We would like to introduce our BizPsych Division of MINES & Associates. Along with high level training, organizational development and leadership development, we offer coaching to all levels of the organization. In addition to the counseling offered through MINES’ EAP programs, staff from line level to C-level can access executive coaching through MINES’ BizPsych staff. Below is a description of some of the differences between counseling and coaching.

Coaching Versus Counseling

The coach’s focus is concerned with goals and untapped potential in a person who seeks to evoke his or her excellence in life and work. Both coaching and counseling involve developmental issues and focus on awareness. Counseling encourages awareness of past experiences in order to promote insight and healing, whereas coaching focuses on untapped present possibilities in order to link awareness to action.

In counseling, the focus is often on interpersonal health and an identifiable issue, such as acute depression or relational discord that interferes with the client’s level of functioning and current psychodynamic or psychosocial adjustment. The focus is typically retrospective, dealing with unconscious issues and repair of damage from earlier experiences, according to numerous interviewees. It may even involve medication, adjunct therapies, and coordination of services. Discerning and treating pathology and relieving symptoms through behavioral, cognitive, or intervention is the domain of the psychotherapist.

The Values of Coaching

Coaching can offer employees individual attention and personal support. Individual strengths can be developed and leveraged in new ways and potential talent and skills are discovered. Coaching can provide an early detection of potential performance-impairing problems. Coachees can become empowered and motivated to perform. They can be encouraged and directed consistently toward increased self-awareness.

Patrick Hiester LPC, BizPsych Senior Consultant