What is the difference between coaching counseling and discipline

There exists an overwhelming body of research and scientific evidence that proves the effectiveness of counseling. Empirical data confirms that psychotherapy works to solve a range of issues such as depression, stress, anxiety, relationship issues, and overall psychological wellbeing.

While still a relatively new discipline, coaching is now one of the fastest growing professions in the world, due to its impact in effecting change. There are also many documented reports in such areas such as performance coaching, life coaching, career development, and team building.

Counseling primarily tackles underlying psychological issues. It is a psychological process that deals with issues such as stress management, career development, anxiety, depression, self-confidence, self-esteem, loss, trauma, abuse, trauma, work-related problems and even relationship issues.

Coaching on the other hand deals primarily with such issues as personal development, business development, performance issues, and even personalized executive coaching for career development.

It also deals with groups of individuals like management teams, organizations, or sports teams. A counselor will help their client build both their personal and psychological well-being. Since a counselor works at the core of the individual, they help their client overcome their perennial stumbling blocks to succeed. Counselors seek out and help to address deep-rooted fears and blocks that a coach is not trained to address.

A coach helps in crafting strategies, action plans and even exercises which the client can use to clarify their goals and the required steps to achieve them. By rallying their clients towards their goals, coaches are a great source of motivation and spur action through accountability.

A coach can get their clients pumped and raring to go, especially in the near term. However, coaches are generally not trained to handle deep-rooted blocks to success. Therefore, coaches often r efer their clients to professional counselors whenever they detect underlying psychological issues that cannot be resolved through coaching. Psychotherapy can be daunting and even frustrating to clients, especially when it over-emphasizes on old techniques that dwell on their past.

Reach an understanding on a corrective action. Make sure you and the employee know what is expected of each other. Identify follow-up steps and dates.

Meet again with the employee to review performance. Recognize improvements that have occurred. Incorporate unacceptable work performance in performance evaluation. Guidelines for Writing a Counseling Memo accompanied with samples Note: These guidelines are intended only to be a general framework for counseling and may not be appropriate under all circumstances. Counseling and Discipline Counseling Forms. Improving Performance or Conduct Through Counseling.

Disciplinary Action. Addressing Difficult Behavior. Ask yourself:. If you answered yes to any or all of the above, coaching may be the first step to remedy the situation. If coaching is the best decision, meet with anyone who has been involved with training the employee. According to the book Smart Questions: The Essential Strategy for Successful Managers by Dorothy Leeds, you should ask yourself: What do I want this person to know or do as a result of our meeting and future training?

What is the best way to give the additional training or information? Who is the best person to carry out this training? How can I reinforce the training and what follow-up is needed? Discipline actions are appropriate if you need to revisit the issues addressed in coaching after identifying and delivering what was needed for improvement.

Disciplining an employee is also warranted if you have talked to the employee about the performance, skills or experiences required of the position but there is limited or no improvement. If the employee has exhibited behavior or performance issues in areas such as safety violations, harassment, illegal or unethical behaviors, discipline actions are appropriate. A verbal warning would normally be the first step in addressing issues after coaching. However, if a behavior needs to stop immediately, such as harassment or illegal behavior, or if the employee was previously counseled and received a verbal warning but no change is seen, you should document through a written warning.

Termination is a natural progression from previous written warnings or a result of investigation of unsafe, illegal or unethical actions taken by the employee.

Never terminate an employee on the spot. Investigate even for the most egregious behaviors such as theft or harassment.

The employee should be directed to leave forfeiting any company equipment, keys, etc. Consult a professional on laws regarding suspension with or without pay.

Before termination, consult the experts, including human resource personnel, your attorney and CPA to be aware of federal and state laws and potential legal issues. This article is for informative purposes only and is not to be construed as legal advice.