Reformed Advice-Givers

One of the core ideas in coaching is that the coach is supposed to help the client discover their own solutions and not give advice. The posture of teaching, being an expert who instructs another, usually is considered anathema to most coaches. This idea is not just one of many elements to successful coaching. I think you can make a strong case that it’s one of the few foundational paradigms on which the coaching industry and movement is built. However, after talking with hundreds of professional coaches and training coaches professionally I have noticed an ironic motif. It seems that the vast majority of people who are eager to become coaches—people who pay noteworthy amounts of money to be trained as coaches—self-describe themselves as prolific advice-givers. Certainly, by the time they complete their training they hold the value of drawing ideas out of others rather than offering their own ideas. But coming into the program, a great number of the coaches I know name that aspect as one of the most significant changes they had to make to become an effective coach. And, to be authentic here, that would be my story as well.

So my questions are: What is it about coaching as a field that draws people whose “natural” posture is antithetical to the coaching field? Is it a misperception in how coaching is understood? Is it something in the personality wiring of would-be-coaches? If this sounds like your story, too, how do you explain it in your own life?

Coaching vs. Counseling

Coaches talk a lot about the difference between coaching and counseling. It makes sense. They are similar enough that defining differences in the industries is necessary. And I certainly think there are significant differences. However, I think that one of the differences is harder to define in real life than we coaches make it out to be.

We say that counselors deal with areas of brokenness or woundedness in their clients, whereas coaches work with people who are basically healthy and functional. In essence I agree with this. But in practical experience I find this distinction to be a very fuzzy line.

Here’s my question for people to comment on: What level of brokenness, pain, or woundedness requires a counselor approach vs. a coaching approach? Or asked another way, how much healing work can a coach be involved in with a client and still be truly coaching (and not counseling)?

I look forward to hearing how you handle this is your coaching business.

Scott Wozniak