Posted on April 3, 2013 by Cynthia Gunsinger
We believe strongly in coaching, promote coaching, and help support coaching businesses because, fundamentally: a surgeon cannot operate on herself. However, there are many skeptics, cynics and critics who hate life coaching.
How does being a life coach work they slowly dismantle your horrible childhood and replace it with a new one? Like “Total Recall”?
 Jenn Tisdale (@Jenn_Tisdale) March 25, 2013
There are many reasons for this kind of thinking, from pop-culture stigma to the fact that coaching is an unregulated industry.
The Top 5 Reasons Coaching Has a Bad Name
1. Wannabes
Many wannabes get into the business by simply printing a business card. Sold yoga gear in the past?  You can always become a life coach because the industry is self-regulated!
When the only credentials a coach has is establishing  great rapport with the client, they are giving the industry a bad name.
2. Skeptics
People who don’t need or want coaching are skeptical and feel negatively about the profession without even experiencing life coaching.
Categorizing life coaches as armchair critics, career hoppers who are without specialty, or new-age woo-woo hippies gives all coaches a bad name.
3. Perspective
Some people just cannot be coached. They are not ready to do the work, do not want to change or require other support.
When on the defensive, we don’t like to hear hard truth or about perceived weaknesses, so it’s easier gripe behind the coach’s back than change.
4. Inaction
Many life coaching websites and coaches promise the moon, but coaching is not a one-way street. The coach does not drag the client along to their dream life/career/relationship.
Coaching is a partnership where success is completely dependent on the client’s action. People who buy sales promises without understanding their responsibility get frustrated when they don’t get the results they paid for.
5. Grandeur
Some coaches paint a very rosy picture – vacations, yachts, 6-figure incomes, and on. It’s hard to buy these stories when the life coach does not own these goodies or have this success themselves.
When clients hear about results that the coach hasn’t achieved, they grow skeptical about the reality of the profession.
1. Change your name to Gordon Bombay2. Become a life coach3. Move into your new mansion made out of million dollar bills  Dan Duvall (@lazerdoov) March 4, 2013
Coaching is a new, unregulated profession and there are definitely some rotten apples in the batch. As the industry changes,  this slight crisis of credibility will be solved and the coaching outcomes of reliable and credible professionals will out-weigh the negativity.
What do you believe gives coaching a bad name?
Excellent!! I am so frustrated at the “coaches” who have not had any coaching training. My mother was an excellent “non-coach” because she was a brilliant woman who “got it”. She would never have hung out a Coaching shingle. She had more honesty than that! I await the day when all coaches must be certified. Then the battle will be similar to that of teachers. Who makes a good teacher? Who judges? Jut because they have a degree doesn’t make them good! Etc. etc.
One major thing that was not mentioned: Advice.
TRUE coaches do not give advice. They remain neutral parties, holding the space for their client to discover. Through our trained questioning, listening and observing skills, we can help the client unfold their life into what they truly want it to be.
I cannot tell you how many ‘coaches’ (plenty with credentials and certifications, too) I have run into who tell their clients what they should be doing. Then, when the client fails because it was not their idea, hence they had no true motivation to succeed – they blame coaching for their failure.
If you want to give advice, call yourself a consultant. Because you are NOT a coach.
Good question Linda! There is the whole debate about to or not to credential is a hot one, but even hotter is the credentialed-but-not-effective coach debate. Clients have to do their due diligence, check references and identify the actual successes that a coach has had!
Stephen, agreed. In it’s purest form, coaching does not include giving advice. There is room for a coach to speak from their experience and background to provide context for the client, but the difference is between telling the client what to do and using all of a coach’s experience to help the client come to their own conclusions about what to do.
I agree with all of the above. Another factor is that too many coaches without counseling training cross over into doing therapy with their client, rather than referring the client on to someone qualified. If the coach lacks counseling training the client isn’t likely to be well-served by the psychological work they do together. The client will then blame it on “coaching” unaware the problem was not with coaching itself, but with having a coach who either didn’t know his/her limitations or didn’t want to lose the client by referring the person on.
Absolutely wonderful information! I think it’s important for coaches to not give advice or promise the moon. When coaches do that, they do significant harm to the profession – not just themselves.
Good point, @Laura – it gets tricky when a coach tries to “fix” a client. A coach can also get stuck in the gray space between working through issues that are hindering movement and knowing when to refer a client to a therapist.
Agreed @Sandra – everything we do as coaches impacts our credibility as a profession.
A life coach is not a therapist or counselor. Nor should a coach speak from personal experiences . . . after all it is not about the coach, their life or their decisions. A good coach listens to the clients, asks thought + soul provoking questions and encourages the client to come to their own truth. Too many coaches make it about themselves and not the client.
Many coaches have not been trained or certified and don’t know the art of listening (we’d much rather hear ourselves talk). Just because everyone comes to you for advice does not make you a coach.
@Stephen, I agree with your assessment!
Many lean more to being consultants than coaches.
The line between consulting and coaching is an important one. Both are skills that we can use to serve clients (active coach-ing or consult-ing) but they are different approaches + meet different client needs.
@Cynthia I absolutely agree with you, very well said.