Coaching is a form of persuasion that comes from a coach. He or she is the person who supports their clients to reach for aims and goals. The coach can do this in a number of ways from encouragement to goal setting and questions. A coach differs from a counselor in the sense that he or she does not offer advice and instead works with the client to fulfill his or her needs. The coach takes very little responsibility for the client's actions and is only there for support and guidance.

The term "coaching" derived from a term used in English universities called "cramming". This term was used to describe the multitasking skills to do with controlling a horse-drawn stagecoach team. During the late 1800s, American university sports teams adopted the term coach and appointed coaches as well as managers for their games. Later in the 20th century, non-sports coaches appeared who seemed to be motivational speakers for clients wanted to achieve their goal in another sense. This could be focusing on non-directive questioning, helping clients to resolve their own problems and provoking the clients thinking.

Organizational coaching is a type of organizational development and coaching is an important aspect of helping to assess and improve the performance of one person or a whole team. Individual coaching is sometimes advertised as life coaching whereby the coach and the client create a mutual understanding of the direction of work and then being able to understand all the different factors involved. The coach helps the client in prioritizing his or her needs and then looks into improvements one can make to better themselves and the environment around them. Team coaching is very similar to individual coaching except it is done on a team basis. The coach focuses on the team's goals and devises a plan for improvement of performance, taking into account the team's current strengths and weaknesses and devising aims to maximize the team's performance.

Systemic coaching is another form of coaching whereby it focuses on effectively improving human systems and their survival. This usually signifies couples, families, communities and teams. A systemic coach will take all the elements of individual and team coaching and combine them into a plan for his or her human systems. He or she will analyze the current situation and make a diagnosis, then will assess goals both as a team and individually, and finally will create a plan whereby the individuals can interrelate with one another in their team to achieve their goals both personally and as a group. The systemic coach often starts training by helping to identify and eliminate previous problems one individual has with another to start the coaching with a clean slate.

Business coaching is a popular idea nowadays. A coach will work with an individual business owner to create a powerful business plan. It exists in all aspects of business from traditional business to e-business. Similar to business coaching is executive coaching. This type of coaching involves to executives being coached to help them implement effective strategies and allow objective feedback growth.

Dissertation coaching involves coaching graduate students who are studying Ph.Ds to help them organize their different research ideas and create a dissertation. Coaching is particularly important and beneficial in these sorts of cases as maybe the academic heads are too busy or there are not enough resources at the graduate's disposal to make them be able to write an effective dissertation. Putting in effort intoa dissertation is generally quite sporadic and therefore the coach can help the graduate regulate his or her time with continuous support throughout the project and after completion to help the graduate with his or her career path.