The Healing Arc of the Coaching Process

People who are thinking about hiring a professional coach and who have never experienced coaching naturally have questions about the process. What will happen? Will I be judged? Analyzed? Is coaching like therapy? Can it really help me?

Of course, it’s hard to predict exactly how it will go, since every person has different needs, values, goals, and challenges. Even so, there seem to be some general steps that occur in the coaching process—and they are nothing new under the sun.

The Influence of Humanistic Psychology on Coaching

Coaching got its start during the humanistic psychology movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The influence of psychologists such as Abraham Maslow (self-actualization, hierarchy of needs), Fritz Perls (gestalt therapy), and most of all, Carl Rogers (client-centered therapy) reverberates through coaching to this day. Client-centered therapy might in fact be the single greatest force on the theory and practice of professional coaching as it is taught in coach training programs and tested by certifying bodies such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Indeed, four of the eight proficiencies for which the ICF tests read as if they came straight out of Rogers’ writings. I happen to be a huge Carl Rogers fan and consider him one of the greatest social and philosophical influences of the 20th century. In my estimation, his research and writings have yet to be appreciated and applied to their fullest potential.

Major Steps in Client-Centered Coaching

This brings us to the main point of this article—what happens in coaching? For my money, Rogers aptly described the arc of a helping relationship (which coaching is)—in 1942!¹ To summarize:

1. The client comes for help.
2. The helping situation is defined.
3. The coach encourages free expression of feelings in regard to problem(s) or challenge(s).
4. The coach accepts, recognizes, and clarifies these feelings, which are mostly negative to begin with.
5. When the client’s negative feelings have been quite fully expressed, they are followed by the faint and tentative expressions of positive impulses that make for growth.
6. The coach accepts and recognizes the positive feelings that are expressed, in the same manner in which they accepted and recognized the negative feelings. And, in this psychological climate, insight and understanding come bubbling through spontaneously.
7. This insight, understanding, and acceptance of the self is the next important aspect of the whole process. It provides the basis on which the client can realize new levels of integration.
8. Intermingled with this process of insight is the process of clarification of possible decisions, possible courses of action.
9. Out of such insights, the client initiates tentative, minute, but highly significant positive actions.
10. There is a development of further insight—more complete and accurate self-understanding—as the client gains courage to see more deeply into his or her own actions.
11. Soon follows increasingly integrated positive action on the part of the client.
12. Eventually, there’s a feeling of decreased need for help, and recognition on the part of the client that the helping relationship can end.

Now these steps don’t necessarily occur in exactly that order. There’s plenty of jumping forward and back. But for coaching engagements of four or more sessions, Rogers provides an excellent summary of events.

Several observations are worth making. Note that at no time during this process does the coach direct the client. They don’t interrogate, interpret, suggest, advise, analyze, lecture, correct, or admonish. In other words, a core principle of client-centered therapy is that it is nondirective. Note also that helping doesn’t primarily stem from the coach’s expertise, knowledge, suggestions, problem solving, teaching, mentoring, or reassurance. In other words, the coach’s frame of reference isn’t external to the client, but rather it’s internal. To the degree possible, the coach accepts, recognizes, and appreciates the client’s feelings exactly as they are—positive or negative—and strives to see and feel the situation precisely as the client does.

Why Hire a Coach If All They Do is Listen?

You might ask, if healing comes about from the client talking and the coach listening, why pay for it? Why not talk to your neighbor, or even to your dog, and get a similar cathartic effect for free?

As Martin Buber noted a century ago, the problem is that it’s rare to encounter a person who truly listens, who actually can hear you from your internal frame of reference rather than from theirs.² This is because most people are actually not listening; they’re up in their head evaluating, judging, planning, or rehearsing what they’re going to say. You can’t truly listen to another person, and you especially can’t sense their feelings, when you’re listening to yourself. But don’t feel alone. Truth told, that’s what many therapists, counselors, and coaches are doing, too! Buber wasn’t just talking about the person on the street.

The moral of the story is that nondirective, client-centered behavior is not something you can learn by reading about it in a book. It’s a skill and way of being in the world that takes a lot of work, practice, and self-examination.

The Heart of the Healing Relationship

Rogers’ work and research findings rocked the world of psychology. He found overwhelming evidence that, to help a person psychologically and emotionally, it didn’t matter how many advanced degrees you had, how much training you completed, what your psychological orientation was, or how high your IQ was. What mattered most was your ability to create a relationship based on empathic listening, unconditional positive regard, and authenticity.

Moral of the story—help doesn’t come so much from the coach’s head as it does from their heart, their ability to build a unique kind of relationship. Thank heaven and three cheers for Carl Rogers. What he discovered was true then. It’s true now. And I’m sticking with it!

1. Condensed from Rogers, C. R. (1942). Counseling and psychotherapy: Newer concepts in practice. pp. 31-45. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
2. Buber, M. (1923/1970). I and Thou. Walter Kaufmann (trans.). New York: Touchstone.

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