Why Coaching?

by Charlotte Tennant
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There’s a lot of noise around personal growth these days, 5 step plans for greatness, morning routines to fix your life, and manifest your-dream-boat style messaging. Life coaching is often lumped in with this woo woo pseudo-science way of seeing things.

But coaching with a well trained life coach has proven benefits (more on that later) and is based on structured conversations that help you think more clearly and act on what matters to you most. Not those surface wants and hopes but the deep stuff, the stuff that would allow you to live the life that works best for you. Unlike therapy or counselling, coaching isn’t about diagnosis or unpicking your past, and unlike mentoring, it’s not about someone telling you what to do or sharing the path they followed. Coaching assumes that you are the expert on your own life and the role of the coach is to walk alongside you, asking questions (sometimes even the difficult ones), offering perspective, and creating space for clarity and action.

It’s not about being fixed. It’s about being witnessed, encouraged, and gently challenged in service of who you’re becoming. Coaching isn’t a replacement for therapy. But for many people, it offers a different kind of support, especially when you're looking to make a change, reconnect with yourself, or navigate uncertainty with more intention.

What Happens in a Coaching Session?
One of the first steps is clarifying where you want to go. That alone can feel surprisingly powerful. You might begin with something vague like “I feel off-balance” or “I want to change career but I have no idea what I want to do.” A coach will work with you to pinpoint what isoff, what you truly want, and what would feel like progress. The coach might help you to explore your values, what lights you up, or what you’d do if there weren’t any barriers. That becomes your starting line, your goal.

But that goal doesn’t need to be etched in stone. As the sessions progress, your aim may shift and adapt. Coaching is designed to flow with your evolving sense of self, not box it in.
From there, each session is a mix of reflection and momentum. What stands in your way? What small steps might get the ball rolling? Your coach will tease out insights, challenge unhelpful patterns, and explore possibilities that don’t usually come into focus during everyday life.

What the Research Says
If you want to know whether it actually works, here’s the data:
One large review found that coaching improves things like goal setting, resilience, and self-confidence, particularly when it's focused on personal or work-related development.
Another study showed that people who had coaching performed better in their jobs and felt more able to manage stress.
Coaching in health settings has been shown to help people change behaviour and stick to it, especially when nothing else has worked.
Coaching based on cognitive behavioural principles (the kind that gets people thinking differently and taking action) consistently leads to noticeable changes in performance and personal effectiveness.
In short: coaching helps people think more clearly, take more effective action, and feel more confident doing it.

The Coaching Ecosystem
Coaching is no longer a fringe activity or the preserve of high-flying CEOs. It’s a fast-growing, global field with increasing recognition across industries, age groups, and life stages. Coaching is being used in schools, healthcare settings, small businesses, and community projects.
Why the growth? Because people are seeing results. Around 70% of coaching clients report improved work performance, stronger relationships, and better communication skills.
Coaching, in other words, is gaining ground because it meets people where they are and helps them get where they want to go.

What Coaching Isn’t
Let’s be clear: coaching is not advice, jargon, or a quick fix. It’s not about telling you what to do or selling you a one-size-fits-all plan.
Instead, coaching creates a clear-headed process where you get to hear yourself think, make sense of where you are, and decide what to do, based on your own sense of what matters. That space-making is far more powerful than many expect.

So, Who Is Coaching For?
If you’ve ever wondered whether coaching is for you, consider this:
You don’t have to be in crisis.
You don’t need to have a polished goal.
You don’t need to be a particular type of person.
Coaching suits people at all life stages, from adolescence to older age, who want more alignment, clarity, or momentum. It’s for those who sense that life could be simpler, clearer, or a bit more satisfying and want a partner in the exploration and achievement of that.

Coaching Takes Commitment
It’s worth saying, too, that coaching isn’t a passive process. It’s not something that’s done to you, and it’s rarely a single, transformative conversation followed by an effortless glow-up.
Yes, a one-off session can offer huge clarity. People often leave with a sense of direction they didn’t have before, sometimes with a surprising first step already in hand. But real change? That tends to come from showing up and doing the work, consistently, over time.

Coaching asks you to be curious, honest, and willing to stretch yourself. It works best when you come ready to reflect between sessions, test ideas, try new behaviours, and return with your sleeves metaphorically rolled up. For some people, the process takes weeks. For others, especially those navigating deeper transitions, it unfolds across months, or even years, as different layers of change reveal themselves.
There’s no single formula, but the rhythm of commitment matters. In coaching, as in most things, what you put in shapes what you get out.

Final Word (Because I have gone on for too long already)
Coaching isn’t hype. It’s a researched, pragmatic method of helping people make sense of stuff that’s stuck, tangled, or kind-of-sort-of-but-not-quite-right. If you’re curious about how it might help you, the next step is simple: start with one conversation, with no agenda and no pressure. Just an opportunity to open things up and see what happens.


References(for those who like that sort of thing):
Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A.?E.?M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta?analysis on the effects of coaching on individual?level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2013.837499 reflectacademy.nl+15research.vu.nl+15researchgate.net+15
Jones, R.?J., Woods, S.?A., & Guillaume, Y.?R.?F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta?analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12119 research.aston.ac.uk+6centaur.reading.ac.uk+6digitalcollections.lrc.usuhs.edu+6
Cannon-Bowers, J.?A., Bowers, C.?A., Carlson, C.?E., Doherty, S.?L., Evans, J., & Hall, J. (2023). Workplace coaching: A meta-analysis and recommendations for advancing the science of coaching. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.xxxxxx researchgate.net+1pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+1
International Coaching Federation. (2020). ICF Global Coaching Study. Report data cited via Coachilly.com on client outcomes.
Coachilly.com. (n.d.). Summary of ICF data showing about 70% of coaching clients report improvement in work performance, communication, and relationships. talentfactor.nl+4pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov+4tandfonline.com+4