The Difference Between Coaching and Therapy with Coach Christi

Coaching and therapy are not the same. Coaching is a forward-looking approach; it is not only the recognition of our circumstances and how they affect us but also working on what to do or how to change. Coaching is forwarding the action of fruitful information. It is not to say therapy isn’t essential to gaining self-awareness. Coaching and therapy can grapple with the same issues but handle them differently. Tune in to hear Coach Christi explain the differences between coaching and therapy.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 [00:00:00] Successful individuals use coaching and mentorship to help them unlock their potential. Not all coaches are created equal, and that’s why we work with the top 5% of coaches at ideamix. Welcome to Coaches You Need, brought to you by idea mix.

Jamie Kosmar [00:00:14] Welcome to the first episode of Coaching Shorts by ideamix radio. This brief podcast is designed to demystify coaching and help you understand what coaching is and how it can help you. I’m your host, Jamie, and today I’m here with Coach Christi. Coach Christi has been coaching since 2018. She has a very deep background in management, consulting and human resources, and her clients are driven high performers that want to make a difference. So welcome. Coach Christi. Thank you, for joining us today.

Coach Christi [00:00:56] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jamie Kosmar [00:00:58] And today, we are going to take a broad look at what is coaching. To help understand from a very macro level what it is and what it isn’t, and what are the misconceptions about coaching. So without further ado, the first question is, Coach Christi, can you tell us what is coaching?

Coach Christi [00:01:23] So when people come to me for coaching, they generally want to make a big change in their lives. They’re burnt out. They’re doing so much for their people. And sometimes they’re eager to start coaching and not eager to start coaching. But what coaching is, it’s never me telling you, Oh, well, you know, you’re burned out. You’re working 16-hour days. That’s why you’re burnt out. It’s never my job to tell you what is going on with you. It’s for me to ask questions, for you to figure out what’s going on with you. And you then come up the client and comes up with the best solutions for you. So maybe you are working 16-hour days and your first step is, you know what, I, I just need a ten-minute break in the middle of the day. That’s what you can do. And then when you get your ten-minute break in the middle of the day, when we talk next time, it’s you know what? I’m working 16-hour days. That is not working. So then we work on how we work. What you do. Just figure out the 16-hour day things. So it’s always figuring out what you need to do. And then the client taking the action, not a coach telling you what to do.

Jamie Kosmar [00:02:44] Thank you. So it sounds like it’s. As a coach, you work to help drive self-awareness in people’s lives, help them drill down on what is working and what isn’t working, and reflect on that. So is it accurate to say that when you are signing up for a coaching session and you’re engaging in coaching, that it really is going to be a moment to help you self-reflect on what’s working and not.

Coach Christi [00:03:24] For sure and that was said way more succinctly than I did. So great job, Jamie. Yes, exactly. And it’s never really about me telling you what that is too. A lot of when I talk about coaching to the things that I focus on are the tactical things. Like in the example that we were saying, maybe I need a 15-minute break, but we often have to work on that mindset to why do I deserve a ten or 15-minute break in the middle of the day? So it’s all it’s the mindset that always goes along with the tactical things that you need to do because if you do one without the other, it’s not sustainable. It just won’t work.

Jamie Kosmar [00:04:11] Amazing, so it’s driving the self-awareness, the reflection, and then to help hopefully clients then pivot how they frame what they’re doing.

Coach Christi [00:04:23] Good one. Yes. Again, much more succinctly than I said it. But yes, that’s it. Right.

Jamie Kosmar [00:04:28] And, you know, coaching has I feel and since, you know, in the past 20 years, it’s really exploded. And sometimes there’s not a lot of clarity on what coaching is and isn’t. So can you speak to some of the common misconceptions about coaching and what it is an- what it isn’t?

Coach Christi [00:04:49] Sure. One of the examples that I just hit on was the differences between coaching and consulting. So I can always tell when I lapse into consulting mode, which I do on occasion, because I’m like, because I know while I think that I know, I know what their problem is. So if they will with the example before I’m working 16-hour days, how could you maybe work 14-hour days? And if I start telling them or even suggesting what somebody might do, they didn’t come up with that in their and that’s me telling them. That’s me being a consultant and thinking that I know best. And one of the things that I typically tell people when I talk to them first, it’s like, I don’t know you best. I don’t know your company best, I don’t know your roles best, I don’t know your family dynamics. Therefore, you’re the ones that have to come up with the solution that’s best for you, not me. So I always get a nice little nudge if I’m trying to consult because it’s never what the person designs and they don’t want to do it.

Jamie Kosmar [00:05:54] So that yeah, that’s, that’s quite interesting. So as a coach, then you’re not telling people what to do. You’re just helping them figure out what are the best solutions for them based on their situation and who they are. A coach is not just there to tell you to do something particular.

Coach Christi [00:06:17] Correct. Exactly. Again, very succinctly.

Jamie Kosmar [00:06:20] Yes. Take this take a certain action, basically, which is maybe in a way how it differs from sports coaching. Right. Because I hear your sports coaches, right? Which we’re all familiar with, many people grew up, you know, taking doing sports where the coach tells you, you know, if you want to get better, this is what you need to do every day. But coaching for adults or for young professionals looks different in that regard because it’s really about helping people understand for them what’s the best solution to get them where they want to go.

Coach Christi [00:06:55] Correct. And it’s a little bit more holistic to, you know, the sports coaches. If you want to make sure that you’re running a marathon or you’re doing a specific sport, they’re very they might tell you what to eat or what not to eat, when to wake up, but it’s always for that ultimate goal. Usually coaching is more holistic. If we know we get your home life in a better, more balanced way, and that aligns with who you are, that’s going to help you with work. So it’s a little bit more holistic instead of just focused on this one area.

Jamie Kosmar [00:07:31] Amazing. Amazing. Umm, as follow-up, you know, one question and idea mix that we get quite often and I’m sure you as a coach get quite often is what is the difference between coaching and therapy?

Coach Christi [00:07:46] Sure. Um, so Alex Blaney, let me give an example and then I’ll explain it too. So let’s say I’m in a session with somebody and we’ll take the person that’s working 16 hours, 16-hour days, and they’re exhausted. And I might ask them the question. Why do you think you’re working 16-hour days? And they really stop and they think they’re like. Oh, my goodness. I’ve worked since I was 12. I was always taught that I need to work, that even if I’m sitting down at the house and my parents come home, I need to get up and I need to hustle because I can’t rest until I’ve already worked. And when somebody has that revelation, they’re going through a lot of past memories. As a therapist, your therapist is going to say, let’s talk about that. How did that make you feel when you were younger? How is that influenced who you’ve become? As a coach, I’m going to say that’s tremendous insight. That’s great that you’ve come to that realization. That’s amazing work, knowing that this is based on how you were raised. And may or may not be serving you now. How do you want to go forward with that knowledge? And they can say, I’m going to keep on doing this because it’s my goal to retire by the time I’m 50. Great. Or that doesn’t serve me anymore. I want to do something else. But that’s what we do. We don’t get into what happened with your parents, what happened when you were growing up. We say great information now. We forward the action. Good.

Jamie Kosmar [00:09:47] So so again, you know, it’s really I, I think what I’m hearing is you may recognize that there is something that you do because of how what you were told in your past. But really, coaching is that recognition that gaining that self-awareness about what that is, but then having a forward looking approach to how, you know, how. Okay. You know, is that still serving you for where you want to go? And if not, then how can we change? How can you change that?

Coach Christi [00:10:24] Correct. Again, much more succinctly. Yes, that’s it.

Jamie Kosmar [00:10:28] Amazing. Amazing. But I mean, it’s really I think one of the key differences is even if you may look back at the past, that one of the sort of differentiators between coaching and therapy is therapy really unpacks the past, whereas with coaching you are moving forward. So it’s really a forward-looking approach and focus on sort of where do you want to go rather than how did how did you get here?

Coach Christi [00:10:55] Correct. And it’s not uncommon. I’ve had and have clients right now that are working with therapists and they’re working with coaches. And even though they might bring us the same issue, they know that it’s going to be handled differently because it’s resolving any trauma in order to help you make that forward progress. And it’s not uncommon for those to go hand in hand because we do not get into each other’s lives. They’re different work.

Jamie Kosmar [00:11:23] So do you ever have moments then where you’re working with a client and you have to say that is something that you should unpack with your therapist?

Coach Christi [00:11:36] I do. And sometimes I say this is a therapy question. You need to you probably need to figure this out because I think it is influencing what you’re doing now. Let’s talk about what we want to go forward. Yes, it’s a version of that. Yes.

Jamie Kosmar [00:11:56] Amazing, amazing. Thank you. And one final question to wrap up our cut short today. You know, I think I find the ideamix coaches are some amazing people who are very forward-looking and are thinking about, I think are much, much more reflective than I would say I am specifically. Right. And so, you know, I’m always curious who the coaches find inspiration and how, you know, who do they learn from in order to continue evolving their coaching practices and help them advance as well?

Coach Christi [00:12:42] One of my biggest influencers is Bernie Brown, and anyone that’s talked to me for more than 5 minutes will probably know that. And what I really like, the example I was using about the work and working 16-hour days is one of her mantras in The Gifts of Imperfection. And in part it is I’m letting go of productivity as self-worth. I have it in a bulletin board so that I can see it. Austin Because she’s pared down so much of the hustle culture into really those beliefs that we need to have so that we’re not doing that. So she twists and turns that about 16 different ways in her books, how she’s brought it to leaders and how she unpacks that in her podcast as well. So I’m always thinking about things differently and getting exposed to different authors when I hear her talk.

Jamie Kosmar [00:13:38] So that’s amazing. Thank you so much, Coach Christi, for being here today. We appreciate and value your insights and thank you for being our first guest as well. On today’s coaching shorts.

Coach Christi [00:13:53] I’m so excited. I appreciate it. Jamie, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 [00:13:58] Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www.ideamix.com. Special thanks to our producer Martin Milewski and singer-songwriter Doug Allen.