The Enemies of Coaching

By Aboodi Shabi

Introduction

The quote I most often share with students in our coaching programmes is from Carl Jung:

“Learn your theories as well as you can but be prepared to set them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.”

As coaches, we may encounter several pitfalls that can get in the way of our coaching relationships and this piece explores some of them.

It is not meant to provide answers or solutions, nor even to be a way to measure our coaching abilities but is more an exercise in exploration and reflection.

It’s best to approach these enemies of coaching from a mood of lightness and curiosity, rather than from the perspective of looking for a definitive statement or a need to get something right.

1) Being over-focused on solutions

An important function we provide for our clients, and frequently a consciously articulated reason for seeking a coach in the first place, is to help them explore solutions to their dilemmas.

However, by focusing on reaching a solution too quickly, we miss out on the possibilities that might occur through our explorations.

There is great pressure on all of us to find answers to every dilemma we face, as if not knowing or being in the question is somehow a sign of weakness. For many people, merely having the opportunity to stay in the question, to explore without knowing where we might end up, is a real gift – an easing of the pressure under which most of us live most of the time.

Coaching misses something if we can’t create and savour this reflective place. In this place we offer a different way of being to the client, which has real value in itself – we’re not just giving them more of the same or more of what they already have and which doesn’t always serve them.

2) Needing to know

Our need to know is closely linked to our need for solutions. When we are faced with uncertainty, we have a tendency to cling to what we know. A coaching conversation is a place to explore not knowing.

It’s not always comfortable, and yet it’s essential if we are to create the space to allow the client to just explore. Rumi said: ‘Sell your cleverness, and buy bewilderment’, and the more comfortable we are with bewilderment, the more room we give our clients. The more we need to know, the more we limit the space, the more we inhibit the blank canvas.

3) Not paying attention to the coaching relationship

The relationship is fundamental to the coaching; it provides the context for coaching and is much more important than the content. A prime element is trust without which coaching cannot happen. We ignore or overlook it at our peril.

When the client trusts the coach, then a kind of sacred space is created, where the client is ready to step into the unknown and sit with their uncertainty and doubt. The coach becomes their guide on the journey they are embarking on.

4) Needing to please the client

A client may come to a coach for help in achieving particular goals which, although laudable, create a narrow definition of successful coaching. If the specific outcome is reached, I can be said to have pleased the client, but have I really served them? Have I enabled them to explore beyond the paradigm in which they think and live? If all I do for a client is help them get more of the same, then is that really coaching, or is it merely consulting and goal-setting?

When I am willing to risk not pleasing the client in order to serve them by helping them to explore at a much deeper level, then there is the space for masterful coaching to happen.

This is not at all to suggest that the coach knows best, but that a coach’s attachment to pleasing a client can get in the way of truly serving them.

5) Focusing on techniques

As coaches we use different techniques and approaches, each of which has its place and is of value in our work. But by focusing our attention on the technique, then it’s no longer on the client and we are no longer present to them. It’s a bit like dancing with someone with our attention being on the dance-steps, rather than our dance partner – the dance stops happening.

We can work to keep our techniques and tools in the background, trusting that they will appear like guide-points when they are needed along the way.

6) Discomfort with emotion

People’s lives and work offer little or no place for emotion. Many argue that emotions have no place in coaching. But we are emotional beings. As Daniel Goleman argues, everything we do is based on our emotions (emotion means a pre-disposition to take action). We need to create a space for our clients where they can bring all of who they are.

If we are uncomfortable with emotions in ourselves, or others, then we cannot be fully present. If a client is sad, for instance, and we are uncomfortable with our own sadness, then our discomfort will, consciously or unconsciously, impact on the coaching conversation and tend to move both of us away from the sadness. That deprives the client of the value of experiencing what they really feel and legitimising it as part of who they are.

7) Needing to be positive.

A need to be positive creates a pull away from negativity, which can inhibit a coaching conversation where a client is expressing negative emotions or thoughts. For example, a client who has just been promoted may feel excitement at the possibilities the new role will offer, but also doubt and fear about their capacity to perform at that new level, and they may have nowhere else to explore those doubts.

Or a client may report feeling ‘stuck’. By providing a space where the client can explore their ‘stuckness’ they may allow themselves to see it from a different perspective and to see what develops.

If we are caught up in our need to focus on the positive, our capacity to honour our clients for where they are is seriously limited.

8) Heaviness

One of the most important moods of coaching is that of gentle lightness.

Clients can often feel very stuck and very serious about the situation they are facing. If we coaches, too, are caught by that mood of seriousness, then it’s as if we become two people running around inside the problem running around trying to find a solution, and then, of course, we can no longer serve the client.

By keeping our lightness, we are more able to serve the client and help them explore from a wider perspective. And we should never forget the importance of humour in coaching. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously, and being able to laugh at ourselves is a real opportunity to move forwards.

However, being light is not the same as being trivial, and it is not about positive thinking either. We need to respect the client, to create a space that absolutely legitimises them and their experiences, while at the same time not being caught up in their ‘story’.

It’s not always an easy balance to find, but it comes with practice, and more practice.

9) Wanting to be ‘a good coach’

Someone who is attached to being a ‘good coach’ will not be present to their client. They will be inhibited, reluctant to take risks, and will play safe.

We will never really do great coaching if we’re not willing to run the risk of making mistakes; being preoccupied with being a good coach might reduce risk, it’s true, but it also kills off the possibility of great coaching where we really connect with our clients.

10) Being ‘coach-like’

As coaches we can take ourselves and our work too seriously. We talk about the need to be coach-like, to walk the talk. The danger here is that we can forget that we are, like our clients, flawed human beings, who sometimes make mistakes or do things that show ourselves as less than great.

In many ways, this is one of the biggest enemies of coaching. If we are not comfortable with our humanity, with our own fallibility, then how can we fully be present to our clients in their humanity? How can we legitimise our clients in their messiness, if we can’t accept our own?

Indeed, it’s our own experience of our human struggles, our painful experiences, that help us to meet others in their struggles. Those experiences where life brings us to our knees help to forge us as coaches able to truly meet and hold our clients in their darker moments.

On a wider level, we don’t serve our profession by being pre-occupied with being coach-like – we need to be human, and to be seen as being human, otherwise we set coaches up as coaches gurus who somehow hold the keys to a “sorted out” life, rather than just fellow journeyers.

Conclusion

We cannot – and probably should not even attempt to – “defeat” all these enemies of coaching, but, as we continue to reflect on our practice we can identify areas for our own development to help us get closer to connecting with the coachee – and do our own on-going personal work. As Hassidic wisdom says, “if you want to raise someone from the mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reaching a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then you can take hold of them with strong hands and pull them and yourself out into the light.”

? Aboodi Shabi – 2024

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About Aboodi Shabi - Lecturer in Coaching for Behavioural Change at Henley Business School

?With over 25 years' experience as a professional coach and trainer, Aboodi has been working in executive coaching and coach training since the mid-1990s and has several years of international coaching, training and leadership development experience. He has delivered coach-training programmes and worked with executives and teams all over the world, in sectors ranging from non-government organisations to financial services, pharmaceuticals and media.

?Aboodi teaches on Henley Business School's coaching programmes and is module convenor for the Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching programme. He also plays an active role on Henley Business School's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

?Discover more about the Henley Centre for Coaching: Coaching | Henley Business School