How Different Are Life Coaches and Counsellors?
In her introductory book on life coaching called The Life Coaching Handbook, life coach Curly Martin includes a chapter where she compares coaching to Counselling and Therapy and argues that they are very different (You can see an extract from the book at: Coaching vs Counselling and Therapy).
Most of the main differences she talks about are claimed differences in approach or method:
- Counsellors and psychotherapists, she suggests, explore the patient's past
- Counsellors and psycotherapists, she suggests, use techniques to remove previously created blocks impeding a patient's recovery
- Life coaches on the other hand, she says, work with the client's present and future, rather than their past, and most life coaches she says do not give advice - she suggests that instead they facilitate the client in defining their own way forward.
As a broad brush way of distinguishing between counsellors and life coaches these claims are reasonable. The problem is that not all counsellors operate in the same way as each other and not all life coaches operate in the same way as each other so these neat distinctions can break down or be inaccurate.
For example, the difference between a counsellor who uses a Freudian or other psychoanalytical approach and a counsellor who uses cognitive behavioural techniques is likely to be far greater than the difference between a counsellor who uses cognitive behavioural techniques and a life coach who uses cognitive behavioural techniques.
I would tend to see the techniques, models and methods offered by counsellors and life coaches as operating on a continuum, with pscyhoanalytical psychotherapists who delve into a client's past according to pre-set psychoanalytical theories being at one end of the continuum and with life coaches who focus on visualisation techniques or other 'forward-looking' techiques for creating a future, such as those practising NLP (neuro linguistic programming) being at the other end of the continuum. Curly Martin describes counsellors as if they were all right at one end of the continuum and life coaches as if they were all right at the other end of the continuum.
As a life coach, I would personally describe myself as someone who operates somewhere near the middle of the continuum - thus for example, I do primarily focus on a client's current situation, their desired goals and outcomes and how they can achieve them (characteristics similar to those Curly Martin associates with a life coach) but I also on occasion give advice - for example about basic principles of stress management as validated by research - which is something she suggests life coaches do not generally do.
I am sceptical about the value of psychoanalytical counselling for most people - and have known many examples of clients who have come to me and made quick progress with practical coaching strategies after having found their wellbeing and self esteem deteriorate during a period of psychoanalytical counselling. However, this does not mean that I think that all counsellors or all counselling is ineffective - on the contrary, where counsellors use proven techniques such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) their services can be extremely effective.
As a life coach, I would define my service as being about helping people to make improvements in their life and wellbeing. This may well include offering them techniques and models to help them solve problems they are experiencing. I would not want to limit the techniques I offer according to a pre-determined rigid box which fixes counsellors in one category and life coaches in another.
What is important is that where I offer particular strategies, methods or approaches I have had appropriate training and experience in using those strategies and methods to be sure that I can offer them in a professional and reliable way and that the ideas and approaches that I offer to the client are effective in helping the client to move forward and deal with the issues that they want to deal with (that effectiveness being demonstrated by research, as well as the clients' evaluations and my own evaluations).
Of course this doesn't mean that all life coaches should attempt to deal with all types of problem - you need to have a knowledge of which issues and which clients your coaching techniques are effective in helping. But then I would argue that this applies to counsellors too - unfortunately too often in the past counsellors have assumed that particular methods were the 'right' ones to use without empirical evidence to support that claim. Fortunately now it is probably more common than in the past for counsellors to use methods which have an evidence base suggesting that they are effective but this is by no means always the case.
The potential similarities and differences between counselling and life coaching raise complex questions about which different professionals may have different views. If you practise or intend to practise as a life coach it is important to reflect for yourself on the methods, strategies and coaching models that you use, why you use them, what your justification for using them is and whether you have the professional competence (and legal authority if applicable) to use them. Remember however, that if you restrict yourself to a pre-determined model of what a life coach is and does without considering in a practical way what will be most helpful for particular clients and what your own expertise, experience, professional training and skills are suited for, then you may be doing your clients a disservice as well as yourself.
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