Personal coaching might be most easily described as customized self help books and tapes, brought to life. Coaching is equivalent of attending a motivational seminar where speaker only talks about you and how to make most of your gifts and talents. Coaching creates an environment where you stay positive and charged up–not for a day or two–but week after week.Ask 10 different coaches why this burgeoning profession is coming into prominence and you're likely to get 10 different answers. If we take a long view of where society has taken us as individuals over past 100 years, need for and benefits of personal coaching start to become apparent.
Decline of Family
At turn of last century, we were dependent upon one another for our very existence. In spite of our pioneering spirit–or maybe because of enormous risks we were taking in blazing trails across this new country–we needed each other for our most basic of needs. As we skip through subsequent decades and observe morphic changes of society, we notice a gradual disconnection of tight bonds previously necessary to survive. The traditional family unit shrinks from supportive environment of multigenerations living under one roof to scarce reality of single parents barely able to make ends meet... both financially and emotionally.
The answer to question "Why Coaching?" could be a simple one. It may be our attempt at partial restoration of safe environment we once enjoyed as an interdependent family unit.
Sense of Community
Even if multigenerational families under one roof are not answer in today's society, you'd have to agree pendulum certainly has swung other way just a little too far. We interact with grocery checkers, bank tellers, and convenience store clerks without so much as looking them in eye. We see neighbors who have lived near us for months or even years and we don't even know their names. This conscious disconnect is often justified by pace of our lives and–ironically–the needs of our family. This fast food equivalent of Family and Community–with fries on side–is not nourishing our body, nor our mind, much less our soul.