Go find a real coach
It’s not support if it doesn’t feel like it
“I’ve tried coaching three times. I guess I’m just not coachable.”
My heart sank.
She said it after a workshop I’d built around better conversations, once she found out I was a coach.
Later, we ended up in a short conversation. Nothing formal. I wasn’t even trying to “do” anything, just listening, reflecting, staying close to her thinking.
Something clicked for her.
She looked at me and said: “Wait… was that coaching?”
Why I hesitate
I always hesitate when someone asks what I do.
Not because I don’t love my work, I do. Coaching changed my life. But because I’ve seen what people think coaching is.
Anybody can call themselves a coach. No regulation, no universal standards, not even agreement on what coaching is. So when someone says “I’ve tried coaching,” they can mean anything. And too often, they mean something that wasn’t coaching at all.
Almost every client I’ve worked with has had one or more disappointing “coaching” experiences before we met.
And it breaks my heart, not just for the profession, but for what it does to the person walking away.
When they walk away
Most people don’t quit on coaching with a big declaration. They just walk away and never return, thinking: “I guess this isn’t for me.”
As a coach, knowing this hurts.
Not just because I care about the work, but because I care about the people who give up on it.
When a coaching experience disappoints, or misses the mark entirely, it can weaken people’s trust in support as a whole.
They might start (or keep) lone-wolfing it through life. Or at the very least, hesitate longer before asking for help. Not because they want to, but because they believe they have to.
But everybody needs to think out loud. Everybody needs someone to show them their blind spots. Everybody needs support. That’s how growth amplifies. Together with others.
Especially together with a real coach.
How support really feels
A lot of what people have experienced as “coaching” really wasn’t.
It was advice. Or cheerleading. Or instructing. Maybe someone with a five-step method for fixing your life.
That’s not coaching.
Real coaching doesn’t fix. It reflects. It doesn’t direct. It draws out.
It’s not about someone taking over. It’s about someone staying with you, curious, attuned, and committed to helping you hear your own thinking more clearly.
So if you’ve only known coaching as advice or cheerleading, you haven’t really known coaching at all.
And you might just need the real thing.
Rik, I really like how you show us what good coaching is all about early in this essay: "I wasn’t even trying to “do” anything, just listening, reflecting, staying close to her thinking."
Listening and reflecting back what you're hearing from someone else is such an key element in any form of communication. Thank you for the reminder.
…when i was a my brother had a football coach who was infamous for dunking kids in puddles when they screwed up…i tell this to show the depths of absurdity in the style potential of coaches (and i know you are more of a life coach, listen coach, convo coach)…when i read about the great sports coaches there is overlap, in that the goal can be to draw out someone else’s greatness…like therapists the best advice i have found is to never settle…work with the people who truly help you and leave the one’s who don’t…i mean if i judged all actors off of Rob Schneider sheesh…