How do you know if a coach is right for you?
Finding the right coach can be daunting. Perhaps even more so today than when I first wrote about this several years ago. There are thousands of coaches, countless approaches, an increasingly bewildering collection of qualifications and credentials, and enough websites promising transformation to make choosing someone feel like a developmental exercise in itself.
And I’m not writing this to convince you that I’m the best coach for you. Quite the opposite, actually. It serves both of us if you find the coach who is right for you — and there is every possibility that person isn’t me.
I don’t work with everyone who approaches me.
That might sound like an odd thing to admit on my own website. Who turns down business?
But coaching is a relationship, and relationships are peculiar things. We’ve all experienced people with whom conversation seems effortless and others where, despite nobody doing anything particularly wrong, it somehow isn’t. We respond to humour, energy, language, challenge, silence, directness, warmth and probably dozens of other things we couldn’t easily name if somebody asked us to.
Why would coaching be any different?
When I first wrote this article, I used an elaborate metaphor involving a paddling pool, muddy water and our reflections. I was clearly very pleased with it at the time. I’ll spare you most of it now. But underneath all that splashing around was something I still believe: the relationship between coach and client matters.
Not because your coach needs to be somebody you immediately like. In fact, if that becomes your only criterion, you may inadvertently choose someone who makes you feel very comfortable while never taking you anywhere particularly interesting.
What matters more, I think, is whether this feels like a relationship in which you could do some useful thinking.
What happens when you talk to them?
Qualifications matter. Experience matters. Ethics matter. If someone is going to work with you professionally, I think you are entitled to ask about all three.
But none of them can tell you what it will actually be like to sit opposite that person.
So when you have an initial conversation with a potential coach, pay attention to the conversation itself. Are they genuinely curious about you, or are they spending most of the call explaining their methodology? Do you find yourself thinking as you speak? Can they sit with uncertainty without immediately trying to solve it? Do their questions open something up, or simply move the conversation along?
And perhaps there is a more uncomfortable question worth asking yourself: could I allow this person to challenge me?
Because coaching isn’t necessarily supposed to be comfortable. There is a difference between feeling unsafe with somebody and experiencing the discomfort that comes from having an assumption questioned, noticing a contradiction, or hearing yourself say something out loud that you hadn’t quite admitted to yourself before.
That distinction matters.
A good coaching relationship doesn’t necessarily make everything comfortable. It creates enough trust for discomfort to become useful.
The discovery call isn’t an audition.
At least, I don’t think it should be.
When I speak with somebody who is considering coaching, I’m not sitting there thinking about how I can convert the call into a client. I’m trying to understand what is bringing them to coaching, what they are looking for and whether I genuinely think I can be useful.
I’m also paying attention to what happens between us.
You should be doing exactly the same.
Ask questions. Challenge something. Tell the coach what you don’t want. Notice whether you feel yourself becoming more curious or more guarded. Pay attention to what happens when there is a pause in the conversation, or when you say something that isn’t quite neat and fully formed.
You have agency here. Choosing a coach isn’t about finding the person with the most impressive biography and then hoping you fit their way of working.
It is a decision you are making together.
And what about instinct?
The original version of this article essentially came down to three words:
TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.
I still rather like that.
Although these days I would probably make it slightly more complicated — occupational hazard.
Our instincts can tell us something important about another person. But they can also tell us something important about ourselves. If I immediately like somebody, why? If I find myself resisting them, what is happening? If something they say makes me uncomfortable, is that because they are the wrong coach for me — or because they have just touched something worth exploring?
I’m not suggesting that choosing a coach should become an exercise in psychoanalysing yourself before you’ve even begun. Sometimes no, this isn’t for me is quite enough.
But perhaps instinct and curiosity can sit alongside one another.
Trust what you notice. And then become curious about what you noticed.
That feels rather closer to how I think about coaching today.
There probably isn’t a “best coach”.
That might be the biggest thing I would change about the article I originally wrote.
I’m increasingly suspicious of the idea that somewhere out there is the perfect coach for you. There are simply different coaches, bringing different experiences, personalities, perspectives and ways of working.
The question is less “Who is the best coach?” and more “What happens when this person and I start thinking together?”
Sometimes you will know very quickly that it isn’t right. Sometimes something will click. And sometimes you might leave the conversation with more questions than you arrived with.
Actually, that last one might not be such a bad sign.
Curious about what might happen if we talked?
If you’re considering leadership or executive coaching, we can start with a conversation. There is nothing to prepare and no expectation that it has to lead anywhere.
We’ll talk. We’ll see what happens.
And we can both trust ourselves to know what to do next.
