Socrates

There is nothing new about the principles of coaching, only the name that these principles have acquired over the last twenty years. Socrates' writings show that he was a prime exponent of coaching skills in his models for diplomacy, statesmanship and good relationships.

'The unexamined life is not worth living' is one of Socrates' quotes, and 'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit', and 'Let him that would move the world first move himself' - all excellent coaching maxims.

Tim Gallwey & The Inner Game

In more recent years, the term 'life coaching' was coined by sports coach, Tim Gallwey. In the 1980s, Tim discovered that his clients had greater success when he taught them how to learn than when he taught them technically how to hit a ball over a net. He hit on the notion that mastering the opponent inside is far more crucial to success than the one on the other side of the net. He put these principles into a best-seller called 'Inner Game of Tennis' and went on a lecture tour. Many businessmen (and in those days, they were mostly men) attending his lectures asked him how they could apply his inner game principles to their work. Tim coined the phrase 'life coaching' to distinguish the practice from his sports coaching. Rarely has a methodology been so inaptly named: to this day, the uninitiated assume that a life coach tells their clients what to do, bullying them into shape and deciding how they should live their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth: life (or executive, career or business coaches) are not advisors, nor instructors nor gurus with answers.