Welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, Pursuers, where my goal and purpose is to
provide you with the tools needed to successfully discover and pursue your God-given calling.
I'm your host, Thomas Carney, and today we're answering the question, what is coaching?
All right, so let's dive in.
First, I want to say happy late New Year.
I said it in the last episode, it was on 31st, it was New Year's Eve, now it's the New Year,
so I have Happy New Year.
Now we're in 2025.
Let's dive in.
So let's start off with saying what coaching is.
Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to
maximize their personal and professional potential.
So I'm going to say coaching is not therapy.
In other words, it's not focused on past issues that need to be resolved.
Coaching is focused on present and future goals.
So I know I just said a lot of stuff and I just kind of dove in and threw you guys into
it.
So first, I just want to kind of say all this stuff I'm learning right now.
This is all stuff I'm honestly learning currently.
It's like stuff I've known, but it's refreshing.
I've been getting refreshers recently after joining the Maxwell leadership team.
And all that means is that I'm an uncertified member and I'm working on getting my coaching
certification through them, getting some new skills, so maybe some new vocabulary.
But the skills of what we're focused on and a new understanding and a more refined understanding
of what coaching is and really why I want to be a coach at all.
So I want to give you a little bit of tidbits on what coaching really can do.
So it can cause you to think thoughts you have never thought before.
It will cause you to step out of your comfort zone.
And for both you and me, the coach, it will unlock our imaginations, productivity and
leadership potential.
So I get it.
That sounds pretty frilly.
So let's break it down a little bit more.
Everything I just stated, like they're really like the goals of coaching.
And I was going to play I was gonna play on saying this later.
But the biggest the whole point of coaching is getting from getting you getting you or
whoever signs up to be coached.
It's to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Okay, that's the whole premise.
The whole premise.
So really, like, as a coach, it's my position.
It's my it's my position to just shut up and listen to ask questions that like I was said
before provoked thoughts in the in my clients heads that may that maybe they wouldn't have
had or maybe they just wouldn't have had it so soon.
You know, the idea isn't that you need a coach to be successful is that when you have a coach
that that you know, a coach that knows what they're doing, the rate at which you'll reach
your goals grows at an exponential rate.
I get it.
That's more fairly words.
Let me let me give you a little bit more.
So your coach or if you hire a coach or if you hire me as your coach, I would ask you
some questions.
You would answer those questions in the best way that you know how.
And then based off your response, I'm paying attention.
I'm listening to what you're saying.
I'm paying attention to how you're saying it.
If there's a video and paying attention to body language to voice inflection, to pauses
and then I'm going to ask you a question based on your response.
It's really just to continuous question.
I ask a question.
You give you give your response.
I ask another question.
The goal is not for me to mentor you.
The goal is not for me to tell you what to do is to pull the things out of your head.
They're already there and to help you facilitate them in a way that will like I said before,
it will help you understand how you can get from where you are to where you want to be.
Really it's like you have to understand that you already have that potential inside of
you and all the coach does is coaches as a thought facilitator.
Like you can think about it like that.
A coach is at least this kind of coach is a thought facilitator.
It's taking these skills, maybe even helping you facilitate some new skills of how to reevaluate
the thoughts that you're having and using them in a way to construct goals to create
potential action items for you to be able to get from where you are to where you want
to be.
So to really give you a gist of what this is, I'm going to walk you through a little
bit of an exercise.
First is that's all right with you.
And I'm going to first pick an area of your life.
I want you to pick an area of your life that you'd like to focus on.
This could be personal, professional, whatever you want it to be.
What would you so now that you picked it, what would you say your ultimate goal is in
that area?
If you're not sure that's okay, just pick something that you would be incredibly satisfied
if you achieved it.
Next, think about what it would look like to finally and actually accomplish this goal.
Envision that in your mind.
How would it feel to actually accomplish this goal?
Now answer this, when now that you've envisioned what it would be like to actually accomplish
that goal, what did you have to do to get yourself to this point where your goal was
finally achieved?
Like, what did you have to learn?
How did you have to grow?
Those are actual questions I'm asking you and those questions I want you to think about.
I'm asking them fast, but this is something you can think of, you can pause, write something
down or just think about it after the episode.
So finally, what is the one thing now you've kind of you've thought through your you figure
out what your goal is, you figure out what your goal is, you figure out what you're going
to need to learn and how you're going to need to grow?
What is one thing you can practically do today to get you closer to that point of achievement
to get you from where you are to where you want to be?
So you know, if again, if I were coaching you one on one, I would probably follow this
up by asking you what day you're going to do that practical action step on, you know,
wink, wink, hint, hint, the write down the date, write down the time that you said you're
actually that you're going to you're going to do this action action step.
And maybe it's maybe it's maybe it's a I'm actually want to do a actually want to make
maybe I want to reach out to 10 people.
And it's like, okay, you can either you can do that today, you can make you can spread
it out if you want to make it as realistic as possible to you.
Maybe you're maybe your day is jam packed, you can reach out to 10 people in one day,
where you can spread that out.
Like the point of doing all of this and point of doing this whole exercise is to show you
that like once you've finally kind of walked through this yourself, you can understand
that like, this is like just the tip of the iceberg of what coaching is.
Right?
It's like I asked, I'm asking you questions through a camera right now through a microphone
into your ears right now.
And the but you're already thinking about things that you haven't thought of before.
And if you already have thought of them thought of these before, congratulations, you're already
ahead of the game.
So like, they really I just want to use this episode uses time to give you an idea of what
coaching is because I, I do have a I do have openings for whoever wants to have whoever
would love to have a free coaching session with me to be able to accomplish something
that they haven't been that they've been putting aside.
Maybe they want to maybe you want to accomplish it faster than maybe that you think you could
do it on your own.
That's another great thing about coaching.
Like I said before, you might not need a coach to accomplish what you want to accomplish,
but having a coach will help you get there faster.
And that's like regardless of whether you need a coach to get there or not.
Some people need some people need it more than others.
Some people need the accountability.
That's a great thing that comes from coaching.
And so I'm going to leave a link down down in the show notes where you can click you
can click the schedule link, sign up for a free coaching session 100% free.
While you don't ask for a credit card or anything, you just click on the link and you set the
click on a link pick a time and we get to talk for about 30 to 45 minutes about your
goals.
We I get to tell you I'll tell you if you don't know me, I'm going to tell you a little
bit more about me and why I even want to be a coach.
That's something I believe I've talked about in other episodes, but I'll probably talk
about it again at some point.
But yeah, I want you to think about those questions though.
If you already if you if you weren't sure if you want to be listening to those questions,
you know, this is recording you can go back.
The whole point like I said the whole point of coaching I said this before I'm gonna say
it again the whole point of coaching is to get you from where you are to where you want
to be.
And that's really what I want to help you do.
I want to get you from where you are right now to where you want to be in your future.
This can be like this can be career wise.
This can be career wise.
It's gonna be relationally with friends.
This can be maybe you want to start your maybe you want to start your own business.
Coaches don't have to be an expert in the field that you're looking to achieve.
All right, guys, thank you for listening to this whole episode of the pursuit of calling
podcast.
If you really enjoyed this episode, if you got anything out of this, I would love it
if you shared it out on social media, just the link or a clip that you see on my Instagram
page.
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a five star review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you listen to your podcasts, guys,
pursuers, I'll see you next time.
Keep on pursuing.