EP 66 - Stop Calling It Coaching If You’re Just Teaching

Stop calling it coaching if you're just teaching and if you just want to be the expert of something. I will break down 5 distinctions that separate a lecture from real transformation. If you're ready, let's begin. Are you ready to shine? Come on, it's the shiny one. You got this. My dear shiny mind, you who's watching, may I invite you to hit that subscribe button? This way, you and I are going to become partners in shine and elevate the consciousness in the world. You so much in advance, and I'll see you inside. Welcome to the Shiny Minds Show with Dr Shiny. I am Dr Shiny Unsal. I am an ICF Master Certified Coach, having transformed thousands of lives since I became a certified coach in 2010. And I also am teaching coaching. I have lectures and in classes where I break down all the coaching skills that I can transfer to my coaching students. And then those are lectures. Those are my classrooms. And as I keep seeing in today's world, people calling themselves a coach, it just shatters me. And I want to do something about it. That's why I'm coming to you today to talk about the distinctions between teaching and coaching. Because again, I'm not only teaching my own coaching education with Neuroshine technology, I I've also been teaching leadership communication strategies and emotional intelligence at UCLA Extension since 2012. I know what a lecture is and what a transformational coaching session is. I can break down the lecture with its all components versus a coaching session with its components, and then I can show you the difference and why it's important for you to know if you are calling yourself a coach. Because you have to stop calling yourself a coach if you're just teaching. And today, my goal is to put a light on these two distinct modalities of coaching and teaching so that you can walk away educated and informed about your true identity. So let's start with the very first distinction. The first distinction that separates a classroom from a consciousness expansion, a transformational coaching session, is the direction of the download, which is the expertise. If you are the expert, you are the lecturer. If you are downloading the information top-down, meaning your information is transferred to the other person, then you are basically transferring the data. So it is actually Vertical. You see that? I know something and I am going to teach it to you and I'm going to give it to you with structural curriculum. I'm going to give you homeworks and assignments and I am going to teach what to fix and what not to do with my blueprint, right? That's a top-down direction of download. So you are the expert. You are teaching it. You can perhaps call yourself a consultant, advisor, or a mentor. That's also acceptable, but that is not coaching. So let's talk about how coaching deals with this expertise. In the world of coaching, especially International Coaching Federation, the definition of coaching is a partnership. You partner up with your client in a thought-provoking and creative process. To inspire them to maximize their own personal and professional potential. You don't necessarily download the data and then give them the information. You don't tell them what to do. You don't fix their problem. You don't come up with solutions with your blueprint. That is not coaching. What coaching is in the world of the International Coaching Federation, the gold standard in coaching in the entire planet, Coaching is a horizontal download, meaning they do not need your knowledge to receive their own download. They do need your partnership, your powerful questions so that they can horizontally explore their own knowledge, their own download, and then they can hit a place which I call the nourishment moment of truth. Because a coach is a partner of consciousness expansion. A coach is a transformational partner. A coach helps the person to find their own truth, to explore and become one with their truth, to extract their truth. A coach is not somebody, okay, here's how to do it, go apply it. That is a teacher, that is a mentor, that is a consultant or an advisor. So to sum up, in this very first distinction, a teacher in this partnership is the one with the knowledge and directs and downloads their knowledge to the client versus in the position of a coach, a coach is the partner who is not the subject matter expert, who understands and accepts and acknowledges and empowers the client as the subject matter expert. Why? Because together they partner up to extract the truth that the client has. The second distinction is about the information flow, meaning the curriculum. If you have a blueprint, if you have a curriculum, if you have an Instagram automation that says comment love and then I'm going to share my blueprint what not to do in dating, then it is not your coaching system. It is your blueprint. It's your curriculum. You're basically teaching. When I was attending UCLA curriculum development programs as part of their faculty, you know what they wanted us to learn? Curriculum development. Obviously, you are, you are a lecturer, you're an instructor, you're going to teach a program, and that program is going to have a structure. You need to know how to put together step-by-step instructions. That's important if you are a lecturer. That's important if you want to create your own blueprint. Understand? If you have that, you're not a coach. You are a lecturer. You are a teacher, perhaps, like I said, mentor or advisor. Versus if you are a coach, what you do in the information flow is that you don't follow a structure. You follow energy. You obviously might have the structure to co-create a transformation together with your client. And that's what I teach as part of my Neuroshine Technology coaching education program. Because when you know what to do, when you know what kind of questions are going to help your clients to hit their own Neuroshine moment of truth, then your job is easier. It just gets easier. But again, you don't necessarily share it with the client. You just know it. It's your skill set. The structure of a program is different than a structure of a coaching session. A coaching session is for you to know and energetically follow so you can guide your coaching client to explore their own inner world so that they can hit their own truth. The whole idea about the information flow in the world of coaching is so that we can actually partner up with them. We can hold the space with them so that they can find their own truth because they are, again, the expert of their own life. The third distinction between teaching and coaching is the primary tool that is being used. I already told you that if you are a teacher, a consultant, or advisor or a mentor, you do have your structured curriculum. You have your blueprint. You have a proven system or something that you created that works for other people. So then that is a curriculum and that is the tool that you use. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you don't call it a coaching system because you're teaching your system and that is a violation of the definition of coaching in the world of international National Coaching Federation. Versus if you are a coach, the primary tool that you use is nothing more than powerful questions. You are skilled to formulate open-ended, non-judging, non-advising, and non-approving powerful questions. You are skilled, you are trained, you are specifically trained not to make assumptions, not to lead, and then not to please anyone, even if they are your dear clients, because your primary tool is self-actualization. You want them to experience consciousness, transformation, self-actualization. You are not there to give them some sort of skill acquisition. You are not teaching them a breakdown of your blueprint so that they can learn something and then they can apply something. That is skill acquisition. That is in your curriculum. That's what I do in my Neuroshine Technology coaching education program. That's what I do. I do have a proven success system, which is Neuroshine Technology. What is proven about it? Well, I have been teaching the same curriculum since 2011, since I created it. And I have not only graduated my incredible professional students from UCLA Extension, where they only experience the leadership skills and communication skills and emotional intelligence skills, part of my Nourish Shine technology, thousands of them in all over the world. But I also have specifically certified more than 500 coaches around the world and more than 55 countries is that they all use my powerful curriculum. So I am the teacher of my curriculum. I am the creator of my success blueprint, my Neuroshine coaching formula. I teach it. I have been teaching and mentoring people to acquire that skill set because again, we also do have the standard, gold standard core competencies that we need to cover within the world of International Coaching Federation. That is all about skill acquisition versus if you are a coach or if you claim to have the identity of a coach, please realize what you are doing is you are partnering up with your clients so that they can experience self-actualization. They are not there to learn your system, to apply a certain skill. That's what teachers do. That's what lecturers and instructors and educators do. Understand? So again, to sum up, the information flow in teaching is curriculum. In coaching, it's transformational, powerful questions. The fourth distinction between teaching and coaching is the goal. With teaching, your goal is to give them a skill, so that's intellectual growth, IQ, skill set, skill acquisition, curriculum, as we discussed, versus when you are coaching, your goal is to grow them emotionally, perhaps also spiritually. So it is applied wisdom, not only intellectual growth or intellectual wisdom. It is applied wisdom. Knowing something is very different than applying something. Knowing something, intellectual wisdom, sounds so cool because you keep talking about it and then you share it and you have this like infinite knowledge versus when you are able to implement it, when you're able to apply it and show it as an integrated part of your life, your identity. Who you are, the who behind the skill becomes way more valuable when the goal is all about emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence versus when you are just teaching, you're just giving them the skills and skills are making them somewhat more intellectual. Yes. More knowledgeable. Yes. But if nobody's applying it, they're not integrating that wisdom. They're not implementing it. They are not investing in the who behind the what. The what just stays alone. The skill, it just floats in the air. We want to work with the who behind the skill, behind the what. And that's why the goal, when it is an IQ, it's kind of surface level. When it is EQ and SQ, It's deep, it's integrated wisdom, and it is more lasting, perhaps for a lifetime. And the fifth and the final distinction between teaching and coaching is the outcome. When you look at teaching, it's all about correction. Go back to your primary school, your high school, or even college. What did you do? You read books, attended classes, listened to lectures, some boring lectures. And then you were corrected. You were told what to do. You were told what not to do. Perhaps you were even like yelled at and punished. Perhaps you were given homework assignments. Anyone? Projects? Yes. That is all about teaching, lecturing, and it's all about classroom stuff. That's a part of instructional design. Instruction is the main instrument. So the outcome is correction. Like, people leave your world, your lectures, feeling the need to be corrected. So the end result, the outcome is, hmm, I haven't learned it well because I am still being corrected. I still need to get approval. You gotta pass. I mean, let's talk about it. The biggest thing in the school, in the school world, in the teaching world, it's all about you gotta pass. There has to be a performance, and then you have to pass that. Guess what? In the world of International Coaching Federation, coaching education also has a component of performance evaluation, and it used to be a passing or failing score. But guess what changed today? As of 2026, what we do after we teach the coaching skills, we invite our Students are coaching students to perform their coaching sessions so that we can evaluate them and then give them formative instructions, feedback and feed forward in my language. We give them, okay, here's what you did well and then here's what you can improve. And there is no failing because if you couldn't pass, then take it again. If you couldn't perform well, then do it again. There is no punishment. There is nothing like, oh, you failed, so therefore you will never be able to do this. There's no such thing. It was mind-boggling when I first experienced this. I was like, wait, what? I, I couldn't do this and I can still go for it? It was very different than, you know, the repeats in the college world. I mean, I've never had those, but I've had friends. If they failed the semester, then they would have to repeat the entire semester, the entire year. Again, like that was the punishment that we had. We don't live in that world anymore. I mean, thank goodness. It's, it's just, hey, do it again. Okay. Well, it's, it's still corrections and it's still applications to perform well and it is needed. We cannot deny the need of it, but it's still falling under teaching. So if you're working with your clients and if you are teaching them, correcting their mistakes because your blueprint, it has a certain curriculum you're fixing, then you are certainly teaching versus if you are coaching, then the main outcome that they receive, your clients receive is, hmm, I've had incredible moments of self-reflection today. In my coaching session, I've learned more about myself than I have learned in the past 3 years. Because as a coach, you are a mirror, and that mirror has to be beautiful, clean, and reflective, not full of your own assumptions, not full of your own blueprint, not full of your own step-by-step formula or your checklist. It cannot be. That is not the definition of coaching. That is not going to grow the person emotionally or spiritually or both. Understand? So again, the whole idea about teaching and coaching is so that we are clear about the modalities that we use and we don't clutter the industry with this coaching, teaching, mentoring, advising, consulting, because they're so blurry. So if you're not clear about your service modality, then you are not really helping your client. You're confusing them, and confusion is never going to take a society to the next level. And that's what we want. Whatever that we do as coaching or teaching or mentoring, our goal is the same. Our end goal is the same. We want to level up our society, our community, our humanity. We want to create change. We want to partner up with our clients. We want to serve them at the highest levels. And if you want to call yourself a coach, please go through a coaching education. Stop looking at coaching, oh, I can just create a coaching business on the side and I can teach a few things and then just, you know, then help some people on the side. I understand you want that. I understand you would love to provide some sort of service to your clients, to people, you want to help people. And guess what you are not doing? And I will tell you as it is to you directly. You are not learning the skills of coaching. If you want to just create something and then put it out there, by all means, as long as you don't call it coaching, because in the world of coaching, the coaching education is all around installing the skills of transformational coaching. And then we have an entire industry dedicated to install these coaching skills. And if you are not respecting that, at least respect the fact that you don't know what it is. I know what you're doing is just teaching and sharing your own expertise and you want to be an expert. That's okay. So with that, with all these 5 distinctions that I shared with you, I am now inviting you to consider what exactly you're doing. I'm inviting you to take accountability, take responsibility for the work that you're putting out there to the world. And I'm also encouraging you to check out the work that we do at the Academy of Neuroshine Technology, because we work with people like you who want to make a difference, who want to help others, but perhaps they don't have the skill set to create transformations for a lifetime yet. Perhaps you want to share your expertise as a coach, but you're not ready to call yourself a coach. Perhaps you want to help your people, your network, because you know that you can. They are all coming to you for advice. I get that. And we are here to help you achieve that goal. We are here to turn you into a master certified coach at the highest gold standard levels that you are going to be proud to share. You just need to earn it. And then there are skills that you can learn because I teach it. We teach it. We have the entire curriculum that is proven and that is now being used at the Fortune 100 corporations like Pfizer and Oracle and PricewaterhouseCoopers and even United Nations. And Amazon and Tesla. We have our curriculum taken into big corporations. We are making a difference because we do have the curriculum that is proven. If that is what it is in your heart, please join us. Hello, Shiny Minds. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to tell you that this Shiny Minds show is sponsored by my academy of Neuroshine Technologies. Methodology, where myself as the founder and my hand-selected amazing elite ICF accredited coach educators are here to support you, to make you feel safe, seen, heard, appreciated, free to become whoever you want to be, and also transformed forever inside out. We are here to hold your hands and to support your growth. If you feel it in your heart to become more and achieve more, then go to shinyunsal.com, grab that PDF, and we will see you inside. Thanks for watching, and until next time, keep shining your light.