The difference between coaching and psychotherapy - Essay Example

In coaching, the practitioner helps its clients to access those information, skills and wisdom that they already have to make decisions, about which changes they would like to make; to develop a personal "action plan" in order to make those changes, to implement the action plan, and lastly to develop strategies to maintain the changes they make. The client will have to set the agenda for coaching. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is a health care service focusing on identifying and treating diagnosable psychological disorders.

The goals of psychotherapy include awakening hope, re-accessing mental well-being and encouraging changes that support mental well-being. Coaching uses variety of techniques and practices to help clients quickly produce desired results even more than they would do on their own. Psychotherapy also has techniques to help their clients but it is a slow process. The focus of coaching is on results as opposed to symptoms or psychology, yet clearly coaching is about relating to and impacting people.

Therapy, while it should and will often create results, focuses on healing psychological or situational pain or distress. Typical reasons people seek coaching are: to clarify goals, to start something new, to create and execute one's vision, when life is out of balance when one cannot enjoy their success and when one is in transition. These are not "medically necessary" reasons but all potentially will be life enhancing. Traditional psychodynamic psychotherapy is past-based, working on feelings and events that have already occurred.

Coaching may also focus specifically on areas which therapy would not, such as balance, strategic planning or life planning. These might be the product of a successful psychotherapy but not the focus. Coaching is collaboration between coach and client. Therapy is an expert relationship in which the therapist has greater power. Increasingly therapy is a three-way relationship in which an insurance company knows the client's issues and has a say.Coaching is future-oriented and designed to move the client towards an outcome.

It can also be process oriented. Psychotherapy is process oriented.Coaches cannot take up the tasks of therapy. There is a need of lot of technical work. Therapists can and frequently do "coach" their clients - particularly in long-term relationships after the major psychological work has been done. Therapists, in fact, can be the best coaches because of their training in listening skillsA coach will sometimes guide individuals toward increased awareness of how their thoughts and emotional reactions lead to problematic behaviors in the workplace.

Therapy may share coaching's goals of improved personal effectiveness and increased awareness of problematic thoughts and emotional reactions that may impede work effectiveness. But therapy also addresses non-work aspects of an individual's life and may involve in-depth explorations of the client's history, and their key relationships with parents and other family members - issues that may be only tangentially related to business effectiveness.The coach training offerings vary from a few days to a full year.

In order to take on the deeper self exploration common to the therapeutic situation counselors and therapists require an extensive training typically far in excess of coach training. Psychotherapy and counseling