Coaching vs. Counselling or Therapy
Coaching and counselling or therapy are each too subtle to enable a clear-cut distinction to be drawn between them, but one primary difference does distinguish the two.
The Distinction Between Coaching and Therapy is Subtle
I am skeptical of coaching writers who offer to tell you, sometimes with a simple bullet point list, how coaching and therapy differ. All too often, the explanation reads like a shameless marketing pitch designed to coax you into viewing yourself as the ideal coaching client. ("Coaching clients are forward-looking people who take charge of their lives!" or "Counselling clients are in need of guidance and possibly a medical cure" -- that sort of thing.)
Even the less obviously marketing-driven explanations can still run aground in the waters of shallow description. The field of counselling/psychotherapy, for example, is so diverse that it's almost impossible to specify non-trivial sets of characteristics in terms of techniques or attitudes that are representative of all the different approaches. For example, it just won't do to say, as it is often said, that counselling focuses on the past while coaching focuses on the future, because some counselling does focus on the future -- and for that matter, a competent coach may well focus on the past when their client has a particular need to do so.
Making simple distinctions, therefore, between the 'methods' of counselling or psychotherapy and the methods of coaching works only if you ignore (or don't realize) the sheer variety of methods available within both fields.
The Most Important Difference is in You
Having said all that, it remains the case that coaching and counselling are not the same thing. Generally speaking, the most important difference is actually in you, the client (simple bullet point list, coming right up!):
- Generally, clients seek counselling when they sense something is wrong.
- Generally, clients seek coaching when they sense something is not as right as they would like it to be.
This isn't just a semantic distinction: generally, the counselling client wants to focus on a problem, a bad experience or feeling, while the coaching client wants to focus on taking some aspect of themselves and making it even better than it already is. To put it another way, generally a counselling client would like to resolve some difficulty, while a coaching client would like to develop some aspect of their life. (But of course counselling clients want to develop as well, and coaching clients may have problems to resolve!) Often, coaching clients will view the process of coaching more in terms of personal effectiveness and skills.
If Coaching and Counselling Are So Similar, Why Not Use the Same Professional for Both?
The answer to this question is two-fold. First, few coaches are actually qualified counsellors/psychotherapists. The level of training offered specifically for coaches is relatively modest and significantly below the level of training normally expected of therapists. (In terms of training requirement, the basic level coach certification offered by the International Coach Federation demands only 60 hours of actual training. The page About Your Coach includes additional thoughts on this.) While coaching might be viewed as very specialized counselling, or counselling enhanced by specific areas of experience or expertise, the reverse is not the case: a coach cannot 'specialize' in counselling without significant additional training.
Second, only some counsellors specialize in particular areas of practise, and fewer still specialize in the specific type of work that coaches do. It is also relatively unusual for counsellors to have acquired significant business experience or expertise of the sort which would be expected for executive coaching. However, those who do specialize in this type of work, and who do have relevant business experience, often do call themselves coaches when they're offering this type of service. In other words, there are some counsellors/psychotherapists who provide both services -- including me!
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