EcoCoach coaching and its types – how do they differ?

EcoCoach coaching and its types – how do they differ?

Recently, interest in personal and professional development has been growing intensively in Poland, and motivational speakers are gaining particular popularity. The profession of a coach is still new in Poland and evokes various emotions among others because it is not yet legally regulated. Nevertheless, more and more people are deciding to use it, or think of it as a new, interesting career path. There are many good comparisons and definitions for coaching. In English, “coach” simply means “trainer”, although it does not fully reflect its definition. More often, coaching is divided into two types – business coaching and life coaching, due to the goals that can be achieved. At ecoCoach, we specialize in two types of coaching, namely: business coaching and executive coaching. So what makes each of them different?

Coaching – cooperation to achieve the client’s goal

By entering these terms into the dictionary of the ecoCoach Community coaching school, we assumed that coaching is a personal and professional relationship between the coach and the client, the aim of which is to cooperate in order to achieve the client’s goal and achieve the desired results as a result of achieving this goal. The task of the coach is to accelerate the client’s personal development by maximizing their potential. In working with the client, the coach uses methods related to psychology, sport and business. These are the three main pillars of coaching. The coach also actively provides the client with feedback on the issues discussed, but also uses the client’s past experiences and resources.

What does that mean? This means that the coach should not propose ready-made solutions to the client, and often helps the client to discover potential and talents, clearly define the goal, resources, help to set priorities, find other, often faster opportunities to achieve the goal. The coach differs in from a mentor who much more often uses his own experience and shares his experience with his mentee. It is important for the client – who is also called the coachee – to clearly define what he wants to achieve during cooperation with the coach and during regular meetings, just as the player achieves his goal with the coach, the coaching client realizes his goals and dreams with the coach. Collaboration also often extends to reflection and working with the customer’s value system, motivators, blocking or supporting beliefs, sometimes also with a mission or vision for the future.

Business coaching – help in achieving business goals

Business coaching, or business coaching in Polish, is a combination of two areas: business development and entrepreneurship (in English: business development) and coaching. The coach also assumes the role of an entrepreneur, which is why business coaching assumes the possibility of consulting and mentoring support between sessions. The client is most often an entrepreneur, president, member of the board, or a manager of a higher or middle level of an organization employing up to 100 people. The premise of business coaching is to support the client in development. On the one hand, the organization’s business goals may be guidelines for the leader’s development. On the other hand, it is the development of the organisation’s key leader that influences its overall development or the elimination of bottlenecks or waste. Sometimes the work is also about defining the mission and vision of the organization or mission and the vision of the leader and their coherence.

During the business coaching process, we use various tools, manuals and proprietary ecoCoach assessments, such as The Leader’s Growth Pad ™, the Leader’s 3D Scan ™. These tools examine the current situation of the leader and his organization. Thanks to such tools and the process that we have in ecoCoach, proven in thousands of sessions and hundreds of clients, we are the first in Poland to guarantee a return on investment from the business coaching process at the ROI = 2 level. Additional effects that customers experience during the process – apart from a specific, measurable financial ROI – are, for example, increased work efficiency, better communication and cooperation in a team, improvement of the entire organization, becoming a better leader and manager.

Sometimes during the business coaching processes we also work on defining a new strategy or accelerating the implementation of the company’s current strategy. Of course, the client’s development as a result of business coaching also improves the satisfaction and quality of his life.

Executive coaching – development of the most important competences and skills of a leader

Executive coaching is a coaching process for the company’s top management. It is conducted for CEOs, CEOs, board members, members of the supervisory board, owners or shareholders of the company. Most often it concerns large corporations and leaders of organizations employing over 100 people.

Here we use other, even better refined and more thoroughly researching the company and leaders of tools and assessments. We can study the entire organizational culture of the company, verify the course of board meetings, we also use our proprietary tools The Leader’s Growth Pad ™, the Leader’s 3D Scan ™ and Management Flow Analysis ™ assessments. The benefits of such a process are multifaceted and often bring spectacular financial benefits for the organization. For one of the companies we work with, the ROI has reached a thousand-fold return on investment in coaching! Reducing dozens of unproductive meetings of the board and management of the company from several dozen hours a week to several hours and directing these newly regained hours to contact with clients resulted in a return on investment a thousand times the equivalent of investment in coaching.

We are talking about the fact that organizations, even in the thousandths, deteriorate like fish, “from the head”. The executive coaching process ensures that the head of the fish, i.e. the CEO, the company’s management is 100% healthy, full of energy and focused on the goals of the organization. Acceleration of the development of the leader of the organization translates into acceleration of the development of the entire organization. Maximizing the potential of a leader and working towards achieving the goals set by the client in executive coaching directly translates into the achievement of measurable financial and non-financial benefits for the company.

What is the work of a coach like and how to become one?

If you are reading this article, it is very possible that you are looking for a coach for yourself or that you are thinking about becoming one yourself. (If you are looking for a coach, please feel free to contact us. During the free consultation, we will tell you how we can help you). So we will deal with the latter – how to become a coach?

First of all, coaching is a method of personal development that requires appropriate competences from a person who wants to deal with professional coaching. A coach should be very open to people, be able to listen to them and inspire confidence. He should be optimistic even in the face of crisis situations, be able to motivate and believe in his client, but not agree to everything that the client does. First of all, a coach should manage his well-being very well, be emotionally stable, so that he will be able to conduct effective coaching processes with clients. A good coach can also draw conclusions from his own experiences or from previous coaching processes and meetings with people. He is usually wise, knowledgeable, has a lot of humility and positive energy.

What does the work of a coach look like and who can become one? Most often, a coach has his own business or we cooperate as a team under one brand, as we do at ecoCoach. He conducts coaching processes for clients individually or in groups. Coaches are most often people who have completed various types of courses with appropriate certificates. Usually, these are people who have always felt the need to help other people and came to the conclusion that such a profession would be the most appropriate for them. Nobody becomes a coach only because of high earnings for this industry – without appropriate competences and a sincere willingness to support people in development. Those coaches who are primarily motivated by money, sooner or later show that their coaching processes are not carried out properly, and their clients do not achieve long-term results, successes, and it does not translate into increased happiness. Fortunately, there are no such coaches in ecoCoach, and we implement the successes of our clients thanks to our own business coaching school and ecoCoach Community executive coaching, the process of selecting coaches to join cooperation, and perhaps the greatest experience we can have on the market, both in business, in coaching and and helping to develop people.

Coaching is like a gift – and probably, if you think about it, you are well on your way to actually becoming one. Not sure where to start? Are you afraid of changing your current career path? Are you concerned about your competences? Would you like to choose a coaching course, but have trouble choosing the right one?