A flourishing community: counsellors who coach
Coaching Today, October 2024

My relational, systemic and solutions-focused way of being with clients is ‘about being present as a human being first; as therapist second’.¹ With this in mind, my aim here is to share with you what I think it means to be a dual practitioner of coaching and counselling or psychotherapy. My hope is that you’ll leave with some clarity about what practising psychotherapeutically informed coaching can look like. I hope too that this will inspire you to feel, like me, excitement and curiosity about working with clients, both at relational depth and with forward momentum, and that you’ll know what steps to take next.

Coaching: the story so far

In 2003, Michael Carroll famously described coaching as ‘the new kid on the block’.² Twenty years later, the coach-therapy sector is an excitingly evolving space, with a growing evidence base and a flourishing ‘dual practitioner’ community. This growing presence is perhaps reflecting our changing world. Nobody needs reminding of the unprecedented events we have witnessed in recent times: the global COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, #Metoo, the cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine, the Israel/Gaza conflict and more. Much has happened in such a short space of time, causing noticeable shifts in our collective consciousness. With organisations and communities increasingly recognising the need for mental wellbeing support that also builds capacity for progression and positive change, demand for the unique combination of skills that dual-trained coach-counsellor practitioners hold is rising. 

At the turn of the century, professional bodies including the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), and later the Association for Coaching (AC), were established to regulate the ‘Wild West of coaching’.³ Since then, significant research into whether coaching ‘works’ has been undertaken. The consensus is that coaching is an effective methodology for facilitating positive outcomes for clients⁴, with at least 80% of people who choose coaching faring better than those in the same circumstances who don’t.⁵ 

What are the differences between coaching and therapy? 

As with counselling and psychotherapy, where modalities include person-centred, psychodynamic, existential and CBT, there are many different ways to practise coaching. Alongside the prevalence of sports coaching, there is executive coaching, life coaching, business coaching, NLP coaching, somatic coaching and an array of ‘niche’ coaching practices, including relationship, parenting, retirement, menopause and divorce coaching. 

Debates have raged, with no definitive conclusions drawn, about the perceived differences and boundaries between coaching and psychotherapy. Comparisons include a ‘present’ (coaching) versus ‘past’ (psychotherapy) focus; a highly functional (coaching) versus dysfunctional (psychotherapy) client base, and a focus on business performance improvement versus personal healing and recovery.^6,7 In 2002, Steven Berglas controversially warned of the ‘danger’ that non-psychologically trained coaches might ignore deep-seated psychological problems they don’t understand, leading to negative outcomes for both the client and the organisations they work for. Others are less catastrophist, concluding that, if coaching fails to investigate the ‘whole human’, the risks are more superficial than dangerous.⁷ 

Western contends that, while modern-day coaching seeks to work with the ‘celebrated self ’, the ‘wounded self ’ will inevitably surface in the coaching room, and coaches must be able to work with all parts.⁸ Kilburg supports Berglas’ assertion that, in the wrong, ‘untrained’ hands, certain coaching interventions can do harm, but also highlights the risk that dual-trained practitioners who trained first as counsellors may focus on psychotherapeutic material that feels familiar and comfortable, rather than the work most necessary for executives operating in a business context.⁹ Others support this, suggesting that a lack of organisational awareness in the ‘therapist-turned-coach’ population is just as likely to lead to ineffective outcomes for clients and their businesses as a lack of psychological awareness in the coach-turned-therapist.¹⁰ 

The EMCC states: ‘Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential’¹¹ (p3). Clients use coaching to learn about themselves: 

‘Coaching is facilitating the client’s learning process by using professional methods and techniques to help the client to improve what is obstructive and nurture what is effective, in order to reach the client’s goals’.¹¹ (p3) 

So, while the consensus is that coaches can work with clients who are experiencing what we might call ‘everyday distress’, including feelings of anxiety, worry or despair, the purpose of coaching is not to explore at depth or aim to heal deep emotional wounds or trauma. The BACP Coaching Competence framework states that coaching clients should ‘have enough psychological resilience to engage proactively with what can sometimes be a challenging process’¹² and concludes: ‘Coaching is therefore not generally suitable for clients who are having difficulties with day-to-day motivation and functioning, or who are experiencing, and seeking relief from, persistent and significant distress’.¹² 

I think it’s helpful to bring us back to the reason why we do this work – to help people. Clients come to both coaching and therapy because they want, or need, something in their lives to be different. Ultimately, coaching is rooted in a person-centred belief that people can ‘self-actualise’¹³, given the right conditions. The focus in both domains is on the client’s agenda; both centre around thoughtful conversations, draw on some of the same psychological theories and techniques, and regard the client-counsellor relationship as paramount. Coaching research supports findings from the psychotherapy domain that a strong ‘working alliance’¹⁴ is all-important, and report that a coaching relationship typified by factors such as empathy, unconditional positive regard, trust and transparency is necessary to facilitate positive outcomes.¹⁵ Qualified coaches and therapists alike are also bound by the ethical codes of their respective professional bodies, which require practitioners to work to high standards of ethical and professional practice. 

Integrating coaching and therapy ethically and with impact 

How does this integration benefit clients seeking to change? It has been widely acknowledged in the coaching community that a psychological understanding grounded in science underpins the process of human change, and that ‘psychological mindedness’¹⁶ is linked to positive outcomes for clients. 

In the world of therapy, integration is the name given to a way of working in which a practitioner makes use of more than one modality, with the aim of meeting each client’s needs more completely than the practitioner believes a single modality can.¹² (p17) 

In the context of the coaching competences, ‘integration describes a way of working that involves the intentional use of both therapeutic and coaching theories and techniques’.¹² (p17). The intentional use of psychotherapeutic theories and techniques has been documented as follows: 

Person-centred 

Lemisiou reports that a ‘person-centred’ psychotherapeutic approach to coaching assists in the development of the levels of emotional and social intelligence competence, resulting in better leadership performance and potential shifts in a client’s ‘internal frame of reference’ that may impact outcomes beyond the completion of the coaching relationship.¹⁷ 

Psychodynamic 

Critchley contends that a coach who practises relationally, needs an understanding of the nature and implications of a client’s unconscious psychological processes in order to facilitate positive outcomes.¹⁸ Kilburg suggests a coach who can recognise and work with unconscious material, in the form of defensive reactions or dysfunctional patterns of thinking, is able to explain and change unhelpful or harmful patterns of decision making and behaviour that clients have been unable to effectively identify or address.⁹ 

Working in the ‘here and now’ 

Cox and colleagues describe the efficacy of using ‘Gestalt coaching’ with clients to achieve significant, positive developmental change.¹⁹ The co-created ‘here-and-now’ relationship is the central vehicle for transformation and development in coaching, with coaches who draw on Gestalt therapeutic influences being able to acknowledge the influence of past experience, while remaining focused on how they manifest in the present. 

Working with emotion 

The ability of an integrated dual practitioner to effectively contain and explore the emotions of clients within a coaching relationship is seen by both clients and coaches to heavily influence positive results.²⁰ De Haan suggests that experienced coaches with the appropriate psychotherapeutic training are most able to draw on their intuitive understanding of psychodynamic unconscious processes in ‘critical moments’ within coaching, and to possess the ability and courage to put these powerful observations forward to the client in a way that will allow them to be received, and insight and change to be created.²¹ 

Why do therapists and coaches want to integrate their practices? 

Sigmund Freud famously stated: ‘Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness’.²² Oh the optimism! Of course, things have moved on considerably since then, and while all psychologically trained practitioners believe that alleviating misery is important, the coaches among us wish to help our clients go much further than this – not just to survive but to really thrive. While every dual practitioner journey and approach may differ, it seems many of us find the dynamic tension between an excavation of the past and proactive movement towards the future simultaneously energising, joyful and fulfilling – for us and for our clients. 

Within the coach-therapist community, one of the current topics of discussion is what we call ourselves and how we describe our integrated practices. Some of the different ways my peer group with similar training across coaching and therapy describe what they do include psychological coaching, therapeutic coaching, and personal consultancy (we’ll call this Group 1). Others who are dual-trained continue to describe their practices as distinctly separate, and may use the terms executive coaching or life coaching, and/or counselling or psychotherapy, depending on their training and their understanding of what a client needs from the work (Group 2). Many highly experienced dual practitioners focus solely on delivering coaching, usually with senior executives, and openly share with clients that their psychotherapeutic experience informs their way of being and approach to working with coaching clients (Group 3). 

Another commonly asked question is how we ethically and professionally contract to work with clients. Again, it varies from practitioner to practitioner, but practitioners in Groups 1 and 3 will usually explain their approach as drawing on their coaching and therapy skills and backgrounds throughout the relationship, and usually have a single paper contract for clients to sign. Practitioners in Group 2 may have two separate contracts and, depending on the client’s initial presenting issues, will discuss and agree with them the approach they feel is the best fit. 

What do you need to know before you start on this journey? 

If any of the following statements ring true for you, then adding coaching to your therapeutic skillset could be something to explore further: 

• You feel insight alone doesn’t necessarily lead to change
• You believe people have the potential to achieve behavioural change faster than standard therapeutic processes allow for
• You want to support clients’ need towards the end of therapy for something more future-focused
• You feel your business background or strategic mindedness may help your clients
• You feel the energy and goal-focused forward momentum of a coaching relationship will suit your personality. 

But there are some issues you need to be aware of. While the world is changing and demand for coaching is growing, the therapy-coaching world is still predominantly white and middle-class. Although the counselling profession is largely female, the upper echelons and thought leaders of the coaching world are still mostly male. To fully represent the client base, we need more diversity in coaching, across gender, race, class, religion, sexuality and disability. I am proud of my own working-class roots and my confidence continues to grow to be truly who I am, with everyone I meet. We need to professionalise this evolving area as effectively as possible. We are working to avoid a ‘new Wild West’ of therapeutically informed coaches, and I’m hopeful that the next few years will see progress in formalising training, registration and accreditation for coachtherapists, in alignment with the structures and frameworks established by the professional bodies for counsellors. Collaboration between professional bodies from both the therapy and coaching worlds will be necessary. 

If any of this whets your coaching appetite, my advice would be to reach out, connect and get your questions answered. My experience of the coaching-therapy community is that it’s inclusive, supportive, authentic, friendly, warm and passionate. So, get in touch with a group or join a network and start to feel your way into what might be right for you next. After all, to use a classic coaching question, What’s the worst that could happen? And what’s the best?