What is coaching?
The International Coach Federation defines coaching as "partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential, which is particularly important in today’s uncertain and complex environment."
Coaching IS NOT therapy, consulting or mentoring, but has similarities with all of these helping-oriented relationships. The diagram pictured below nicely explains how coaching compares with other helping-oriented relationships.
What is the role of the coach?
According to the International Coach Federation Coaches honor the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole. Standing on this foundation, the coach's responsibility is to:
Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve
Encourage client self-discovery
Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies
Hold the client responsible and accountable
Coaching for Personal Leadership
Our Wilderness Coaching is based upon the notions of Personal Leadership, Life Management and Life-Clarity to help women of any age lead their life well. Leadership is often thought of as something only for people in positions of authority, or only needed in large corporations, or as a tool unfortunately used to manipulate others. This is not the case! Leadership is for everyone and leadership is required of everyone!
Just as businesses apply leadership and management principals and practices, so can each of us, and doing so makes a huge difference in how stressed out we feel. Personal leadership also helps us create more clarity in life, allowing us to create richer and more satisfying lives. Time in nature draws out the leader inside of us all. Wilderness adventures are the perfect setting for growing personal leadership insight and skills!
What is the Coaching process?
Our coaching process brings self-awareness and insight along with space to reflect on what is truly important to you in life. Reflection, observation and openness is what makes our coaching so powerful, especially when the process is fueled by a willingness to experiment with new thoughts or behaviors. Coaching conversations and opportunity to experiment with personal change flourish while outdoors!
While the process depicted below progresses sequentially around the circle, your coaching experience may not develop in this exact format. This is totally fine! This 5 element process provides a simple structure for coaching and while many coaching discussions typically evolve in the order depicted below, some will cover the 5 elements in a different order. Additionally, some coaching engagements will go through the process multiple times, spend an unequal amount of time on one or two elements, or return back to specific elements after completing the circle once. Any pattern is fine!
Why Wilderness Coaching?
Scientific research and personal experience have proven to me time and time again that the human mind, body and soul come alive in natural spaces. A few years ago I (Jessica Johnson, Discovering Wilderness Owner & Maker) took a deep dive into the literature around the profound positive experience many people have when out in nature. I’m convinced that taking my coaching, counseling and yoga outdoors, into nature’s classroom, is by far the best location for me to do my work. Want to read more of the work that convinced me that Wilderness Coaching is the way to go? I wrote it all up in a post a few years ago called Walk Your Way To Clarity. Happy reading!