What is the difference between coaching and counselling? You’ll probably get as many answers to this as coaches and counsellors you ask. Both kinds of support are aimed at helping you achieve more of your potential and at removing obstacles in your way.

I think that good coaching does overlap in some ways with good counselling. Both approaches will explore some of the self-imposed limits that are holding you back and preventing you getting more of what you want out of life. And both approaches are prepared to ask important questions about emotions and values, supporting you if the asking of these is, for a while, uncomfortable.

If you are finding yourself constantly tearful, then counselling is more likely the help you need. On the other hand, if you have plans that you often think about but just, somehow, can’t realise, then coaching might be a better fit. Maybe your challenge is somewhere in between. In that case, you could do worse than give a counsellor or a coach a quick call and just ask.

A few minutes on the phone with a counsellor or a coach is going to be far more useful than any amount of online reading about the difference between the two approaches. If you contact me and I think coaching is more what you need, I’ll refer you on. And any good coach, if they feel it’s counselling you need, will do the same.

Here’s my Edinburgh colleague Mandy Day-Calder, with her own take on the difference between coaching and counselling:

Coaching differs from counselling in that we would concentrate on what is happening for you just now. Our sessions would involve an exploration of your whole life – I will ask you questions and then let you do most of the talking! Using some creative visual exercises we would define a sense of how you would like things to be, where you want to make changes and then we would focus our sessions on working towards your goals by creating mini-steps or ‘actions’. In doing so we would hope to uncover what’s important to you and how you want to live your life. All sounds very ‘big’ but we would take it step by step. Though we will be working together, I will never take over or tell you what to do – you know yourself better so you are the expert… in fact you are in charge!

Coaching isn’t always easy – what learning or process of change is? It is likely that you may feel resistance along the way as familiar patterns of thinking / behaviour arise. However, I will be there to guide and encourage you – challenge and keep you on track you if need be (not ‘nag’ – I save that for my partner!) My style is to make coaching fun as well as hard work!

If you came to this site thinking about counselling, but wonder whether coaching is what you need, you can contact Mandy via mandy@achievingbybelieving.com or give her a call on 07493 068 938.