Brilliantissimo Coaching Company

History of coaching

Coaching as a discipline has probably been around for centuries. Certainly, the Socratic dialogues from ancient Greece were very coachlike. Also there is a lot of Buddhist wisdom in coaching. The term "coaching" as we understand it was first used by Werner Erhard (creator of the EST Training, which became Landmark Forum) in the late 1970's/early 1980's. Then along came Thomas Leonard.

Thomas Leonard was a successful accountant and certified financial planner in the San Francisco Bay area. Several of his "yuppie" clients started simultaneously bending his ear about issues such as how many children they wanted, what kind of lifestyle was important to them and when they wanted to retire. And Leonard discovered there was no one to help them make the big decisions that would shape the quality of their lives.

"These people were reasonably well-adjusted emotionally, they had happy families, and they were successful in their business and careers, so they didn't need therapists or even business consultants," Leonard recalls. "What they needed was some kind of objective alter ego who could listen to what they were saying, help them set priorities and then act as a sort of compass to steer them on whatever course they chose."

As a financial planner, Leonard was accustomed to helping people look at the big picture as well as assisting them in getting there. So he used his financial clients as a testing ground for what he originally called life planning.

"There are probably 5,000 full- and part-time coaches today." Leonard says. "We are watching the birth of a new breed of counselor who will help people get more out of life."

Meanwhile, in the UK, coaching and mentoring was being developed by The Industrial Society and at Oxford University.

Some examples of coaching results

Thomas Leonard is founder of CoachU, CoachVille and the Graduate School of Coaching.

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