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This article refers to the act of coaching people. For sports coaching, see coach (sport). For other uses of the word, see coach (disambiguation) or coaching inn.

A coach is a person who supports people (clients) to achieve their goals, with goal setting, encouragement and questions. Unlike a counselor or mentor, a coach rarely offers advice. However, term coaching is often misused in situations where the "coach" provides expert opinion and "how to" answers and advice. Coaching does not include the given solution for the problem but will energize the coachee to solve the problem. Typically, a coach helps clients to find their own solutions, by asking questions that give them insight into their situations. A coach holds a client accountable, so if a client agrees to a plan to achieve a goal, a coach will help motivate them to complete their plan.

This use of the term "coaching" appears to have origins in English traditional university "cramming" in the mid-19th century. (The name allegedly recalls the multitasking skills associated with controlling the team of a horse-drawn stagecoach.) By the 1880s American college sports teams had -- in addition to managers -- coaches. Some time in the 20th century, non-sporting coaches emerged: non-experts in the specific technical skills of their clients, but who nevertheless ventured to offer generalised motivational or inspirational advice.

Current practices in performance coaching in non-sporting environments focus on non-directive questioning, provocation and helping clients to analyse and solve their own challenges, rather than offering advice or direction (see Tim Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis or Myles Downey's Effective Coaching).

Contents 1 Individual coaching 2 Team coaching 3 Organizational coaching 4 Business coaching 5 Executive coaching 6 Systemic coaching 7 Dissertation Coaching 8 Ontological Coaching 9 See also

Main article: personal coaching

When a person coaches an individual client -- often marketed as life coaching -- the initial task involves the coach and client working out a mutual understanding of the scope of work and documenting that understanding in a coaching contract. Then the coach helps the client to prioritise their current needs and looks for ways to address any improvements.

Like individual coaching, team coaching focuses on improving performance. In the case of a team, the coach observes the team's current functioning, assesses the team's strengths and weaknesses, and develops a plan for addressing any needed changes.

In organizational development (OD), coaching forms an important intervention designed to assess and improve performance of an individual or a team. It is very important to improve the skills of the person which can be achieved through proper training by which he can achieve organizational goals and also enhance his knowledge and skills.

Main article: business coaching

Business coaching focuses on helping a business owner to create a distinctive business plan with its own identity. Business coaching can operate in any segment of commerce: from traditional businesses to entrepreneurial start-ups to e-businesses.

Business coaching can also apply to any model of business. For instance, the "franchise" model has the end goal of establishing defined processes that allow the entrepreneur to separate him/herself from the business.

Main article: executive coaching

Executive coaching focuses on top level executives to bring the most from the strategies and how they implement them with their team. Executive coaching can be geared towards onboarding the executive during his or her transition into a new environment, guiding the executive through an organizational change, such as a merger or restructuring, or training the executive to employ a new skill set.

Main article: systemic coaching

Systemic coaching focuses on improving the effectiveness and survival of human systems: usually couples, families, teams and communities. A systemic coach assesses a system's functioning (systemic diagnosis) and goals (systemic goalwork) and coaches the members to develop interactive coaching plans for the members to achieve both individual and systemic goals.

Systemic coaching plans often begin with dissolving transferences, guilt and other entanglements between system members; so that the members can communicate resourcefully about all aspects of the system. Individual coaching can be incorporated into systemic coaching.

Main article: dissertation coaching

Dissertation Coaching helps graduate students, who are usually working on their Ph.D.'s, to manage the task of researching and writing a dissertation, an original contribution to one's field. Because of poor supervision by their advisors, personal problems, or distance from their universities, many graduate students struggle with this task. The fact that there are few intermediate deadlines and a lot of free time contributes to difficulty completing the dissertation. A dissertation coach can help a student work on a steady and regular basis, while building a career and hunting for work.

Ontological coaching is a form of life and executive coaching developed, since the 1980s, by Julio Olalla, in collaboration with Rafael Echeverria and Fernando Flores. What distinguishes Ontological Coaching from other kinds of coaching is that it focuses on altering and expanding the world view of an individual or group so that they can see and take new action aligned with their beliefs and values.

Ontological Coaching integrates the traditional model of coaching (as supporting others to achieve desired goals) with transformational coaching (expanding one's world view to facilitate innovation in life), working from the premise that our habits of seeing and acting limit what is possible in our personal or professional life.

Ontological coaching is a discipline that combines concepts of management effectiveness and of personal development with principles of ontology –the branch of philosophy that studies being. It integrates humanity into effectiveness promoting the achievement of extraordinary results and respect for human dignity. It is directed to the effective achievement of concrete goals. Its target is to develop the kind of skills in people and teams that can generate actions leading to the achievement of their goals. Ontological coaching is committed to the development of competences necessary to create an unprecedented future.

• dating coaching
• co-coaching
• leadership
• mentoring
• life coaching
• personal coaching
• systemic coaching
• dissertation coaching
• professional coaching