Carol Wilson explores tools and skills in a new series of ‘Tools of the Trade’ that describes the basic tools of a coaching conversation or culture. This month, she examines the fundamentals of coaching: its history and what the term actually means, Training Journal May 2010

Coaching is a relatively new profession and yet, arguably, as old as human communication itself. Socrates is sometimes deemed to be the first coach because of sayings such as: “I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.”

So how did the skills we term ‘coaching’ become recognised as the method of communication we know today?