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How Does Performance Coaching Differ from Traditional Training or Counseling?

 


Tell me if this sounds familiar. About 15 years ago I was doing everything my supervisors told me to do. I attended all the leadership training, I took on extra responsibilities at work, and led some of our most important efforts. I even went to counseling to see if there was something wrong with my mental health! Still, I kept getting passed over for promotion.

Then, an opportunity to engage with a leadership coach came my way. I didn’t know what leadership coaching was at that time and I thought, “Great! This is a former senior executive in our organization and she’s going to be able to tell me what I am doing wrong so I can finally advance!” Boy am I glad I was wrong about coaching!


Today, let’s unpack the difference between coaching, traditional training, and counseling. Coaching has some unique benefits that apply to everyone, but especially tend to resonate with veteran and clients whose faith drives their values.


Traditional Training

The goal of traditional training is typically to acquire or enhance skills or pass on knowledge from trainer to
trainee. We accomplish this through structured curriculum (usually in a classroom setting), workshops, and trainers are equipped with specific techniques.


Training is useful because we gain improved skills and gain an understanding of concepts specifically relevant to our assigned tasks.


Training does not address underlying self-doubt or directly translate to sustained behavioral change, however.


Counseling/Therapy


Counseling focuses on emotional healing. If you’ve been to counseling, you probably spent a lot of time addressing past traumas, mental well-being, and understanding why you act the way you do. 

Counselors use “talk therapy”, introspection, and cognitive behavior therapy to explore the root causes of whatever issue you may be dealing with. This can result in emotional stability, coping mechanisms, self-awareness, and psychological relief.


Where counseling can fall short is that the focus is often on your past or present emotional state and is not necessarily forward-looking or focused on actionable change or performance improvement.


The Distinctive Nature of Performance Coaching


Enter performance coaching! Coaching is future-focused and action-oriented. Your coach will help you realize measurable progress, achieving specific performance goals and unlocking your potential. 


Coaching is a co-active partnership. This means we work together to set goals, establish accountability mechanisms, design a personalized strategic plan, and overcome whatever obstacles you are facing. 


The emphasis is on moving forward by taking consistent action and creating new habits.


We do this by identifying your values - the values that actually matter to you, not what some self-help book tells you they should be. 


This might mean aligning your faith with your professional life. We might integrate spiritual principles and beliefs to build your self-worth and confidence to quiet that inner critic.


For veterans it can mean identifying those military values that attracted you to the military in the first place and realizing how those values translate to the civilian world.


We use a variety of techniques to accomplish this. Affirmations, prayer, mindset shifts, etc. to recognize your inherent value.


Through our co-active partnership we address the root of self-doubt and imposter syndrome from a deep, values-based perspective. We work together to set clear KPIs (key performance indicators), establish regular check-ins, track achievements, and adapt strategies as necessary.


There is a direct link between coaching and tangible outcomes which differentiate it from the often qualitative results of counseling or training that can’t be specifically measured.

Conclusion

So let’s recap what we discussed in today’s blog. 

  • Traditional Training:

    • Goal: Acquire or enhance skills, or pass on knowledge from trainer to trainee.

    • Method: Structured curriculum (classroom setting), workshops, specific techniques.

    • Benefit: Improved skills and understanding of relevant concepts for assigned tasks.

    • Limitation: Does not address underlying self-doubt or directly translate to sustained behavioral change.

  • Counseling/Therapy:

    • Goal: Emotional healing, addressing past traumas, mental well-being, and understanding behavior.

    • Method: "Talk therapy," introspection, cognitive behavior therapy to explore root causes.

    • Benefit: Emotional stability, coping mechanisms, self-awareness, psychological relief.

    • Limitation: Often focuses on past or present emotional state, not necessarily forward-looking or focused on actionable change or performance improvement.

  • Performance Coaching:

    • Goal: Future-focused and action-oriented, realizing measurable progress, achieving specific performance goals, and unlocking potential.

    • Method: Co-active partnership to set goals, establish accountability, design personalized strategic plans, and overcome obstacles. Emphasizes consistent action, new habits, and identifying values (including faith and military values for veterans). Uses techniques like affirmations, prayer, and mindset shifts.

    • Benefit: Direct link to tangible outcomes, addresses root of self-doubt and imposter syndrome from a deep, values-based perspective, sets clear KPIs, and tracks achievements.

I’m sure you can see that coaching offers the unique benefit of achieving actionable results, quieting that inner critic, and providing tailored support (in real-time) that you need to succeed.


If you’re ready for a no-obligation, completely free intro call, Click here to schedule. I can’t wait to work with you and watch you take that next step in your career!

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