Coaching Vs Therapy - Bridging The Gap
Defining the two fields:
The American Psychological Association (APA), says “…the understanding of behavior” is the enterprise of psychologists. My interpretation of therapy is it frequently results in positive changes based on understanding past causes for current behavior. It often deals with repressed conflicts from childhood to help clients deal better with practical, real-life problems. Therapy assesses and intervenes at the level of feelings. Long-term, troubled clients with significant emotional challenges are best served by therapy.
The International Coach Federation says, “[Coaches]… seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.”
My interpretation of coaching is it focuses on current and future issues. Coaches don’t spend time on why clients are where they are. Rather, coaches help clients say to themselves “Here’s where I am now,” and through self-acknowledgment and acceptance make new plans and changes to get to where they want to be. In contrast to therapy, coaching best serves emotionally healthy individuals and helps them to function even better. Both modalities ferret out underlying causes for where clients are in their life. Yet, coaching is usually only seeking sufficient information to clarify the goals and create momentum to reach them.
Coaches have discovered too much “leading from behind” may not be helpful to all clients. Recently Trisha, a former client, told me how feedback was helpful for her. “In therapy there really weren’t any ’suggestions’ as to what my answers were. I had to come up with all the answers on my own. Whereas in coaching I was able to ask you ‘what would you do’ and get an answer. …You definitely held me more accountable.”
Both models of support are concerned with offering processes that will have the greatest impact and most credibility for the client, helping them to practice new skills and encourage their exposure to challenging situations.
Both models of support recognize the importance and delicate balance of the relationship to their client. “…[N]o relationship comes with a guarantee,” says clinical psychologist, Dr. Bennett Pologe at his online website. He adds, “The world’s full of advice. Part of what brings you to treatment is that you’ve become lost in that advice and can’t sort out who’s to heed; the last thing you need is yet another voice to consider. The goal of treatment is for you to rediscover your own voice, your own priorities, and the courage to act on them.” Isn’t that coaching?
Abilities and Limitations:
Despite overlaps and dissimilarities, now that we’ve had two decades of coaching experience, it’s important to take the positive from both professions. To get to where you want to go, it’s important to know how you got to where you are, otherwise you may repeat what you did that didn’t work. Without that awareness you often can’t get to that next place, or if you do, you’re not feeling rewarded by it. You can’t build a rose garden on top of a manure pile.
Therapists can now put attention not only on helping you know your limitations, but on eliminating them and strengthening existing abilities. Limitations aren’t bad. There are certain abilities you just don’t have. If getting where you want to go requires abilities you don’t have, you have two options:
1. garner those abilities.
2. make another rewarding choice based on current abilities.
Both coaches and therapists can help you accept where you are and use abilities you do have rather than provide you hope for how you can put your square peg in a round hole. You can do that and force it to fit, but do you really want to change your peg? Both models will help a client determine if they need to look for a different hole to fill. Coaching offers strategic steps to get there.
Round pegs in square holes:
What would make you feel uncertain about working with someone? Often your instincts are right on. In my early days as a coach during a potential client interview, Teresa admitted to being in therapy at the time and taking anti-depressants. Despite saying she was making progress and ready for change, something in her voice belied this. I decided to meet her face-to-face. When asked a few questions about her health she said, “I don’t want to discuss these.” I was uncertain if I would have difficulty blending the work she was doing with our work, without any information to help guide me. I let her know I had some hesitancy and we arranged another conversation time. That night her husband, a medical doctor, called and berated me, telling me I was undermining the confidence in her changes so far that they both felt she’d made. He was not willing to listen to how the conversation occurred and understandings reached. So, I simply apologized for any misunderstanding and we parted ways.
Despite the rocky ending of this relationship, I honored my truth by gauging my ability to work effectively with someone. Though that edge has become more finely tuned over the years, at the time, it was simply noting that I was uncomfortable. It’s important to listen to yourself and trust your decision whether to work with someone.
Crossing borders:
Whenever you’re working at the level of personal and professional change with human beings, you’re going to be dealing with their psychology - their emotions, their attitudes, their self-image, the way they respond to life. This statement in itself can shatter the thin veneer we hold sacred between not crossing borders between therapy and coaching. It’s like saying you work on career issues, but never talking about how it affects your client personally.
Because there are legal requirements for practicing in the psychological field and not yet in the coaching field, as a coach, you mustn’t offer services in which you’re unqualified. Aside from that, a client’s psychology as it relates to change ― their self-doubt, their self-judgment or judgments of others ― will arise and must be addressed. Discovering client obstacles is part of the coaching process, yet determining when and how it is best to engage those issues takes some learning and practice. When clients are in pain, you can’t stop them and say, “I can’t go there.” You have to listen and determine if it’s a deep-seated, repetitious pattern that continually interferes with their progress. If so, then therapy could be more helpful.
As a coach you have to develop your confidence with being with clients when they are in pain, but not relate too closely with their emotions. If you find yourself uncomfortable when your client is emotional during a session, then look deeper into your own emotional well and do whatever work is necessary to make yourself more accessible and empathetic to your client, yet always remain professional.
Bridging coaching and therapy:
Coaches owe a great deal to the history of the psychoanalysis and mental therapeutic professions. In the psychological field there have been long-time integration efforts to bring together various approaches, such as Paul Wachtel’s classic efforts to integrate the benefits of psychoanalysis and behavior therapy. Integration between coaching and therapy can occur at many levels, yet as with blending therapeutic approaches, premature integration could confuse the concepts and processes which make both approaches valuable. As with coaches, there is a great variability among therapists on issues of empathy, interpersonal sensitivity and ability to inspire trust. There is also a wide range of application or techniques.
It is the interpretation of these approaches by the client that should be of greatest concern. But does a client always know what’s in their best interest? You can assume that if their behavior is consistent with their best results their satisfaction will increase and their life situation will improve. They will report how well they’ve been helped and the significant others in their life will report the same. This evaluation is based on their own paradigm of the world and how they see it affects their feelings and behaviors. When they don’t see themselves or their situations clearly, your role is to challenge these assumptions and help guide them toward productive behaviors, effective actions, attainable objectives or ones that will produce less stress to reach more satisfied living. Coaching also helps clients take credit for their changes. Research has frequently shown the long-term benefits of helping clients attribute improvements to themselves, through their own efforts and changes in attitude.
The phenomenological essence of support:
In my view there is already a natural convergence occurring and each profession is seeking a combination of methods sufficient to help a client change. We already have removed the long-term treatment typical of therapy and the shorter-term coaching model as distinctions between the two professions, since many coaches have clients six months or longer. Both professions offer some version of teaching skills to last long after the therapy/coaching has ended. We each help clients use self-restraint when offering criticism to a partner or co-worker when their desires aren’t met. We each help clients communicate more effectively or set positive, attainable standards for themselves without requiring ongoing external reinforcements.
So we need to ask ourselves what is the main value for creating constant distinctions? We should look to find a more collaborative approach, similar to some of our current practitioners of western and eastern medicines. That collaboration would benefit the public more than confusing combinations or wildly diverse programs that pit the benefits of either against the other. We must stay open to the holistic advantages and links these two helping professions provide, as they are both significant avenues for change.
Laurie A. Sheppard is a master certified Life Coach and Career Strategist to mid-level professional women and entrepreneurs who want to make quality career and personal changes. (Actual client names above not used.) Ready to change your life? Contact Laurie today at info@creatingatwill.com © 2007 This article is free to publish in its entirety, including this paragraph, and a courtesy email to info@creatingatwill.com
Tags: coaching, coaching vs. therapy, counseling, personal change, personal developmen, self-help, therapy