Since I started to place coaching at the centre of my business I have learnt that, when I say I am a coach, people will often ask: “Are you a Life Coach?” I have also learnt that, for some people at least, the term ‘Life Coach’ carries less-than-positive connotations. So, having fielded this question once again, I decide to pick at it a little here on my blog – and maybe not for the last time.

Of course, the question implies that there are differences between ‘Life’ and other forms of coaching. And since I call myself an Executive Coach I wonder how to differentiate between the two. Perhaps the most obvious thing to say is that Executive Coaching is for Executives and has as its point of departure questions relating to the Executive and his or her work. Most of my clients come to me because of my reputation for working with senior leaders in organisations, hence “Executive Coach”. Life Coaching, by contrast, is for anyone and has as its point of departure wider questions pertaining to the individual’s life as a whole.

What does this mean in practice? Perhaps it’s worth saying that Life Coaching will often embrace questions of work whilst Executive Coaching will often embrace the wider questions of life. This can happen both in a personal and in a wider sense. Beginning with a personal example, it’s often true that when an Executive faces up to a new challenge or sets out to learn something which will support his or her career progress, the same challenge or learning need is likely to show up in all sorts of areas. Perhaps the leader who finds it difficult to place limits on the freedoms afforded to staff will also have difficulty saying ‘no’ to his or her children. Or maybe the Executive who decides to address problems in his or her marriage finds over time a renewed passion for work as things get better at home. It’s always been my experience as a coach that the questions we ask ourselves about our work have resonance elsewhere in our lives.

And in case we think that work is something separate from life, it may be worth asking ourselves what our current global economic and political situation is here to teach us. As Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government today investigates the role U.K. bank directors have played in creating our current economic situation it seems to me that one question is waiting to be asked: how do we want our business and organisations to contribute to our lives? Maybe we would also do well to ask whether our goal is to create businesses and organisations which serve us in creating lives worth living or whether our goal is to devote our lives in service of our businesses and organisations.

And as I write I recognise that this posting opens up a subject whilst leaving many questions unanswered. What, for example, distinguishes the ‘Executive’ from the ‘Life’ Coach? Why does the term ‘Life Coaching’ have less-than-positive connotations for some? And does that imply that Executive Coaching is in any way superior?

And since these and other questions are going to wait for another day I invite you to add your questions to this list via the comments link below. I’d love to answer them – in good time.