Coaching is called, along with others, a “helping profession” which according to the American Psychological Association (APA) can be classified as a job or position that offer “health and education services to individuals and the community”.
The APA include a list of example roles including psychiatry, teaching, nursing, and counselling, but not coaching. In addition, I often hear coaches on training courses start a coaching session by asking, “how can I help you today?”, and I hear supervisees claiming, “I really want to help my coachee”, and I notice that I also want to “help”. After all, helping others makes us feel good about ourselves, and it can feel like we are doing something of value and worthwhile, thereby fuelling our own self-worth and stroking our own ego. In addition, the desire to help and being helpful can be of use because coaching is something that can “help people move forward to create change” (Starr, 2021).
BUT let us just pause for a moment and think about what the term “help” means and signify. When we look at the definition of help it is about giving “assistance or support” or “to provide something that is useful” (Merriam-Webster dictionary).
I have been thinking about help a great deal of late, mainly because I am learning to live with being “helpless” in terms of supporting my elderly mother who is a 4-hour drive away! And I am learning that I dislike being helpless, I so want to make things better and easier for her, rescue her and be the “super-daughter fixer”! However, in doing all of this I would be taking away her power, resourcefulness, making-it better and fixing/problem solving! And so, I am reflecting on what does/could “help” and “wanting to help” really mean for us as coaches and what might it infer in one’s coaching practice?
Of course, we can justify our desire to help as a strength and an asset to one’s coaching, as it can mean that we are supporting, making things easier, facilitating growth and development etc. However, let us look at the flip side as it might also imply and infer that the individual, we are coaching needs “fixing or making better” in some way, or that as the helper we are more “sorted” than they are, and finally of course “being the helper” gives us, the coach, power over the other person. Therefore, in sum, I am left mulling over the fact that our desire to be helpful is likely to be projecting something (unconsciously) into a coaching relationship that is not helpful at all! As this projection will tip the balance in the relationship away from one of equality and undermine the philosophy of “unconditional positive regard”, as it will be saying “you are not a whole resourceful human being who can think for yourself.”
With that in mind let’s stop wanting to help and perhaps think about supporting, facilitating, walking alongside, journeying, and partnering so that “the purpose of our interventions is to mobilise our coachees’ level of excitement and energy towards development and growth” (Leary-Joyce, 2014). Also, let’s take some time to reflect and think about why we want to help so much, and identify what is our need that is being fulfilled by doing the helping. With that in mind I offer a few questions for reflection:
Starr, J. (2021). The coaching manual. Pearson UK.
Leary Joyce, J. (2014). The Fertile Void. AoEC Press, UK.
Julia Carden is an Executive Coach and Coach Supervisor. Alongside Julia’s coaching and supervision practice she is a visiting tutor at Henley Business School teaching on the Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching, MSc in Executive Coaching and Behavioural Change and heads up the Professional Certificate in Coaching Supervision.
+ 2 more
Coaching & Supervising for insight & change through Self-Awareness.