Conditions that Compromise Coaching: A Dirty Dozen
Zachary Gabriel Green
Professional coaching, whether it takes the form of life coaching or working with executives, involves complex interpersonal interactions. Those being coached and the coach are bringing together the intersection of personal histories, professional aspirations, and particular ways of understanding the world towards the aim of bringing different practices to how “clients” operate aspects of their lives. Each also imports the unworked and unexamined parts of their experience to the coaching process. Invariably, with varying degrees of severity, there are moments and comments that impede the effectiveness of coaching. Some of these moments are mere misunderstandings about the nature and meaning of one thing or another. With diligent exploration by the coach or effective assertion by a savvy client, these points can be cleared up, the coaching alliance remains strong, and the pathway to co-create desired outcomes proceeds unabated. In many ways, these kinds of experiences deepen the coaching relationship, helping the coach and those being coached add greater refinement to their mutual work.
Conditions that Compromise: Defined
Conditions that compromise coaching are of a different magnitude. These conditions differ from moments of misunderstanding where a clarifying question or a pause for reflection can yield new insights and directions. By their nature, conditions that compromise coaching are enduring, invasive, and destructive to the process while often taking forms that are paradoxically evasive, invisible, and often untraceable to their source. While what happens to make coaching uncomfortable in a queasy way, ineffective and inefficient beyond what may be due the skill of the coach, and potentially harmful to the well-being of the person being coach is an function of the coaching relationship, it is the responsibility of the coach to begin to wonder what else may be going on.
In holistic leadership coaching, this particular array of ways to impede and potentially destroy coaching is known as the “Dirty Dozen.” While presented as if they are discrete processes, as with the coaching model, these conditions are overlapping, intersecting, and interrelated to one another. It is safe to assume that all coaches fall prey to these conditions to some degree or another from time to time. The key is whether a coach has or can develop the capacity to self-correct these shadow practices once they come to consciousness. The challenge of extruding the “Dirty Dozen” is that they often reflect more about the character of the coach than mere behaviors that can be readily examined and extruded. As such, the conditions that compromise coaching may well have deep roots in the psyche of the coach. Profound reflection, peer-to-peer support, direct supervision, life coaching, or psychotherapy may be needed by the coach so that damage to the integrity of the coaching relationship and the well-being of the client does not result.
The Activation of the Conditions
The conditions that compromise coaching are often activated when something in the coaching relationship triggers an issue that remains unresolved for the coach. When it something like a situation where we made a choice parallel to one being faced our client, we are usually able to see this kind of moment for what it is and continue to be effective in our role as coach. Yet, if this parallel evokes anxiety or some other sense of unease that distracts or detracts from the coaching in the moment and thereafter, chances are one or more of the Dirty Dozen are present. The more profound challenge for the coach is when these conditions become pervasive and reflected throughout the coaching practice. Not unlike a malignancy, if not addressed in its early stages, such conditions can spread to other parts of the coaching practice and bring to an early end this avenue of professional expression.
What coaches need to recognize is that these conditions are not in and of themselves a problem. They are usually overdeveloped, underdeveloped, and unexplored parts of our own personalities. With awareness, most coaches are able to see and own how these conditions remain present in their lives but are able to find strategies to keep them from compromising the coaching relationship or, more importantly, harming the person being coached. Yet, in those cases where these conditions pervasively present, do not yield to mirroring by other professionals, and even have the appearance of placing the person being coach at risk (personally, professionally, psychologically, physically), then there is responsibility to end the coaching relationship in an ethical manner.
Most coaches, if honest with themselves, will see aspects of their own behavior in how the “Dirty Dozen” are described in the following sections. What is important is for coaches to notice their own propensities and begin now to take action to address those areas where work is needed. What is equally important is to recognize that we all have some part of these traits in us as a part of the human conditions. Taken to an extreme, one can see these processes everywhere in all of our relationships. Such an orientation to this material is not useful and could well have the counter impact of causing effective coaches to question all interactions at level that borders on obsession. The challenge to coaches is to become vigilant about the presence of these conditions, learn the unique triggers that activate them in various combinations) in each of us, and develop practices to address them when they compromise our coaching.
The “Dirty Dozen” are presented as separate conditions. They should also be thought of as one continuous process. Again, coaches are to be reminded that not only is this list less than exhaustive, each of the conditions likely has companions with which it shares characteristics. Further, the fact that coaches do not see themselves in one area offers little assurance that we are free from issues we import to our coaching relationships. Finally, please note that these conditions often have another side that is less prone to shadow and could actually be strengths that make our coaching effective. Discernment through personal reflection and professional supervision will often help us to know when what is mirrored is true.
Egoic Eagerness
It is important that we are eager for those we coach to reach the goals they set for themselves in coaching. Our confidence and enthusiasm is often something that can be borrowed from us until our clients are as grounded in their feeling that they are more making progress towards their desired results. There are moments in the coaching where coaches may lose track that the relationship is for the benefit of the growth of the person being coached, not us. The condition that impedes coaching is when the pride in the progress of a client begins to descend into ego and self-aggrandizement. The moment the coaching begins to become about us, how skilled we are, how “we did it for them,” and how their story gets conflated with our own, ego has taken over.
Egoic Eagerness is characterized by the degree to which the coaching relationship is driven by the needs, aspirations, intentions, and actions of the coach rather than the person being coach. The distinction can be rather subtle. It is the role of the coach to help the client give language to the desired outcomes sought through the process. This aspect of coaching is co-created unless those situations when coaches begin to think they know what is better for the client and steps in a manner that manipulates rather than supports the learning and goal-setting of the person being coached. Ironically it is experienced coaches who have “seen it all before” who may be most prone to Egoic Eagerness, mistaking efficiency that comes from experience with effective coaching in a new and unique situation.
Active Antipathy
What happens when we really do not like the person we are coaching? If we do not go into denial about this feeling, it is probably wise to end the first session with suggesting that another coach may be better able to support the person seeking coaching. If for whatever reason, this option is not available or does not present itself until the coaching relationship is established, then the coach has a lot of work to do. When we have Active Antipathy towards a client, in most instances it is because something in us has been intensely triggered.
Active Antipathy is among the easiest of the conditions to detect and address because the feelings about such clients are often very close to the surface. What may be less evident is what activates this kind of response and the ways it may be showing up in the coaching. It is not enough for a coach to simply think, “I just don’t like that client” and think enough work has been done. The nature of the dislike must be explored, as such situations are likely to continue to be present in our coaching practices until we resolve or have sufficient awareness about the source of this impediment. The danger of leaving Active Antipathy unaddressed is that we will tend to project the disdain into the coaching relationship in invisible, often unconscious ways. This tendency will assuredly render less than optimal results for clients and runs the real risk of being harmful to them in ways that are difficult to detect, but are nonetheless present.
Ethical Evasion
Though there is no single set of ethical guidelines currently used in the coaching profession, it remains important for coaches to operate from an ethical core. If nothing else, coaches must operate from a central creed that does “no harm” to health, emotional well-being, and professional reputation of the client. Coaches may be invited from time-to-time to look at things with a wink, ignoring such ethical considerations. A simple test is whether, as a coach, we would like a behavior to go viral on the Internet may tell us if we are on some ethical edge.
Ethical Evasion tends to be characterized by misguided expedience at the expense of longer-term exploration of issues. These lapses in judgment may seem harmless in the moment but often portend patterns, which if learned by the person being coached, will eventually undermine professional status and compromise relationships. Behaviors and practices that are unethical can easily border on actions that are illegal, creating to the precipitous collapse of professional progress.
Similarly, when coaches do not consider the consequences of lapses in confidentiality, conflicts of interest, undisclosed dual relationships, and indirect economic benefits from coaching relationships, they are creating the conditions for destroying their own professional reputation if and when discovered. The strongest intervention to avoid Ethical Evasion is to learn and practice ethical guidelines offered by coaching professional bodies and make ones best effort to abide by them.
Deep Dependence
Coaching is a helping profession that shares characteristics with counseling and psychotherapy. In exchange for compensation, a person who seeks coaching (and often called a “client”) shares information about their personal and professional life. While coaching tends to focus much more on concrete results and specific outcomes, the nature of the coaching relationship is an interpersonal one primarily characterized by confidentiality. Though coaching places greater emphasis on the co-creation of desired results than is often the case in psychotherapy, clients may grow dependent on their relationships in coaching to make decisions about personal and professional direction. While it is expected that clients may want to “run something past” their coach, it is another thing when these same clients grow to be paralyzed in taking action without the input of their coaching.
When our clients have Deep Dependence, they turn to us final arbiters of their personal or professional actions. In this respect, we slip into being professional advisors rather than coaches, per se. The issue with this condition is that it also indicates potential unconscious abuse of the power differential present in the coaching relationship. While coaches may often work with people in powerful leadership positions, the skill set of most coaches in managing interpersonal relationships may create circumstances where subtle and unseen manipulation is present. In such instances, the coach may gain vicarious benefit from the influence they wield with those in power. It is when this tendency goes unrecognized that it is most problematic.
In its darkest form, the Deep Dependence, is used to assure ongoing financial economic benefit by revealing, if not creating, enduring needs for the client to make use of coaching services. This process can be seen when there are efforts to perpetuate the coaching for season after season with no sign of ending and with little or no exploration with the client of this process. This condition is best addressed with periodic review of the coaching and clear contracting of each phase of work.
Cultural Incompetence
When we refer to culture in the context of leadership coaching, it has at least two levels. The first refers to culture in terms of social identity. As a coach it involves having curiosity, respect, and some familiarity with fundamental dynamics related to differences between those we coach and us. Gender, faith tradition, orientation, ability, native language, social class, nationality and racial/ethnic origins are but a few of the considerations. Based on the context in which the coaching is embedded, more granular dimensions of differences, such as region, neighborhood, or school affiliation — to name but a few — may actually be far more important to consider in the coaching. When culture as social identity is known to influence the coaching, it does not require direct experience or necessarily expertise working with these differences, but it does require us to know what we do not know and be attentive to the impact such elements may have on the quality of the coaching relationship.
The second area of culture involves the organizational context. Leadership coaching with professionals will typically have the overlay of the particular character of the organization as the primary cultural consideration that influences coaching effectiveness. When a coach has little or no experience working in corporate settings, does not know much about the non-profit sector, is not conversant with higher education structures, never served in the military, or has little clue about entities with specific technical focus of work, it is the responsibility of the coach to gain education about the context. Once more, the list of organizations for which such education may be needed is far more extensive than is being presented; yet these examples offer a sense of the array of areas where one must bring cultural competence to the coaching.
Cultural Incompetence is characterized by operating from a particular construction of the human condition where issues of dominance, subordination, and power rooted in socio-historical experiences are not taken into consideration in the coaching. It is further reflected in giving insufficient attention to the context in which the coaching is embedded. In such instances, coaches will tend to superimpose experiences and predilections inappropriately to the person being coached and the cultures, social and/or organizational, represented. Arrogant imposition of one’s own culture or inability to remain curious about the culture of the person being coached is one condition that will surely result in the diminishment of the coaching relationship and early end to the process.
Bad Boundaries
At the most basic level, coaches need to attend to the time, task, and territory when coaching another person. It is the responsibility of the coach to show up at the appointed hour, have an approach for addressing the task as identified by the client, and secured a space (territory) that assures effective and confidential interaction. While these boundary considerations may seem simple to address, it is failure in these core practices of coaching competence that can lead to the rapid end of a coaching relationship. These boundaries provide the container for the coaching and are fundamental to the effectiveness and security of the process.
Bad Boundaries extend beyond these basics. Far more pernicious is when Bad Boundaries involve the interpersonal rather than the technical aspects of the coaching relationship. We see this process operating whenever there is an imposition on the client primarily due to the action of the coach. When a coach routinely shifts scheduled coaching sessions at the last minutes is one such imposition. Another is when the coach’s own personal needs or professional aspirations get in the way of the focus remaining squarely on the person being coached. In short, any situation or circumstance where the coach makes use of the client emotionally, financially, sexually, or professionally that can be viewed unethically, bad boundaries are present.
An important practice for coaches to use to avoid Bad Boundaries is an ever-vigilant attention to grounding the coaching relationship in clear roles and focused tasks. Bad Boundaries not only blurs the pathway to the results the client seeks, this condition also has the potential of obliterating the container necessary for the coaching relationship to survive and thrive.
Compromised Confidentiality
There is perhaps nothing more important in the coaching relationship than maintaining the confidentiality of the private information entrusted to us as coaches by our clients. Beyond the ethical requirement, confidentiality represents a sacred bond that allows those who seek coaching an opportunity to explore the texture of issues and nature of aspirations with optimal freedom. Core to the coaching contract is sharing with clients their rights to as well as the limitations of confidentiality. In principle, all of what is shared in coaching is confidential unless the client has been informed of the exceptions. One of the most common exceptions is when one is training and engaged in peer and/or professional supervision. Another is a professional context where a coach may be a part of a cohort of other coaches working with intact teams within a larger organization. In order to coordinate the individual and organizational goals, coaches may work together to discover common themes and share systemic impressions of the organizations functioning. Even in these instances, training and share professional context, confidentiality remains important to be maintained for matters that the client, for whatever reason, does not wish to be revealed even as a part of thematic reporting.
Coaches have a responsibility to yield on confidentiality when there is there is imminent potential threat of a client harming themselves or others. Suicidal ideation and homicidal intent, if assessed to be actively present in a client, requires direct intervention to assure the safety of all parties concerned. As such it is wise for coaches, especially those working privately and engaged life coaching to have in their network professional psychotherapists and an emergency plan should such a situation arise in the coaching relationship.
Compromised Confidentiality is a condition where a coach reveals to another party privileged information about a client without that client’s knowledge or prior consent. The “line” of this confidentiality is rather variable in the coaching profession. Those who have been trained with counseling and psychotherapy backgrounds tend to hold confidentiality more strictly, revealing little of the content and quality if their coaching relationships. Those who are from business settings are more prone to speak of their clients, use their names, and share anecdotes from their coaching practice. The test of whether confidentiality is being compromised is whether coaches would want similar information to be revealed to another party about themselves. Another test is whether the coaching relationship would be damaged if the revealed information were to circle back to the client. As a rule, what is shared in coaching is never to be a part of casual conversations with other parties for any reason. Our clients give us their trust. Our holding of confidentiality is our way of honoring the relationship and respecting their dignity.
Nested Neediness
Those who seek coaching often do so to meet a pressing personal or professional need. Our role as coaches is to bring our skill and training to this circumstance and help the client to grow towards what they seek. In coaching the needs of the client are primary. As coaches, we also have needs. It is important to have awareness of what these may be and find means to address them. What is inappropriate and unprofessional is to have such needs become a part of the currency of the coaching.
Nested Neediness is one of the more difficult conditions to detect. It is often invisible because we as coaches may not know that our own needs have been activated until after we have begun more intimate or intricate phases of work with our clients. The character of Nested Neediness is when the work of clients so closely parallels our own current focus, personally or professionally, that we lose track of where the client ends and we begin. We will find ourselves sharing our challenges and dilemmas with the same kind of issue. We may even slip into using the client as our confidant, eliciting from them insights about how we may address the issue in our own lives. Some will argue that such an approach is the purest form of collaboration and co-creation of learning, which is partially true. Nested Neediness becomes a condition that compromises coaching when the client begins to meet the needs of the coach more often than not. Should such emerge, it is better to formally end professional coaching and begin a peer-to-peer support relationship. Even in such transitions of role, coaches must be exceptionally discerning that they have acted ethically and have not exploited the client to meet their own needs.
Savior Syndrome
Once professional coaches have a degree of experience and enjoy some level of success in helping individuals and organizations live into their goals, they may one day be recognized for “saving” someone or some situation. While with skill, competence, and experience many coaches to have moments where they can point to a success that is directly attributable to expertise they brought to the situation. One is right to honor these strengths and celebrate the accomplishments.
Savior Syndrome is a few steps beyond the claims we make at our website. It is when we believe our own hype and walk into coaching relationships as if we were modern day messiahs. More than self-promotion or confidence in our skills, Savior Syndrome is tinged with grandiosity and narcissism. It is the belief, however well-founded, that our clients are somehow fortunate to have us in their midst to grace them with our infinite wisdom.
What is lacking when the Savior Syndrome is present is humility and empathy for those we are serving as coaches. While we may be well trained and uniquely qualified to address certain issues that our clients are facing, Savior Syndrome becomes a stance that makes it more about our effort than the particular pathway of growth of our client that we are entrusted to support.
A companion to the Savior Syndrome is a form that is characterized by false humility. In this more subtle expression of the condition, there is an implicit concealed sense of superiority that is brought to a situation. Fellow humans are thought of being lesser, behind language like marginal, at-risk, minority, impoverished, victims, third world, disadvantaged, and oppressed. While it may indeed be the case that such clients are in such situations, that is not the point. What is of concern is the attitude of the coach. When coaches operate from some extrinsically motivated sense of “doing good” and not “working with,” there is a distancing from such clients that is alienating and quietly condescending. We unconsciously believe it is our role to save “them” and as a consequence fail to see such clients as fellow travelers in a shared life’s journey of common humanity.
Savior Syndrome, whether in the narcissistic or false humility form, is perhaps one of the conditions most difficult to address and correct. Each is marked by effectiveness that meets the more immediate needs of clients. What gets lost, ironically, is some share of the soul of all the parties concerned.
Darker Desires
Coaching is a powerful tool. It is also most instrumental when intimacy is a part of the process. When genuine concern, positive regard, and loving kindness are present, coaching can be exponentially more effective and outcomes more sustaining than when there is false formality and forced distance. It is natural for tender feelings to emerge in this kind of relationship. It is not uncommon for a form of love to be a part of the process where a lasting bond is developed between the coach and the client. This kind of mutuality allows for the coaching process to enjoy greater depth and the potential for more profound impact on the life and aspirations of those being coached.
What is unfortunate is when these same feeling are misconstrued to be something else — an invitation for darker desires to be approached. Even with coaching being a co-created experience, it is for the purpose of advancing the goals of the client. A coach who somehow contorts the experience to gratify sexual urges abuses the coaching relationship. It is not the presence of such feelings that is in itself a problem, it is when a coach actively acts on these urges, makes advances towards the client whether or not is reciprocated. Short of such a situation, Darker Desires can be a condition that impedes coaching when the coach is no longer able to focus on the task of supporting such a client to meet the original objectives because there is instead attention diverted to the pursuit of an intimate personal relationship.
One may then wonder if such an encounter does arise, what if the client and coach would agree together to end the coaching and begin a relationship. The problem with such a scenario is that the origin of that such a relationship would still be in the context of a power imbalance. A client, by choosing to enter coaching, is also agreeing to be subject to the influence of another who is trained in interpersonal and organizational dynamics. When Darker Desires are present, the use of these skills were likely manipulated and approached unethically so that sex rather than the substance of the coaching became a focus.
Darker Desires, if acknowledged and explored through expert supervision, can often be managed so that established coaching relationships can be preserved and the work can continue. It is when this is not possible and the prospect for there to be harm to the client is all but certain, the ethical choice is to help the client find a new coach. Should a coach find this situation repeatedly emerging, it is recommended that counseling or life coaching is sought before continuing to engage clients in their own practice.
Psychotherapy Seduction
It is increasingly being acknowledged that professional coaching is a helping relationship that shares characteristics with counseling and psychotherapy. An effective coach is a skilled listener, often with the capacity for empathy, entrusted with confidential information on the life of a client. Many coaches may be trained to help clients achieve life goals and perform with greater effectiveness professionally, but they may not be specifically trained in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues. Beyond the fact that counseling and psychotherapy are protected professions with specific certification requirements in most jurisdictions, it is the role of a coach to recognize when appropriate referral is needed. A professional coach will undoubtedly be aware of various personal issues in a clients life, may be informed about a client’s history in counseling, and may even encounter moments in a coaching meeting that has therapeutic elements. Such experiences are not the same as actively succumbing to the Psychotherapy Seduction.
While coaches may wish to place the onus on the client in such a situation, seeing the counseling issues as an impediment to effecting coaching. Indeed, such is likely true. This reality, nonetheless, cannot be mistaken for license to begin to approach the coaching as psychotherapy. When a coach does so, there has been a seduction into a different kind of stance where ego has been activated and the need to be a savior tapped. Especially when coaches have strong and enduring relationships with clients experiencing a period of personal difficult, the seduction will be particularly strong to feel as if we are the only ones that can really help. What is key is that we can best help by assisting the client is finding the proper professional support and keep our focus squarely on the coaching.
Toxic Transference
While most of the conditions that compromise coaching have focused of the behavior of the coach, there is one that involves the client. Toxic Transference is a process where the client develops strong attachments to coach that are associated with important relationships in the client’s history. The conditions is characterized by the client beginning to act as if the coach is the parent, ex-lover, intimate friend, or other key figure for whom the client has strong feelings and attachments. While this kind of transference is typical in a transitory way in all helping relationships and can be useful when consciously acknowledged and explored, it becomes toxic when the responses are unconsciously and unrelenting.
Toxic Transference is rare, even in psychotherapeutic situations. In most cases those who have some level of self-awareness are able to see when they are in moments of transference and balance these experiences with other aspects of the coaching. When a client is not able to make the distinction between the coach and these other important figures, it is the responsibility of the coach to end the coaching relationship — full stop. Toxic Transference is evidence of a condition with deep psychological roots that can only be addressed through trained professional intervention. Coaches may find themselves in such a situation because a person with serious mental health concerns may first seek coaching as way to begin to cope with these histories. In professional settings where coaching assignments are made, it is also possible that we as coaches trigger something in such leaders that activate transferences that slowly become toxic. We may seen as representing a supervisor that is perceived by our client as abusive, learning as well that our client had an abusive parent as a child. When we become merged with the immediate situation and such histories in the minds of our clients, we are no longer able to help. As with other conditions, it is important that we do our best to make an appropriate referral to a mental health professional for counseling or to another coach where such Toxic Transference is less likely to be present.
Conclusion
It again must be emphasized that this set of conditions that compromise coaching is not a definitive nor exhaustive. There literally countless ways that competence in professional coaching can go awry, as varied as the human condition. Some other factors include how resistances are pursued, how compensation is managed, and when to bring coaching to end — just to name a few. What is important to remember is that professional coaching is a practice. It will continuously present opportunities for challenges that place us at edge of what is ethical and effective. So long as we act in ways where the client remains the focus, the task is made clear, and actions that may bring harm are avoided, these conditions are less likely to be a concern in our coaching relationships.
