Professional coaching is a temporary consulting service typically for persons in leadership positions. It aims to support individuals, teams, and organizations to improve, deal with challenges, prevent and solve conflict, or to advance their business or organization. It is not psychotherapy.
Professional coaching is different from conventional consulting and mentoring. Both formats have the character of giving “expert advice”. Coaching aims to work at eye level with the client to jointly identify issues and work on strategies to move on. As such, it typically is more client-focused and has higher probability for sustainable development.
While leaders in the medical field tend to be increasingly interested in accepting coaching support, professional coaching is rarely discussed in science. Awareness of universities for coaching, however, increasingly offer contacts for their researchers.
One reason for this observation may be the fact that researchers are socialized to not influence their science by their own personality and preferences, but to stay completely objective. While this is certainly and unquestionably essential, science is made by humans. Humans with feelings, dreams, and aims. One of the most mis-used statements in this context notoriously made may be that of “pure fact-based” decisions. Decisions which often are severely conditioned by earlier made restrictions, “gentlemen’s” or unwritten agreements.
If you are interested in my professional science and medicine coaching service, please see my webpage.
Laura M. Schreiber, PhD, MBA 