Some people are coaches, some are teachers.
Coaching and teaching and the similarities or differences are something I have been thinking about recently.
Both teaching and coaching are of course helping someone learn a particular skill or set of skills or sharing a certain piece of knowledge, and both of them are gifts that are given to a student.
One of the things that I see is teaching is providing information from the teacher to the student. It’s a more one-way interaction.
I have often viewed myself as a teacher, because of sessions such as this. I am sharing my knowledge on a skill or subject – and what you do with it is your own. You can teach on a massive scale, especially in today’s online environment. One video, on a blog post, can reach the masses.
Coaching, on the other hand, is more give and take, coaching is about feedback. Information from the coach to the student, and then feedback on progress is given back from the student to the coach. And sometimes the plays change. Coaching, to me is certainly more one on one.
So in these examples, the biggest difference is that, ultimately, teaching is about the teacher and coaching is about the student.
As I mentioned before a teacher maybe can reach 10,000 people with their message, on the other hand, it would be tough to observe and offer one-on-one feedback tot hose same 10,000 people to truly coach them.
When it comes to business you need both sets of skills. I am not saying one outweighs the other. But, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that there is a difference between teaching business (the education side) and coaching someone in business (the practical side).
Teaching is a form of education, is more academic and knowledge-based. Coaching is more practical and skills-based or job focused.
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