Coaching is useless
Just like Zen, psychoanalysis and life itself.
Coaching is useless.
I have been practicing coaching for five years. I make a living as a coach. I learned from good coaches. If you asked me five years ago, I would have said that coaching is useful, but I hope I have learned something since.
Coaching is useless in the same way as Zen is useless. When we get together to meditate in Zen dojo in the mornings, we aren’t trying to become happier, or get enlightened, or become better people in any way. We just sit very still with whatever presents itself without any agenda.
Inevitably, there will be an agenda. “Oh, if I pretend really hard that I don’t have any agenda, then I will get the benefits of Zen! Maybe I’ll even get enlightened and won’t suffer anymore!” That attitude can be quite an obstacle if we don’t see it clearly.
Zen can afford to be honest about being useless because it’s free. No one is charging an hourly rate for sitting cross-legged staring at the wall (if they do, run!). But the trouble with coaching is that it has to earn its keep and so it tries hard to pretend to be useful.
I wrote about this in my essay on coaching and therapy, where I argued that more often than not the difference is slim and where it exists, therapy might be a better option. This is not an answer most coaches will like because the truth is, it’s very hard to make a living as a coach for the vast majority: there are just too many of us, and even good coaches are hard to find in the ocean of impostors because the difference is rarely clear to the client1.
So the coaching field has a strong incentive to prove it’s useful, but it’s not. Let’s put aside those coaches who are in effect trainers, e.g. B2B sales coaches. Coaching is a very elastic label, and lots of people who actually have something to teach call themselves coaches. Nothing wrong with learning B2B sales from someone who knows it.
The kind of coaching I claim is useless is a thought-provoking and creative process in service of the client’s potential. There, the coach isn’t expected to be a subject matter expert. They specialise in listening very carefully and asking good questions that help the client grow.
It is useless in the sense that is not useful. For something to be useful, we should be able to say what results we can expect from our efforts, what problems will be fixed, what change will be achieved. Coaching at its best is not useful. It’s just a process, like sitting Zen or engaging in psychoanalysis.
Speaking of which, psychoanalysis is also useless. Other therapies, like CBT, can be shown to be effective at treating, say, depression. But psychoanalysis? It makes no such promises. What an analyst offers is to sit with you and your emotions, and problems, and questions for as long as they arise, which is to say forever.
The concepts of useful and useless come from the worldview that there are problems to fix. In particular, that there is something wrong with the client and it must be addressed. But coaching, much like Zen and psychoanalysis, starts with the assumption that there’s nothing to fix in the first place. The person is whole as they are. And whatever they want to do, they’re creative and resourceful and so don’t need anyone’s help. Job done, on day one.
Yet, that’s where the work starts, too. Some of the deepest questions we have can’t be answered rationally. Who am I? How do I face suffering? What matters in life? What’s next for me? What’s my work to do? What fears do I need to face? Where am I holding back? Where am I betraying my values?
These aren’t problems to fix, and I’m sceptical of anyone promising to help others find their life purpose in a weekend course (“50% off in the next 24h”). These questions are rivers to swim in for as long as the river is flowing. Practices like coaching or meditation are process-oriented, that is, they help us engage with what’s going on, instead of being an outcome-oriented. Process-oriented practices are useless just like pure play is useless. Play is just play.
Coaching is useless in a sense that it’s not trying to do anything. As a coach, whenever I catch myself trying to help the client, that’s when I know I’m about to fall flat on my face (which I do regularly). I do my best coaching work when I do nothing. But it’s a different nothing from a regular nothing, just like there’s a difference between someone doing nothing sitting Zen an hour a day and doing nothing sitting on a sofa an hour a day.
Just like in Zen there’s no point in pretending you have no agenda while having a secret agenda (those long-term meditators do look a bit chilled, can I be like them?), it’s of no use to pretend in coaching that we’ll just engage in a thought-provoking and creative process secretly hoping it’ll help us to get somewhere.
That will only get in the way. Work with a coach, or sit Zen, or engage in psychoanalysis for years without any hope of achieving anything, but take it seriously and work hard. If just sitting still was enough in Zen, every chicken would be a Zen master.
The attitude matters. We all have only one life to life, let’s not waste it.
But even our wild and precious life is useless, as in, not useful. There’s no exam to pass at the end, no one to satisfy, nothing to live up to except our vacuous fantasies. Life’s there to be lived, not to be done — but please, please take it seriously. You’ve only got one.
Paradoxically (and life is full of paradoxes), the biggest lesson we can take from coaching, or Zen, or psychoanalysis, is that there’s nothing to fix and no problem to solve, least of all with us. Realising clearly that coaching is useless and then laughing at a price tag can be a mark of success. Likewise, truly seeing that Zen is useless and laughing at having sat many years staring at a wall is an insight. There was no problem to fix to start with. No one to get enlightened. No wisdom to attain. No suffering to escape. No self to transcend. Nothing. Just this.
If I have a wish for my coaching clients, it is for all of them to realise they don’t need me as their coach. They never did. There’s nothing wrong with them. There is no problem to fix. They are perfect as they are. Their life is okay already, and life is not a problem to solve; life is a joy to be a part of, even when it’s not very joyful, even when it’s quite painful.
They are already free, and creative, and resourceful, and whole without any further effort. In fact, effort often gets in the way because it sneaks in an assumption that there must be a problem to fix somewhere with all that effort.
If there’s nothing to fix, then coaching is useless in fixing what wasn’t a problem to start with. Just like Zen and psychoanalysis. Just like play, the point is to do it, not to try to get somewhere.
And if you still think coaching is useful, get a good coach. They will disabuse you of this illusion.
PS In my last post I said my next one would be a reflection on my very first visit to India. India is wonderful. I loved it. I’ll back. But there’s nothing I could write that would have done it justice — I tried, then tried again and then deleted drafts without trace. Sorry.
For example, there’s a difference between a client feeling like they’re making progress and the process being helpful to them. The latter can feel frustrating and unproductive, and that might very well be the point, but to most clients that will look like a waste of time.
The same can be said about therapy. I’m somewhat sceptical when I hear about earth-shattering insights from someone’s first therapy session: was there really a breakthrough or was the therapist really good at giving a good first impression?
The latter isn’t necessarily bad, in a way, because without a good first impression the client won’t stick around, and that will be a loss to both. But deep work generally takes time, often years.
Such a refreshing take! Your Zen comparison for coaching is spot on. I do wonder if sometimes the paid structure itself helps some folks kick start useful self-reflection.