What is Inner Game Coaching?

What is Inner Game Coaching?

Essentially, this is a way of describing ‘coaching at depth’, or your ability to help someone at a transformational level when the change they need on the outside requires a change on the inside.

The phrase was invented by Timothy Gallwey, who was an elite sports Coach at at time when tennis became incredibly competitive. In his book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’, he wrote that Coaches needed to move past technique and knowledge sharing and support their players to become champions in this field by coaching to the ‘inner game’.

He wrote that ‘in every human endeavour there are two arenas of engagement: the outer and the inner. The outer game is played on an external arena to overcome external obstacles, to reach an external goal. The inner game takes place within the mind of the player and is played against such obstacles as fear, self-doubt, lapses in focus, and limiting concepts or assumptions. The inner game is played to overcome the self-imposed obstacles that prevent an individual or team from accessing their full potential.’

This is the type of coaching that is sometimes described as ‘Life Coaching’, but I personally feel that this term confuses people into thinking that it does not occur in organisational or small business coaching.

As a Coach, I work with people across many different markets (organisational and personal contexts, as well as small business) and I can tell you that internal barriers are part of the human condition. The ability to confidently work to change a belief, clear an unresourceful emotion that is a barrier, or even help someone access a positive emotion (like confidence) is common to supporting people across any context.

If this article has been interesting and you would like more information on this topic, I discuss this in my Free Online Course – ‘Introduction to Coaching’, click through to learn more.