Coaching 1 & 2 – History of coaching & Definition

Socrates, the Greece philosopher and mentor for many young people in Greece, was in fact the first coach in history. Socrates saw oneself as a mental obstetrician: so helping people to understand, but as a coach one cannot take care for the understanding. In other words, according to Socrates: one can help a woman to bring a child into the world, but you cannot bring that child yourself into the world.

So a coach can help to perform, but the real performance can only be made by the performer oneself. Socrates was very progressive by promoting that stimulating self-management by thinking is more important than instruction.
In business coaching one uses the so called Socratic system of coaching; it is coaching based on asking questions in order to stimulate to find yourself the right answer.

In business coaching there is also a variation of the Socratic system of coaching; it is called coaching by pulling comparative to coaching by pushing.