What is the difference between coaching, consulting, and therapy?
One of the most common questions in the often similar fields of coaching, consulting, and therapy is how to define the difference between those three roles. When do you need a coach versus a consultant versus a therapist? The decision hinges on what you’re hoping to get out of the relationship, where you’re starting from, and how you want to tackle the process of progress.
What is Coaching?
A coaching relationship is, at the end of the day, about improving you as a person. A good coach will help you dig deep, asking powerful questions that help you identify and address whatever obstacles are holding you back from accomplishing the goals most important to you. Typically, you need a coach if you’re seeking help primarily with any of the following:
Organizing your thoughts
Working through limiting beliefs
Creating a practical and effective plan
Prioritizing goals and tasks
Setting up a system of accountability for yourself
Maintaining motivation in the face of difficulties
Identifying and overcoming self-sabotage
Of course, coaching isn’t limited to just these areas, but those listed are typical ways a coach can help you maximize your personal potential. If any of that sounds like your primary motivation for seeking outside help, then a personal/business coach is a good choice.
What is Consulting?
While coaching focuses on delving into you as a person in order to help you succeed, a consultant will help you grow by providing systems and specific advice. Typically you would seek a consultant who has accomplished what you want to accomplish, then hire them to assist you in following a similar path. Some of the ways a skilled consultant can help include:
Formulating strategies specific to your business based on their experience in the same business
Learning and implementing specific skills such as marketing in a rapid manner
Implementing specific, measurable, often pre-built systems for managing your business
Providing business-specific KPIs to measure your success against specific metrics
Again, the consultant relationship isn’t limited to just these aspects, but there are common reasons why someone hires a consultant.
What is Therapy?
The first major aspect of therapy you should know is that of regulation. In order to be considered a therapist, offer therapy services, and bill insurance for those services, a professional has to meet specific governing criteria, achieve a minimum level of education, and maintain a certain level of certification per state regulations (in the USA).
Why the extra requirements?
Therapists deal with trauma and healing, which usually involves digging into past hurts, harsh experiences, and diagnosing/treating psychological disorders. When handled properly, this process can help a person who may feel “broken” bring themselves to a normal, average level of functioning. When handled poorly, it can make things worse. Therapists help bring people to baseline, rather than maximizing potential.
Overlap
There is a significant amount of overlap between these categories in many cases. All three might, for instance, help someone deal with stress that is preventing them from accomplishing one or more life goals. The coach would tackle this from the perspective of rethinking personal habits, developing an action plan, and the like. A consultant, on the other hand, might provide a specific stress management strategy to implement, regardless of the client’s current situation. Lastly, the therapist might use cognitive-behavioral techniques to bring the client from below-average functioning to a healthy baseline.
Said another way…
coaching helps the client adapt themselves and the situation for best results,
consulting helps the client implement situational systems towards specific results,
therapy helps the client heal trauma that is negatively impacting their behavior & thoughts.
Closing
So, which one is right for you?
In general, all three roles can be helpful to just about everyone. While you may be ready to maximize your personal potential in one area (say, developing a personal productivity plan), you might need to implement tested systems in an area where you’re not sure how to operate (like with a franchise business), and you might need a therapist to help you deal with something from your past (for instance, a phobia or neurodivergent conditioning like ADHD).
The trick is to honestly evaluate where you are, where you want to be, and what seems like the most likely path to lead to your end goals.