Good advice?
Many people are looking for professional support in their professional and private lives. But the supplier market is confusing. A guide.
Sometimes some people are faced with a big decision that they don't dare to make on their own - be it the step into self-employment or the separation from the partner. More and more people are now looking for professional advice on this: Anyone who is self-reliant goes to a coach. The term comes from the English word for coachman - the one who brings the horses safely to their destination. From the middle of the 19th century, in the Anglo-American world coaches were tutors who prepared students for exams and sporting competitions. The term finally found its way into the German-speaking world through sport.
In the 1980s, coaching as an individual advisory service was still largely reserved for top managers. In the meantime, ordinary people are increasingly affording an advisor who is supposed to help them along the way, either professionally or privately. The coach meets with the client - called the coachee - regularly over a period of several months to help them deal with their problems. The advice is usually "client-centered", which means that the coachee himself determines what the content is about. This is an important difference to psychotherapy: While the diagnosis and treatment of mental distress depend more heavily on the expertise and experience of the therapist, coaching focuses on the wishes and assessments of the client. However, the boundaries between counselling, coaching and therapy are fluid…
