Your Friend is not your Coach

I am deeply grateful for a lot in this season.? I have a job I enjoy and that challenges me, and the managers who work for me develop people with care while inspiring innovation and excellence.? Even more importantly, I am also surrounded by a lot of fascinating people who generously care about doing good.

No, life is not remotely perfect, my wife and I still fight, I still snap at my kids more than I want to, and there is a clarity emerging about the work I get to do in the world.

I have begun to embrace that there is work that consumes energy, and there is work that produces energy.? Through coaching I encounter people who are bravely choosing to face down blind spots and areas of growth in their lives.? I’m struck by our willingness to intentionally put ourselves into a situation with a person who we know will challenge us.? I didn’t get into this for myself, but I’d be lying if I did not admit how much fulfillment it provides me.

What might surprise you is how much my wife and I have argued about the legitimacy of coaching as a profession and as a need.? Raised voices, go to your respective corners, stalemates and everything in between.? She is a healthcare professional where the barrier to entry is reasonably consistent and relatively high.

Anyone can start calling themselves a coach.? Despite a governing body and a code of ethics, nothing prevents a person from calling themselves a life coach, career coach, leadership coach or whatever flavor suits his fancy while operating however he sees fit.

In one of our arguments, she said to me, “Whatever happened to talking to a friend or having people in your life that you don’t have to pay to talk something through with?”

Jordi Hernandez recommended a book illustrating the life of a legendary coach.? Bill Campbell “understood that positive human values generate positive business outcomes” writes Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle. Many Silicon Valley leaders trusted Bill with their biggest professional and personal moments.? Bill was a former football coach and eventually a successful tech executive, but he wasn’t an engineer and didn’t have the “resume” of most of the leaders whom he coached.? He also didn’t have any formal coach training (e.g. CTI, Hudson, Erickson, etc.), but that in no way diminished the profound impact he had.

He listened intently, he focused on the person(s) more than the problem, and he had deep enduring respect for the goodness and possibilities within people.? He seems to have been one of those who was born with it so he didn’t need the other stuff.

For the 17 years prior to my time at Google, I worked for staffing firms where I interviewed and hired hundreds of people for my own teams.? I got many more hiring decisions wrong than I did right, and one of the biggest red flags was when someone called themselves a “people person.”? My narrative was, oh dear, this person is going to spend a bunch of time with clients and candidates who will never translate into any revenue.

Leading and developing people has kept me engaged for more than two decades because the complexity of humans captures me.? People are the unsolvable puzzle for the curious mind.? So yep, I’m finally willing to admit:? I am a “people person.”? For those that know me, this might seem painfully obvious, but hey, it took me a while.

Although I have had roles that were coach-like throughout my 20+ years of leading teams, it was only in 2019 when I began to understand the difference between coaching and mentoring.? One distinction that trained coaches hold is that we coach the person, not the problem.? The client should gain perspective in increasingly more situations without dependence on the coach for answers.? This requires the coach to be endlessly curious about the client, without judgment, while holding their agenda.? Not focused on knowing or telling, but focused on reflecting and exploring.

Although I have completed extensive coach training, I am in the final stages of achieving certification through CTI.? My certification instructor, Sandra Cain, says that the conversation a client has with their coach should be unlike any other that they have.? With friends and strangers alike, I want to talk about the stuff that inspires us or keeps us up at night, but even those are distinctly different from a coaching session.?

A coach is hopefully friendly, but the relationship is not designed to be a friendship.

It exists to forward the action and deepen the learning.? The coach listens with compassion and kindness, but if that’s all that happens, it doesn't meet the bar.? The client? should always come away with a growing awareness of who they are, how they want to be in the world and what matters to them.? My friends listen to me, encourage me and even provide accountability, but it is not their role, nor within their professional capability, to help me see things about myself or move forward in the ways my coach requires of me.? That is not what the friend nor the friendship exists for.

This certification process has provided the structure, time and people to help me understand the magic of what folks like Bill were more naturally able to do.? Clients usually engage a coach to work through something until we find it is our relationship to the thing or something within us that actually needs the work.

Enabling and witnessing that transformation is why I do this work.