone who needs to understand the difference to this link.
With that in mind, I am going to explain various related helping professions such as coaching, counseling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, mentoring, and training.
Coaching is a process of partnering with the client in a co-creative process that is thought-provoking. It is a process that allows the client to maximize their potential – personal and professional. The coach and the client are at the same level in the relationship. It focuses on helping the client find amazing and individualistic solutions towards moving forward and ahead.
The analogy that I love to use to explain coaching is a journey on a ship where the rudder is in the control of the client while the coach stands close-by with a huge light. As the client decides which direction to take, the coach occasionally turns the light in different directions to allow the client to consider their options, thought process, beliefs, and true motivations.
Mentoring is a relationship between two people where one has considerably higher experience than the other in a specific arena. In a mentoring relationship, the mentor is clearly the more senior authority in the interactions and the mentor instructs, leads, and actively suggests the routes that the mentee should take.
Consulting is a practice in which a client’s problem is solved with the help of data, models, analysis, and sometimes involves implementing the operations that are being recommended. It requires expertise in the specific area of consulting. Consulting is focused on the future and it can often help in getting to solutions faster, However, it does not create an awareness within the client about how to solve other new challenges going forward. In a manner of speaking, while consulting is like giving a hungry person a fish, coaching is teaching someone to fish on their own.
Psychotherapy (and this includes all psychological therapy techniques) aims at figuring out the root cause of the problem before an attempt is made towards any kind of recovery. It often delves into past experiences and then moves into an instructive mode in order to heal.
Counseling is closest to coaching in the sense that it is based on the key skills of listening and asking intuitive questions. However, it is aimed at overcoming past experiences or traumas and finding remedies for unresolved emotional issues.
While these are good ways to understand the difference between the above practices, it is also important to know that there are a lot of overlaps too. As discussions flow, there is bound to be some sharing of the past events in coaching discussions even though coaching focuses on the future and action steps required to move ahead.
While counseling involves helping clients to overcome some issues that they have faced in the past, it does also bring out some strategies that can be used to cope as the client moves ahead. Even though mentoring is mostly about advising, there is scope to ask questions to understand where the mentee wants to go.
One of the best ways to explain the difference between most of these helping modalities is this image below:
When to Choose Coaching?
If you are looking for growth and want to maximize your potential in any arena, you should choose to work with a coach. It is future-focused and will help you discover your true motivations that can then be used to set action steps that take you towards your goal.
When to Choose Counseling?
Choose to counsel when you know you need to heal and recover. It is a process of inquiry that will help you uncover aspects of your life that you may have shoved under the carpet and not dealt with in the past. If you feel that your past is holding you back and you need recovery from those wounds, choose to get counseled.
When Should you Find Yourself a Mentor?
Choose a mentor when you are seeking help and advice in a specific industry or arena. When you choose to be mentored, you also need to understand that the mentor is likely to be able to help you based on their own experiences and have not been trained to help you find your own solution (which is always the best solution for you!)
A more detailed explanation of the differences between coaching, mentoring, and counseling is shared here.
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