Swim, Gallop or Fly?

Coaches often wonder about the difference between coaching and counseling. A recent forum post captured my interest and prompted this response.

I take as my role the job of helping clients not just see the light at the end of the tunnel and figure out how to get there. As a coach, my job is to help the client jump the tracks and take to the air -- in other words, to leave altogether the paradigm of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and building the track to reach it.

My job is to help coachees envision a completely new view of themselves and their possibilities.

In other words, (and switching metaphors) a fish never imagines it can gallop because it has no frame of reference for being a horse. As a counselor, my job is to help the fish adjust to the disappointment and sense of loss it may experience if it happens to see a horse and want to be one, to teach effective coping tools for the inner urge to leap out of the fish tank, to tame the post traumatic stress of being nearly stepped on by a horse, to heal the depression or anxiety about the inevitability of being a fish, and to reintegrate its identity as a fish with a sense of belonging to its pod or school of origin.

As a coach my job is to help the fish imagine how horse-ness might work in the fish tank, to help the fish identify what it would need to be more horse-like within the parameters of obvious physical limitations, and to guide the fish in creating the action steps for experimenting with incorporating selected horse traits into the fish's world view and behavior patterns.

In other words, my job as a coach is to help clients think big, act brave, take the next leap, and discover they can not just gallop, but fly.