What is Coaching?
About Coaching
The “Who” of Coaching:
Coaching has emerged as a new profession over the last half-century to support personal and professional development for individuals. It is a self-regulated field, with industry standards and certification established by the International Coach Federation . All ImpactADHD coaches are independently trained by credentialed schools and certified by the ICF.
The “What” of Coaching:
Coaching is the process of working with a trained professional to achieve lasting improvement in life and/or work. While there are many styles of coaching, most are grounded in the fundamental principles of life coaching.
Parent Coaching is a sub-specialty of the industry that has emerged to respond to the growing challenges of raising children in a complex society. Some other common sub-specialty areas include: Executive, ADHD, Career and Health coaching.
The “Why” of Coaching:
Coaching offers participants a structure for improving specified areas of life and work, leading to enhanced success and personal fulfillment. In particular, coaching enhances clear decision-making, based on personal circumstances.
The “How” of Coaching:
As a professional industry, coaching employs a wide variety of techniques that find their root in open-ended questions and clear and frank discussions.
As masters of communication, coaches help their clients accept personal responsibility, learn flexibility, adapt to new situations and hold themselves accountable.
- Coaches offer perspective to their clients without critical judgment, allowing clients to learn and create opportunities for change without getting mired in self-defeat.
- Coaches work with their clients to identify core motivations, and use those as a framework for empowerment, understanding, decision-making and action.
- Coaches help their clients look both internally and externally to identify and existing barriers to change.
- Coaches help to develop action-oriented plans and identify strategies for success.
- Coaches support their clients in developing accountability structures, leading to stronger and more sustainable change.
Desired results are determined collaboratively between coach and client, specified at the outset of a coaching engagement, and evaluated throughout the process.
ImpactADHD’s Coach Approach
How Coaching Can Help Parents:
First, coaching gives parents a chance to pay attention to themselves, which helps them be the best parents they can be. Parents often spend so much energy on their kids that they forget about themselves, and ultimately that’s not good for anyone.
Coaching also enables parents to more effectively manage their kids. In particular, a Parent Coach works with a parent of an ADHD kid to:
- Identify needs, set goals, and offer guidance
- Provide support and structure
- Develop skills that work with ADHD kids
- Improve family communication
- Educate the family about the impact of ADHD
- Work with other professionals for coordination of services
- Promote self-esteem and confidence
How ADHD Coaching Can Help Kids:
For older kids who are eager for (or at least open to) help and support, ADHD Coaching can be amazingly effective structure. A coach allows a parent to let go of unwanted roles like homework patrol and morning wake-up duty, allowing her to just be a parent. It’s great for relationships. For the student, the coach:
- Provides support and structure
- Helps with skill building
- Provides accountability structure (separate from parents)
- Teaches organizational skills
- Identifies strengths
- Teaches social skills and fosters independence
- Monitors progress and goals
Note: If you are interested in finding a coach for your older kid, we recommend you start with The Edge Foundation to learn more about coaching for students.
The “Bottom Line” of Coaching:
Coaching is a powerfully effective way to create lasting change. A coaching relationship provides the structure to:
- focus on what’s important
- find the clarity you need to make decisions
- determine the actions you want to take, and
- hold yourself accountable.
If you know there is something more for you and your family, if you are ready for something better, then coaching may be just the way to transform your life from surviving to thriving!
For more on Coaching, refer to the International Coach Federation, CTI (Coaches Training Institute) or iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching).
For more on ImpactADHD’s Coach Approach, go to “What Makes Us Different?”