Coaching with NLP For Dummies®

Pursuing a Coaching Career

Coaching is a fast-growing profession, attracting plenty of interest from both the world of personal development and the business world.

Coaching's increasingly popular because it addresses the challenge of living a fulfilling existence in a complex world. It explores an individual or team's experience from two angles – externally and internally – and synergistically combines them:

• The external perspective looks at the context in which someone is operating, their behaviour and communication with others.
• The internal perspective addresses an individual's thoughts, feelings and motivation.

Coaches are naturally curious people who listen and ask questions; even on holiday their eyes and ears are tuned into what's going on with those around them. Like an engineer who likes to find out how machines work, a coach sees another person as a set of intriguing interlocking parts, some running smoothly, others in need of extra oil on the rusty parts. Sound like anyone you know?

Picture the scene. The sun is setting on a white Caribbean beach. A coach walks into a hotel bar with his wife, and they strike up a conversation with a fellow guest who's sipping her pina colada. Over cocktails, the lady explains that she's a landscape architect, staying on the island to redesign a series of gardens for a prestigious hotel group. The coach asks, ‘What's important to you ...