The coaching profession is growing rapidly every day and that means there are now many types of coaching to help you achieve whatever goal or change you want. One of the best coaches I ever worked with helped me learn how to give the best presentation ever. There are coaches with a general coaching approach and there are coaches with expertise in specific industries, tools, or focus areas. Here are the most common types of coaching:

Executive Coaching

Executive coaching is helping leaders work through challenges so they can transform their learning into results for the organization,” says leadership expert Mary Beth O’Neill.

This coaching differs from other types of coaching because it concentrates almost exclusively on executives (e.g. c-suite executives) and very senior leaders in organizations.

In executive coaching, the focus is less about adding new tools and competencies and more about increasing capacities or changing a leader’s mindset and mental models. Common executive coaching challenges are managing change and transformation in organizations; improving leadership; people and performance management; and work/life balance challenges.

A core area of my coaching practice is working with executives and senior leaders to resolve these types of challenges and more. If you, or your organization are interested in learning more about my coaching and setting up a chemistry call, you can contact me to set up a time to discuss further.

Leadership Coaching

Leadership coaching is a close cousin of executive coaching. This coaching differs from executive coaching and other types of coaching in that leadership coaches help individuals from all levels of an organization (e.g. junior, middle management, HR, senior, executive, etc.) with leadership. In this coaching, the emphasis is on the core areas that make up leadership (e.g. emotional intelligence, primal leadership, leadership styles, examining the definition of leadership, creating and communicating a vision, strengths-based leadership, setting and achieving goals, etc.).

Life Coaching

Life coaching is all about creating a life worth living. It’s helping people to create a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and where they can thrive by leveraging their natural strengths and values. Whereas executive and leadership coaching might work on how an individual fits within a company or organization, life coaching works on the person and their journey in life.

Life coaching can encompass a broad spectrum of a person’s life: family and friendship relationships, finding purpose in life and work, changing habits, identifying and eliminating limiting beliefs, are a few of the areas you might cover in this type of coaching.

Health Coaching

Health coaching is a small but growing area of coaching. This type of coaching addresses health related goals or challenges (e.g. losing weight, building muscle, overcoming chronic or acute disease(s), feeling better, etc.).

It’s also common to see health coaches that focus on specific topics because of their subject matter expertise. For example, the Ketogenic Diet is a popular approach to losing weight. My good friend, Kevin Davis at Our Ketogenic Life, is a health coach who helps people lose weight and get healthy with a Ketogenic diet and lifestyle.

Behavioral Coaching

Behavioral coaches use the science of behavioral change to help people make significant changes in their lives. What this means for the lay person is that they concentrate on using evidence-based approaches to coaching. Whereas other types of coaching might focus on hard to measure (and thus hard to quantify) concepts of personality traits or constructs, behavioral coaches focus on our actions. They measure, analyze, and help us to understand how our actions – the things we do based on our beliefs and emotions – affect our ability to change something or attain a goal that is important to us.

If behavioral coaching is new to you, like it was to me a few years ago, check out my interviews with behavioral change expert Gianna Biscontini and author & researcher Matt Wallaert. My conversation with them provides a deeper dive on what behavior change is and how it might help you.

Career Coaching

Career coaches are an invaluable resource to anyone who is exploring their career or possible future careers. If you are struggling to determine what career might be the best fit for your strengths, interests, and skills, then hiring a career coach might be a good solution. If you want to decide on the next steps you should take in your career to ascend to your ultimate destination, then a career coach can help you. Anything related to discovering the right career for you or navigating will be fertile ground for you and a career coach to traverse together.

Team Coaching

Team coaches are different than other types of coaches in that they concentrate solely on teaming strategies and dynamics. Teams that are not effective because of poor communication, collaboration, and related challenges benefit greatly from having a Team Coach work with both individual team members and the team as a whole. It’s not uncommon to see this type of coaching fall under executive and leadership coaching and even career coaching. But, it’s often most effective when you have a coach focusing specifically on all the dimensions of successful teaming.

Types of Coaching: Summary

If you are looking for a coach to help you reach your goals or to make a significant change in your life or career, this is a great list to start from. These types of coaches [Executive, Leadership, Life, Health, Behavioral, Career, and Team] can all help you succeed in achieving your goals. If you are interested in working with me as a coach, please contact me to discuss further. My practice focuses on executive, leadership, and adventure life coaching. However, I have cultivated a list of trusted coaches I work with to ensure I can help you find the right coach you need to help you reach your goals.