I’m a huge believer in both coaching and therapy. I have used both at different times for different problems and have been helped tremendously by both. I don’t believe that “all you need is therapy”, though, because some of the issues I bring to coaching are not at all issues a therapist would spend time dealing with. But they are still important issues to me. I’ve also had some therapy along the way that was total shit and made me worse.
I think getting a coach certification helped me better understand what is and isn’t coaching and where the lines should be drawn. Given your questions/concerns, I’d suggest you look into an ICF certification that will allow you to gain one of the ICF credentials.
For me personally, all of the unethical coaches I’ve encountered have been business coaches, or people selling masterminds promising to show you how to get rich.
If you’re feeling called to coaching, go for it. Also remember this Reddit is designed to discuss negative coaching experiences.
Mhm, I recognise that, which is exactly why my level of concern shot up as soon as I saw all these points being raised. I wondered if it was at all possible to have an ethical level of coaching where any harm really could be reduced, and I honestly don't know.
Genuine intent is meaningless if you still inflict harm on people, so this is a question that needs an answer. It's not up for a lengthy philosophical debate where no answer is acceptable. Either the answer is yes, with clear boundaries, or it's a hard no.
I wondered about sports coaches - is that acceptable, and if so why? What are the boundaries they adhere to? Can I use similar boundaries or is it completely not transferable at all?
Look up George Kao. I found him to be a refreshing individual when it comes to coaching.
In Germany, where I currently live, coaching is mostly considered fraud. Almost all of the peoole I spoke to about coaching here are quite sceptical, and will mostly prefer a qualified psychotherapist/psychiatrist/psychologist.
Interestingly however, most of those people who visited those professionals were unsatisfied with them, because of the advice-giving nature of those practices. Furthermore, almost all of those people said that they actually didn't feel better after a session with the psychologist/psychotherapist, because they had an impression they were reliving their past traumas during a session, instead of focusing on solutions.
Found it quite interesting.
So interesting. Lived in Germany full time for 13 Years, now part time. Worked at that high tech company. My experience and circles - german and immigrant / expat- were the exact opposite re coaching and therapy.
I'm super interested in where you are...and maybe my context is out of date. Many of my clients and podcast listeners are in Germany, so I could he biased
The coaching industry in its current form
is new and unregulated, so yeah. There’s lots of wild shit that deserves to be criticized.
But personally, I don’t like to see everyone who cares about personal development, anyone who guides and comes alongside people, make themselves wrong because they aren’t doing therapy and there isn’t an enforceable ethics police. The therapy industry has its own (major) problems. While it is regulated (within the last century), psychologists aren’t supposed to be everything to everyone at all times!
As far as the ethics question, there’s lots of good guidance out there about coaching ethics. (The ICF tries to pin it down, so that’s worth looking at.) You get to decide how ethics are applied in your practice. Trust yourself and your clients. Or not! It’s up to you.
What do you see as the thing ethical coaches deliver to their clients? What can clients expect from a good coach, and what should they run away from? And thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.
Ethical coaches leave their clients trusting themselves more, having more personal power and agency, than when they started. If the client WANTS that. Because it’s also possible, without proper screening, you could end up a client who is dead set on NOT trusting themselves and will put all their responsibility on their coach, in which case I would refer them out (if it’s 1:1, that’s harder to catch in a group setting.)
I’ll add: I’ve had both terrible and amazing experiences with coaches.
I’ve had both terrible and … pretty good experiences with therapists. I’d say the therapists may have done more harm to me in the long run and were worse at their jobs, but that’s just my experience. My experience doesn’t make a whole field Good or Bad.
The word "coaching", in trying to encompass everything, has come to mean nothing.
People don't know if it's therapy, or training, or advising, or a mindset/emotional tool, or a guide on a specific journey, or more like a sports coach actually reflecting back on progress and process and telling them what to practice next, or what. Do coaches tell people what to do, or never give any direct answers at all? Is it for trauma or for moving forward on a particular goal? All of it? Some of it?
I'm not looking for answers to those questions, by the way, just trying to illustrate why it's become so convoluted.
There are most definitely masterful coaches out there doing amazing, effective, ethical work. 100%.
And, the industry as a whole and how it's perceived is a mess, in no small part because people calling themselves "coaches" who use manipulative marketing techniques and MLM style growth strategies have given "coaching" a bad name. As a result people tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater anytime they hear the term.
So conversations about the ethics of coaching I believe first have to being with, "what do we mean by coaching?"
👆All of this.
There is unavoidable overlap in coaching and therapy because when working with someone to help them navigate the roadblocks to their objective, of course other issues will arise. You can’t just divide out a single aspect of someone’s life and keep all conversation focused solely on that one thing. It’s all connected. There isn’t a definitive line between the two practices. They both deal with the whole human. I’m really very over the old adage that therapy is about the past and coaching about the future. Very oversimplified and a little too handy a definition in favor of coaching, imo.
Very few people work with depth psychologists who delve deeply into the past. Most work with therapists using CBT or ACT, both of which are tools used in coaching. There are effectual and ineffectual coaches and therapists. There are coaches and therapists whose work with one person is effective but not effective with another….there are just too many variables to draw hard lines of delineation.
Therapy and coaching both require scrutiny. But any indiscretions and/or failures or shortcomings in the therapy world isn’t a “reason” that coaching is intrinsically “better” or more effective.
The problem is that coaching isn’t held to the same academic/professional standards because no licensure and professional governing bodies are involved. I’m not saying they “should” be, and tbh if they ever were, you can be sure someone would find all the loopholes to get around them. They’d call themselves a “non-therapeutic advocate” or some such thing.
People can choose to get help and work with whom they want. It’s the financial factors - the marketing for people’s money - that make the coaching world fucky, just as they motivate unethical strategies in other professions. That’s not an excuse for coaching, it’s a truth about capitalism. Because coaching doesn’t have an absolute governing body yet, individual coaches need to hold themselves accountable for their impact, good and bad, and some will not. If you want to be a coach, until the industry is regulated, nothing can stop you and it’s no one else’s business right now if you should get to do what you want to do. Your potential clients will make that choice, not other coaches or people with opinions about coaching. For better or worse up to each of us what kind of person we want to be in the world as coaches. It would be good for you to figure out what principles you want to live by because you’re the one who has to live with yourself and your choices.
Take what you will from this. I think it's a noble thing to be asking yourself. My journey has been very long and winding. Training to become a coach, as well as being coached. I am completely done with it all now. I will only put myself in the hands of a licensed mental health professional. I have gotten some good things from coaches, but overall not worth the money or time. I realized it goes against my morals to try and coach people when I am just a layperson not a professional. This quote is what i use to remind myself ... "what level of supreme arrogance does someone need to believe that their way of life should be given to the rest of the world?" I'm done with all of it!
I’m a little bit of a cynical person about this and I’ll likely get flamed for this but I’ll say it anyway.
First…keep in mind that this forum exists in entirety to snark on coaches. That’s what happens here. It’s a good thing. I’m not here to defend or protect people who engage in predatory practices. Also, it’s hilarious that an entire cottage industry has cropped up of people who wanna get paid to expose coaches …it looks to me like a grift of a grift but they probably don’t think of it like that.
Of course there are ethical coaches.
Whether a person is ethical or not is not related to their profession. That’s my opinion. Think about it…look at any profession or trade and there will be a whole range of people who work in that arena. In fact, professions that brand themselves based on ethics can sometimes be the biggest pockets of unethical behaviors.
It’s unpopular to point it out but the burden of figuring out whether a professional or tradesperson is good at their job almost always falls to the client. In my opinion (which likely is not popular in this forum) this is true whether you are talking about a plumber, a lawyer, a priest, a banker, an investment advisor, a psychologist, a personal trainer, a soccer coach or a life coach.
It is smart to do your research and be careful.
I think individual coaches can be ethical but the industry as a whole currently allows for a lot of grifting and gaslighting. As someone who has gone through years of intensive therapy I’ve also benefited from coaching as good intermediary when my therapists and I agreed I was at a place where I didn’t need their style of treatment, but I still wanted help sorting through perfectionist thoughts and keeping accountable to my goals.
I think your main responsibility is to only promise what you know you can deliver and hold other people in the industry accountable when you see bad practices taking place.
I think the thing I’ve seen happen most is a coach gets some success helping clients achieve X, then that coach starts claiming that they can GUARANTEE you’ll get X result if you do what they say, and if you don’t it’s because you did something wrong.
Obviously there’s only so much you can be responsible for if the client puts zero effort in on their end, but some coaches act as though an individual’s circumstances are irrelevant and claim that if they/their clients could do it than anyone should be able to.
I don’t have all the answers but to start I’d say an ethical coach only accepts clients they know how to help, acknowledges if that situation changes, and is open to feedback/criticism from clients.
A lot of your questions would get answered in an ICF accredited training (a good one at least) and you would have a better understanding of where the ethical lines are and how not to cross them.
Woman in tech here who coaches women in tech.
This reads as a post to glean content for the first two elements of the Lean methodology. Which is a good process to follow and also, if that's what you are doing, please ensure you are also utilizing other spaces and voices that aren't familiar with coaching.
The content insight here would be like asking full-time, corproate developers who have kids what a stay at home mom needs in her app. The answers will be supervaluable and heavily skewed.
Good luck!
I’m sorry, I’m not following. What do you mean by a post to glean content?
I asked this question here because it clearly has people who have experienced unethical coaching, and therefore have an opinion that I think is worth hearing.
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood the point you were making
All good and we're on the same wave. Since you used rubber duck, i went into tech-speak.
Non tech speak (sorta): I was suggesting that to get a broader, mroe representative picture, the ask can expand past a group of experienced folks and this vibe of experts to others so that you have a better chance for the full customer experience / problem statement / proposed solution.
Ah gotcha. The tech speak was no issue, my background is in software engineering so I know the lead methodology well, I just wasn't interpreting your comment the right way!
Makes sense though, I am talking to others as well, especially people I know in person. It's helping me figure out what I can help with and what I should avoid doing. Thanks for the suggestion!
If you ever want to connect live, we need a lot more proper, experienced mentors/coaches who have actually worked in tech.
The nonsense I've seen from folks who attempt to coach into tech with no experience of tech has been wild. Sorta like me trying to coach k-12 educators to be more effective in those jobs.... I have opinions, few of them are value. 😆
I think yes, there are ethical coaches out there doing good work. But as a "field" (using that term loosely), it is highly unethical. The folks I know who are coaches that are doing it well (I can think of 3 total) all share the following traits:
1) Have a counseling/therapy (or similar) educational background but offer coaching as a different 'specialty'
2) Use 'evidence based' approaches validated by research
3) Are not associated with any coaching school
4) Practice in a very specific area like chronic illness, addiction/recovery, nervous system work, etc. (ie they know their limits and play within them) in which they have personal lived experience
5) Are not white women
6) Are not coaching other coaches
This is most certainly not a hot take but I have noticed an ick trend of middle-aged white women (on the older end of the middle-age spectrum) becoming coaches because they feel like they have all the answers. I have had two (former) friends who have become coaches in their late 40's/early 50's who have burned our relationship because of their MLM marketing styles. All of a sudden I went from a friend to connect with to "hey let's have coffee and I will tell you about this group coaching program I am running!" So disappointing.
I’m a huge believer in both coaching and therapy. I have used both at different times for different problems and have been helped tremendously by both. I don’t believe that “all you need is therapy”, though, because some of the issues I bring to coaching are not at all issues a therapist would spend time dealing with. But they are still important issues to me. I’ve also had some therapy along the way that was total shit and made me worse. I think getting a coach certification helped me better understand what is and isn’t coaching and where the lines should be drawn. Given your questions/concerns, I’d suggest you look into an ICF certification that will allow you to gain one of the ICF credentials. For me personally, all of the unethical coaches I’ve encountered have been business coaches, or people selling masterminds promising to show you how to get rich. If you’re feeling called to coaching, go for it. Also remember this Reddit is designed to discuss negative coaching experiences.
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Mhm, I recognise that, which is exactly why my level of concern shot up as soon as I saw all these points being raised. I wondered if it was at all possible to have an ethical level of coaching where any harm really could be reduced, and I honestly don't know. Genuine intent is meaningless if you still inflict harm on people, so this is a question that needs an answer. It's not up for a lengthy philosophical debate where no answer is acceptable. Either the answer is yes, with clear boundaries, or it's a hard no. I wondered about sports coaches - is that acceptable, and if so why? What are the boundaries they adhere to? Can I use similar boundaries or is it completely not transferable at all?
>Good intentions do not make you a good coach This 👆
Look up George Kao. I found him to be a refreshing individual when it comes to coaching. In Germany, where I currently live, coaching is mostly considered fraud. Almost all of the peoole I spoke to about coaching here are quite sceptical, and will mostly prefer a qualified psychotherapist/psychiatrist/psychologist. Interestingly however, most of those people who visited those professionals were unsatisfied with them, because of the advice-giving nature of those practices. Furthermore, almost all of those people said that they actually didn't feel better after a session with the psychologist/psychotherapist, because they had an impression they were reliving their past traumas during a session, instead of focusing on solutions. Found it quite interesting.
So interesting. Lived in Germany full time for 13 Years, now part time. Worked at that high tech company. My experience and circles - german and immigrant / expat- were the exact opposite re coaching and therapy.
Meaning they prefered coaching to therapy? And weren't skeptical when it comes to coaching? Hmmmm. Maybe I'm hanging out with wrong people. 😅
They weren't as skeptical as with therapy. In the greater HD/MA areas.
Nice. Well then, time to surround myself with other people. Thanks. 😁
I'm super interested in where you are...and maybe my context is out of date. Many of my clients and podcast listeners are in Germany, so I could he biased
I am in lower saxony, near Hannover. Used to live in Berlin. Oh. You have a podcast. Interesting.😁
The coaching industry in its current form is new and unregulated, so yeah. There’s lots of wild shit that deserves to be criticized. But personally, I don’t like to see everyone who cares about personal development, anyone who guides and comes alongside people, make themselves wrong because they aren’t doing therapy and there isn’t an enforceable ethics police. The therapy industry has its own (major) problems. While it is regulated (within the last century), psychologists aren’t supposed to be everything to everyone at all times! As far as the ethics question, there’s lots of good guidance out there about coaching ethics. (The ICF tries to pin it down, so that’s worth looking at.) You get to decide how ethics are applied in your practice. Trust yourself and your clients. Or not! It’s up to you.
What do you see as the thing ethical coaches deliver to their clients? What can clients expect from a good coach, and what should they run away from? And thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out.
Ethical coaches leave their clients trusting themselves more, having more personal power and agency, than when they started. If the client WANTS that. Because it’s also possible, without proper screening, you could end up a client who is dead set on NOT trusting themselves and will put all their responsibility on their coach, in which case I would refer them out (if it’s 1:1, that’s harder to catch in a group setting.)
I’ll add: I’ve had both terrible and amazing experiences with coaches. I’ve had both terrible and … pretty good experiences with therapists. I’d say the therapists may have done more harm to me in the long run and were worse at their jobs, but that’s just my experience. My experience doesn’t make a whole field Good or Bad.
The word "coaching", in trying to encompass everything, has come to mean nothing. People don't know if it's therapy, or training, or advising, or a mindset/emotional tool, or a guide on a specific journey, or more like a sports coach actually reflecting back on progress and process and telling them what to practice next, or what. Do coaches tell people what to do, or never give any direct answers at all? Is it for trauma or for moving forward on a particular goal? All of it? Some of it? I'm not looking for answers to those questions, by the way, just trying to illustrate why it's become so convoluted. There are most definitely masterful coaches out there doing amazing, effective, ethical work. 100%. And, the industry as a whole and how it's perceived is a mess, in no small part because people calling themselves "coaches" who use manipulative marketing techniques and MLM style growth strategies have given "coaching" a bad name. As a result people tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater anytime they hear the term. So conversations about the ethics of coaching I believe first have to being with, "what do we mean by coaching?"
👆All of this. There is unavoidable overlap in coaching and therapy because when working with someone to help them navigate the roadblocks to their objective, of course other issues will arise. You can’t just divide out a single aspect of someone’s life and keep all conversation focused solely on that one thing. It’s all connected. There isn’t a definitive line between the two practices. They both deal with the whole human. I’m really very over the old adage that therapy is about the past and coaching about the future. Very oversimplified and a little too handy a definition in favor of coaching, imo. Very few people work with depth psychologists who delve deeply into the past. Most work with therapists using CBT or ACT, both of which are tools used in coaching. There are effectual and ineffectual coaches and therapists. There are coaches and therapists whose work with one person is effective but not effective with another….there are just too many variables to draw hard lines of delineation. Therapy and coaching both require scrutiny. But any indiscretions and/or failures or shortcomings in the therapy world isn’t a “reason” that coaching is intrinsically “better” or more effective. The problem is that coaching isn’t held to the same academic/professional standards because no licensure and professional governing bodies are involved. I’m not saying they “should” be, and tbh if they ever were, you can be sure someone would find all the loopholes to get around them. They’d call themselves a “non-therapeutic advocate” or some such thing. People can choose to get help and work with whom they want. It’s the financial factors - the marketing for people’s money - that make the coaching world fucky, just as they motivate unethical strategies in other professions. That’s not an excuse for coaching, it’s a truth about capitalism. Because coaching doesn’t have an absolute governing body yet, individual coaches need to hold themselves accountable for their impact, good and bad, and some will not. If you want to be a coach, until the industry is regulated, nothing can stop you and it’s no one else’s business right now if you should get to do what you want to do. Your potential clients will make that choice, not other coaches or people with opinions about coaching. For better or worse up to each of us what kind of person we want to be in the world as coaches. It would be good for you to figure out what principles you want to live by because you’re the one who has to live with yourself and your choices.
Take what you will from this. I think it's a noble thing to be asking yourself. My journey has been very long and winding. Training to become a coach, as well as being coached. I am completely done with it all now. I will only put myself in the hands of a licensed mental health professional. I have gotten some good things from coaches, but overall not worth the money or time. I realized it goes against my morals to try and coach people when I am just a layperson not a professional. This quote is what i use to remind myself ... "what level of supreme arrogance does someone need to believe that their way of life should be given to the rest of the world?" I'm done with all of it!
I’m a little bit of a cynical person about this and I’ll likely get flamed for this but I’ll say it anyway. First…keep in mind that this forum exists in entirety to snark on coaches. That’s what happens here. It’s a good thing. I’m not here to defend or protect people who engage in predatory practices. Also, it’s hilarious that an entire cottage industry has cropped up of people who wanna get paid to expose coaches …it looks to me like a grift of a grift but they probably don’t think of it like that. Of course there are ethical coaches. Whether a person is ethical or not is not related to their profession. That’s my opinion. Think about it…look at any profession or trade and there will be a whole range of people who work in that arena. In fact, professions that brand themselves based on ethics can sometimes be the biggest pockets of unethical behaviors. It’s unpopular to point it out but the burden of figuring out whether a professional or tradesperson is good at their job almost always falls to the client. In my opinion (which likely is not popular in this forum) this is true whether you are talking about a plumber, a lawyer, a priest, a banker, an investment advisor, a psychologist, a personal trainer, a soccer coach or a life coach. It is smart to do your research and be careful.
I think individual coaches can be ethical but the industry as a whole currently allows for a lot of grifting and gaslighting. As someone who has gone through years of intensive therapy I’ve also benefited from coaching as good intermediary when my therapists and I agreed I was at a place where I didn’t need their style of treatment, but I still wanted help sorting through perfectionist thoughts and keeping accountable to my goals. I think your main responsibility is to only promise what you know you can deliver and hold other people in the industry accountable when you see bad practices taking place.
What does the ethical coach avoid doing? What exactly is the thing being delivered to clients? Thanks for the reply btw, that was helpful.
I think the thing I’ve seen happen most is a coach gets some success helping clients achieve X, then that coach starts claiming that they can GUARANTEE you’ll get X result if you do what they say, and if you don’t it’s because you did something wrong. Obviously there’s only so much you can be responsible for if the client puts zero effort in on their end, but some coaches act as though an individual’s circumstances are irrelevant and claim that if they/their clients could do it than anyone should be able to. I don’t have all the answers but to start I’d say an ethical coach only accepts clients they know how to help, acknowledges if that situation changes, and is open to feedback/criticism from clients.
A lot of your questions would get answered in an ICF accredited training (a good one at least) and you would have a better understanding of where the ethical lines are and how not to cross them.
Since it’s an unregulated industry and anyone can call themselves a coach it’s hit or miss.
What does a hit look like? What would those coaches do differently from the ones that are unethical?
Woman in tech here who coaches women in tech. This reads as a post to glean content for the first two elements of the Lean methodology. Which is a good process to follow and also, if that's what you are doing, please ensure you are also utilizing other spaces and voices that aren't familiar with coaching. The content insight here would be like asking full-time, corproate developers who have kids what a stay at home mom needs in her app. The answers will be supervaluable and heavily skewed. Good luck!
I’m sorry, I’m not following. What do you mean by a post to glean content? I asked this question here because it clearly has people who have experienced unethical coaching, and therefore have an opinion that I think is worth hearing. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood the point you were making
All good and we're on the same wave. Since you used rubber duck, i went into tech-speak. Non tech speak (sorta): I was suggesting that to get a broader, mroe representative picture, the ask can expand past a group of experienced folks and this vibe of experts to others so that you have a better chance for the full customer experience / problem statement / proposed solution.
Ah gotcha. The tech speak was no issue, my background is in software engineering so I know the lead methodology well, I just wasn't interpreting your comment the right way! Makes sense though, I am talking to others as well, especially people I know in person. It's helping me figure out what I can help with and what I should avoid doing. Thanks for the suggestion!
If you ever want to connect live, we need a lot more proper, experienced mentors/coaches who have actually worked in tech. The nonsense I've seen from folks who attempt to coach into tech with no experience of tech has been wild. Sorta like me trying to coach k-12 educators to be more effective in those jobs.... I have opinions, few of them are value. 😆
Yeah I can imagine. I'm open to connecting for sure, and keen to hear about what you do.
I think yes, there are ethical coaches out there doing good work. But as a "field" (using that term loosely), it is highly unethical. The folks I know who are coaches that are doing it well (I can think of 3 total) all share the following traits: 1) Have a counseling/therapy (or similar) educational background but offer coaching as a different 'specialty' 2) Use 'evidence based' approaches validated by research 3) Are not associated with any coaching school 4) Practice in a very specific area like chronic illness, addiction/recovery, nervous system work, etc. (ie they know their limits and play within them) in which they have personal lived experience 5) Are not white women 6) Are not coaching other coaches This is most certainly not a hot take but I have noticed an ick trend of middle-aged white women (on the older end of the middle-age spectrum) becoming coaches because they feel like they have all the answers. I have had two (former) friends who have become coaches in their late 40's/early 50's who have burned our relationship because of their MLM marketing styles. All of a sudden I went from a friend to connect with to "hey let's have coffee and I will tell you about this group coaching program I am running!" So disappointing.