I do not particularly like the word “coaching”.
I love coaching. I just wish it had a better name. To me, the word itself has never quite matched the value of the process it describes — and somehow no alternative has appeared that feels worthy of replacing it.
Like many people, I once misunderstood what coaching actually meant. I either did not know what sat behind the word or had built a rather different picture of it in my head. That changed during my very first classes at coaching school. I understood what coaching could be, and I fell in love with it.
I see coaching as supporting another person as they move towards change. It begins with genuine presence: paying close attention to the person in front of you and to what matters to them. For me, that is the heart of coaching. We live surrounded by noise, advice, books, online content, friends and family members who often have suggestions for us. What can be much harder to find is someone who will truly listen — someone who, instead of offering “three ways to fix it”, asks what is actually important to you.
Coaching is often associated with tools: powerful questions, models and techniques. They can be useful, of course, but I think they are also one reason coaching is sometimes misunderstood. The very phrase “coaching question” can sound intimidating: what if I do not know the answer?
For me, the tools come second. A meaningful coaching conversation is first of all about being with another person without judgement and giving full attention to whatever is most important for them in that moment. It is a conversation that tries to get closer to the source: what do I really want, what matters most, what am I moving towards — and what might I be noticing now that I could not see before? Coaching focuses not only on goals and dreams, but also on how to achieve and fulfil them.
Yes, coaching involves questions. But they are questions meant to support rather than test you. Questions that help us look beneath the surface. You do not have to know the answer. Sometimes not having an answer is meaningful information in itself — just as choosing not to act is still a choice.
One of the ways I understand the distinction between coaching and psychotherapy is the direction of attention. Therapy often explores the past in order to understand how we arrived where we are. Coaching is primarily future-facing: how do I want to feel, where do I want to be, and how might I move towards that place?
There is another reason I value coaching so much. A supportive coach trusts that the Client is the expert on their own life. The coach does not hand out advice or steer the Client towards the supposedly “right” answer. There is no need to fix the person sitting opposite you. The role of the coach is to help the Client see their direction more clearly — and then shed some light on the road ahead.
I like to think of coaching as planting seeds. A question from the coach, a reflection from the Client — each one is a seed placed in the soil. Some begin to grow almost immediately. Others need time.
So what word could really do justice to this process? Presence? Attention? Planting? None of them quite captures the whole of it — or the value coaching can bring as we search for what matters, understand the direction we want to take, and begin moving towards it.