The Problem With Coaching

Photo of water snake and lily by garten-gg from pixabay.

A longer version of this article first appeared on Medium on Feb 3, 2024.

Coaching’s dark underbelly — and how to do more than just expose it

Few things motivate me into action more than misleading representations of coaching in the media. From The Lighthouse to The Dream, these strawman “exposés” of coaching only serve highlight the industry’s most nefarious fringe actors.

They aren’t even close to sensible depictions. It’d be like if you looked at any one of the reality wedding TV shows today and said, “yep, this is how marriage works…watch out!”

I’m admittedly fascinated by this junk…in small doses. If only because it fuels a fire to create content that gives a more accurate view of this changing world.

I love being a coach, but I hate being called one

I love and hate coaching. The word, that is.

I love what it represents, the process and the experience. I hate how it’s used lately.

Like a cat holding a beloved toy gently with its front paws and kicking it away aggressively with its back ones, I want to hold onto and elevate the meaning of ‘coach’, but I also vehemently reject it.

A small flaw in my logic

My argument against the word ‘coach’ incorrectly assumes that the meaning of a word exists out there in the world, independently of minds. That the understanding of what a ‘coach’ does is immutable, like a solid object that we can observe and decide we want to hold onto it. Similar to the cat embracing its toy, that’s only partly true. There’s still the back half of the cat to reconcile.

Accepting the whole kit ‘n caboodle

There is a gigantic raft of well-meaning — and also ill-intentioned — people calling themselves coaches with little understanding of the field, its long history, its global code of ethics, or its professional bodies.

Anybody can call themselves a coach. That is both a good and a bad thing. However, the industry is currently unregulated, which tends to encourage looser interpretations of what coaching is.

All this range in what it means to be a coach allows the field to be accessible, wide-reaching, and available in myriad ways.

This variation and lack of structure also lends itself to all manner of opportunists — scammers and incompetent people who may or may not have good intentions, but are nonetheless bringing mistrust and poor reputation into the arena.

Enter the ICF

The International Coaching Federation, or ICF, exists as a global body setting ethical standards, providing certifications and promoting development pathways. The work they do helps stem the tide of opportunists and displaces the flood of incompetence.

While not the only large organising body (see the EMCC, est. 1992), they’re the biggest game going and their attempts to professionalize the coaching industry are noble and needed.

But this has its downside, too. The attempts by professional organisations to bring in structure can be seen as gatekeeping. And as well meaning as they may be, as work gets standardised, it often becomes more complicated and less accessible.

For the ICF, the primary obstacles are the high fees and overly-rigid, somewhat non-inclusive certification hoops, making it challenging for myself and others to deepen our practice in a more standardized, professional way.

Not the oldest profession, but one of them

Perhaps there’s another way to look at this tension around what coaching is and what it should be. Something that can guide us as we navigate the current state of affairs. For it is often the case that looking at our past can help us decide how to move forward.

None of this is new

While these New Gurus of coaching have been around for less than a decade, and coaching as a career is only about 50 years old, the practice of coaching is part of a speech tradition and philosophical enquiry that goes back to the beginnings of our humanity. Long before we had a word for it.

Once we began talking, we started asking questions, too

“While some argue that coaching was born in 1974 (Carter-Scott, 2010), we believe it is almost certain hunter gathers will have engaged in the use of listening, questioning and encouraging reflective practice to help fellow members of their tribe to improve their hunting skills or their sewing.”

— from The Future of Coaching by Jonathan Passmore & Rosie Evans-Krimme

The core techniques of coaching, such as listening, questioning, reflecting, planning, have always been part of conversations. What makes a coaching conversation different and elevated from everyday talk is its unique method and process — a specific structured approach that is future-focused with a clearly defined outcome.

Photo of Socrates — Classical Greek Athenian philosopher (c. 470–399 BC) by Panagiotis Maravelis from Getty Images

This talking modality is Socratic in nature, with its origins stretching back even farther.

“Socrates is regarded as one of the first coaches although the name ‘coach’ emerged much later.”

— Koopman, et. al. (2021)

Screenshot of the origin of ‘coach’ from etymonline; the personal development sense of the word is first attested in 1849.

In The Future of Coaching, Passmore and Evans-Krimme go onto connect these early conceptions to modern-day professional practices:

“While the clothing sector developed in full sight, leaving traces for archaeologists in graves and wall paintings, coaching remained a hidden communication form, until its emergence in societies where written records documented different forms of learning. At that moment, the Socratic form was born. It is often this moment which until now has been regarded as the birth of the positive psychology practice of coaching. It has taken a further 2,500 years for coaching to move from a learning technique used by teachers to a specialisation increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, which requires training, credentials, supervision and ongoing membership of a professional body.”

— from The Future of Coaching by Jonathan Passmore & Rosie Evans-Krimme

Passmore and Evans-Krimme demonstrate the developmental pathway that coaching has taken, similar to other key activities of human evolution, such as sewing or hunting. And like those practices, coaching has reached new capitalist heights, ballooning into the $20 billion dollar industry it is today. For since humanity has been using language to listen deeply, challenge others, and promote thoughtful reflection, there have been people who specialize and excel at it. And of course, those who simply excel at monetizing it.

So that’s how we got here…but where does it leave us?

Coaching is evolving; more rapidly in recent years. As this landscape changes, so does our understanding and (sometimes wild) experiences of it.

Embrace this wilderness

Meanings don’t exist objectively in the world. Even our codified references for words, such as found in dictionaries, are constantly in flux.

The benefit of this unrelenting evolution is that we can collectively and individually shape the meanings of things, including the work we do.

It’s an incredibly exciting time to be in the coaching industry. We get to define what it means to be a coach and we get to help set the standards. If only by continuing to do things in the tradition we think is most appropriate and beneficial, co-creating, improving, and redefining it as we go.

It’s not quite Wild West out here, but we ain’t settled either. There’s opportunity and opportunists.

I find this both infuriating and comforting. Infuriating because it makes legitimising this work harder.

But it also puts my mind at ease. Because as I go deeper into this field, I become more confident in the credibility of what I’m doing and the value I’m offering. Also, that I become one of the people who are upholding and representing coaching in a skilful and equitable way.

It does and doesn’t need to be said, but coaching is a profession — a full-on career path. We choose which parts to illuminate and expose as we make our way.

References:

Passmore J and Evans-Krimme R (2021) The Future of Coaching: A Conceptual Framework for the Coaching Sector From Personal Craft to Scientific Process and the Implications for Practice and Research. Front. Psychol. 12:715228. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.715228

Koopman, R., Danskin Englis, P., Ehrenhard, M. and Groen, A. (2021) ‘The Chronological Development of Coaching and Mentoring: Side by Side Disciplines’, International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, 19 (1), pp.137–151. DOI: 10.24384/3w69-k922