The New Private Practice
Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies, and Advice

Lynn Grodzki

Overview – Excerpt – Table of Contents

Overview:

The New Private Practice

Lynn Grodzki

In 1929 Cole Porter asked, What is this thing called love? and then proceeded to wonder in that lilting song whether attempting to unravel love’s mystery might make a fool of him. This song plays in my mind when therapists who know that I work as both a therapist and a coach ask me a series of questions: What is this thing called coaching? Is coaching a passing fad or a new profession? What are the distinctions between coaching and therapy, from a therapist’s point of view? Do you have to stop being a therapist to become a coach, or is there a way to combine the two professions? Do coaches charge more than therapists? What does it take to get a coaching practice up and running? Who are the successful therapist-coaches and how did they build their practices?

This book began as an attempt to answer these questions, but when read as a whole it does more than just characterize what it means to work as a coach: It highlights a turning point in the field of therapy, by describing a new kind of private practice.

This new private practice appeals to therapists who are searching for different ways to work with clients, and attracts clients who are searching for untraditional ways to achieve personal growth. This new private practice operates outside of a medical model, outside of the constraints of managed care, and outside of the conventional boundaries of psychotherapy. This new private practice incorporates the essence of what therapists do best, and adds to it, so that therapists can reposition themselves to become first-rate coaches.

Transitioning from therapist to coach doesn’t follow a single, established route; more often it’s a twisting, turning path—one that looks illusive at the start. Knowing how to build a coaching practice, adopt a coaching mind-set, and determine the needs of the growing coaching market can be confusing. I hoped this book would unravel whatever mystery exists in making the therapist-to-coach transition, although I wondered if the unraveling process, similar to the sentiments in the Cole Porter song, might make a fool of me. Fortunately, I had the best of help. The team of therapist-coaches who contributed chapters have produced a collected work that offers a clear and insightful look at the many ways that therapists succeed at coaching. After reading these inspiring stories, case studies, and sections of practical advice, therapists will understand what is involved in both the art and business of coaching, and be better prepared to transition into the coaching profession.

The book is simple in format: I asked former and current therapists now working as coaches to share their professional and personal narratives, take us behind the scenes into their workdays, and mentor those thinking about entering the coaching field. I wanted this stellar group of therapist-coaches to spell it all out: why they decided to become coaches, how they built their coaching practices, and what it took for them to flourish in the coaching field. Don’t hold back, I shouted from my editing sidelines. Be transparent! Reveal your best ideas and strategies for others to consider! I wanted to demonstrate the diversity of therapists who coach, so the book covers the waterfront by including executive coaches, personal coaches, peak performance coaches, and some with special niches. To understand the choices these therapist-coaches made in developing their practices, it helps to first examine the origins of coaching.

This Thing Called Coaching

Before coaching was defined as a profession, it was understood as a style of relating, one that has been used in a variety of settings (sports, business, and, of course, therapy) for decades. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, writing in the Harvard Business Review (April 2000), defines the coaching style as consistently positive, constructive, motivational, inspiring, and effective. Coaching is action-oriented. It gets the client moving. Coaches assist their clients to reach further, go faster, expand their vision, think big, and develop their future potential. Coaches use accountability; they want to see evidence of progress. They not only advise and consult, they also engage in ongoing relationships with clients that offer support and collaboration until the goals get implemented. Coaches help clients learn new skills, expand existing strengths, heighten self-awareness, and achieve measurable success in easier, more elegant, and faster ways than a client could alone.

During the early 1980s, due to a sea-change in the business world, this style of relating generated a separate profession. The relentless corporate downsizing saw a disappearance of a corporate culture of in-house mentoring relationships. Gone were the important executive coaching relationships of years past, where senior executives targeted junior executives and groomed them to succeed. Both senior and junior executives found themselves isolated and dealing with chaos, needing more than good advice. They needed guidance in the form of an ongoing relationship that would provide meaningful interaction. But if mentoring were to exist, it would have to be out-sourced. Enter the executive coach in the role of mentor.

Corporations first hired executive coaches to groom senior executives and improve problem managers. Executive coaches helped clients achieve corporate goals: develop better communication with staff, build more productive management teams, do strategic planning for a division, manage rapid change and multiple layoffs happening around them. But as the coaching relationships matured, the coaching became personal.

The executive/personal coach was a confidant—a trusted, independent advisor who counseled his or her executive clients how to create a balanced life and cope with emotional stress while navigating the political labyrinths of the office. Coaches heard about far more than work issues. They listened as clients discussed family problems, fears about retirement, or a search for meaning and purpose. The coach listened nonjudgmentally, asking probing questions, offering advice, solutions, encouragement, and ideas in a way that helped the executive feel supported, yet powerful.

In the 1990s, the concept of coaching found its way into the business media. Now the question being heard at some business roundtables wasn’t “What is a coach?” but “Who is your coach?” With articles about coaching appearing in “Time,” “Newsweek,” and “New Age Magazine,” interest in coaching spread beyond the corporate world. Entrepreneurs, students, artists, retirees, and working moms hired a coach to transition from one stage of life to another, to achieve peak performance, or to have a trusted sounding board.

As the millennium approached, the democratization of coaching was helped by several mass-media events, including coach Cheryl Richardson’s best-selling Take Time for Your Life, Tony Robbins’s motivational late-night coaching infomercials, and Oprah Winfrey’s year-long “lifestyle makeovers” on her talk show. A mass audience became more familiar with the language and concepts of coaching.

Substantial energy and resources from the International Coach Federation (ICF), the professional association of the coaching world, helped build public awareness and create a market of clients for the hundreds of coaches who were graduating from coach training programs. Over a two-year period, from 1998-2000, 1000 mentions and stories were placed in national magazines and newspapers about coaching, aided by a media campaign spearheaded by the ICF and Coach University, a large coach-training organization. These organizations and others helped hundreds of their members get quoted in newspapers, interviewed on TV, and featured on radio and in magazines. As a result, during the past decade coaching developed a buzz and became the “new new thing.”

The difference between a trend and a fad is that one lasts and the other doesn’t. As the market for coaching grew, therapists, human resource and personnel managers, retired executives, and a wide variety of others signed up for coach training. Industry experts now estimate the total number of personal and business coaches at 10,000 and growing. Concerned about the need to make coaching a lasting profession, the ICF wisely began a catch-up effort to establish certification guidelines for coaches that would bring all the various coaching institutions into agreement in terms of who could rightly be called a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) or a Master Certified Coach (MCC). A PCC must have logged 125 hours in an accredited coaching program; been coached by a PCC or an MCC for a minimum of 10 hours over a 3-month duration; have 750 hours of direct coaching experience with clients; have letters of sponsorship from a PCC or MCC; and complete a written and oral examination. MCC requirements go further, including experience of 2500 hours of coaching. While one does not need to be certified to work as a coach, in the future certification may become an important marker for establishing serious coaches from dilettantes. And as more coaches want to meet the ICF guidelines, more PCC’s and MCC’s will need to be on board to guide them through the requirements.

Training programs for coaches are not standardized at this time, although the ICF has attempted to bring programs under its accreditation. (At the time of this printing, only eight programs have received ICF accreditation.) Coaching programs have different ideas regarding curriculum and duration. Some training programs consider a student to be sufficiently trained after a few weekend workshops; others have a three-month curriculum; still others have classes and requirements that take several years to finish. Since the field is so new, no formal analyses of comparisons of training curriculums exist. Therapists wanting to become coaches have to rely on researching the existing programs themselves and then selecting the training that meets their needs.

The Therapist As Coach

Therapists, based on their expertise in helping people change, seem naturally positioned to become first-rate coaches. According to Warren Bennis, professor of business administration at the University of Southern California business school, “A lot of executive coaching is really an acceptable form of psychotherapy. It’s still tough to say, ‘I’m going to see my therapist.’ It’s okay to say, ‘I’m getting counseling from my coach.”¹ The New England Financial Journal echoes this, calling executive coaches “part therapist, part management consultant.”²

What is now considered coaching showed up in the therapeutic literature starting in the post-war era of the 1950’s. As therapists shifted from a Freudian, psychoanalytic view to embrace the human potential movement, they adopted behavioral and humanistic methods of therapy.³ Carl Rogers’s client-centered approach to therapy using positive regard was an early example of the style of relating considered coaching. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs promoted self-actualization, a state of fulfillment and high personal achievement—essential goals of coaching. Virginia Satir’s approach to therapy removed the traditional boundaries between therapist and client; a Satir therapist functioned like a coach, becoming more real with clients and communicating openly and honestly. Milton Erickson espoused the idea of the unlimited potential and possibilities in clients, sometimes unlocking the most amazing “cures” within a single session, with the right question asked in the right way, at the right time. Therapists of the sixties and seventies followed suit and many became specialists in possibility thinking, seeing the unlimited potential of their clients. Therapy sessions focused on helping clients change present and future situations, as skill-based methods came into vogue. In the eighties and nineties, solution-focused therapy methods and the many dramatic so-called “alphabet” therapies—NLP, EMDR, TFT, EFT and others—help clients make rapid change in just one or two sessions by using methods that draw on each clients inherent resources. The therapists using these methods naturally adopt a facilitator stance, positioning themselves as coaches and therapists.

Steven Johnson, author of several books about psychotherapy, looked at the common choice points that the “post modern” psychotherapist makes versus the classic analyst, all of which fit squarely into what we now consider a coaching style, including:

• Authenticity (versus neutrality)

• Directive (versus nondirective)

• Focus on cognition (versus focus on affect)

• Prohibition of transference (versus allowance or provocation of transference)

• Empathy (versus intervention)

• Supportive (versus expressive-uncovering)

• Current determinants (versus historical determinants)

• Interpersonal focus (versus intrapsychic focus)

• Systemic focus (versus dyadic focus)

• Strengthening defenses (versus weakening defensives)¹

After decades of practice applying these techniques, it is no surprise that many therapists find themselves able and ready to transition into the field of coaching.

Transitioning from Therapist to Therapist-Coach

Depending on how therapists have been trained and how they work, the shift from therapist to coach may be a short hop or a sizeable leap. If therapists have been trained to use proactive, directive, solution-focused methods, if they give advice, assign homework, and like to see evidence of change in the therapy session, if they teach classes, lead workshops or run time-limited groups, if they conduct training in business settings or consult for organizations, if they speak in public and are comfortable being out in the community educating others about their work—chances are they are probably using a vast array of coaching skills. For these therapists, making a decision to become a coach often feels like a natural and logical step. Therapists who have been trained analytically may find that they also would like to become coaches, but adopting a coaching mind-set of pro-active, pragmatic, optimism and the tools that further strategic goal setting will require additional training.

Sometimes becoming a coach is way to integrate disparate but complementary aspects of one’s professional life. In my case, I wanted to bridge two careers—a current one in therapy and former one in business. From 1980–1986 I worked in the family business as general manager of a large scrap metal company. I entered the job as the boss’s daughter with an art degree and a sprinkling of undergraduate business courses. I found the work both fascinating and disheartening. I loved helping to run a multi-million dollar business and learning about profit, management, and sales, and found I was pretty good at business. But I struggled to fit into the rough and tumble world of a scrap yard. A large part of me went unfulfilled, and in 1983, beset by increasing stress and chronic health problems, I found a gifted psychotherapist (Marilyn Ellis, in Virginia) who helped me deal with an underlying depression that was contributing to my poor health.

Psychotherapy was a revelation to me. I cherished the potential for change that therapy offered. The thought of becoming a therapist, helping others as Marilyn had helped me, tantalized me, although it seemed out of reach. I was a single parent with sole custody of a young son, and felt dependent upon a job that could give me benefits and financial security. But with Marilyn’s unfailing optimism that I, too, could have a career that nourished me, and with her steady, practical coaching, I felt able to take some big, life-changing steps and become a therapist.

In 1988, masters degree in hand, I opened a solo private practice. After a few years, I found myself counseling people not only about their relationships and personal lives, but occasionally about their problems at work. One afternoon, when I mentioned to a colleague in a peer supervision group that I was spending an increasing amount of time with a client helping him strategize how to get a promotion at work, she said, “That’s really not psychotherapy.”

“What would you call it?”

“Business coaching,” she said.

Now that I knew what to call it, I looked for training to help me to do it better. In 1996 I enrolled in Coach University (affectionately called CoachU by its students and staff), a large coach-training organization with a curriculum that emphasized business. This was a virtual training program, meaning that all my classes, over 600 hours, would be conducted by phone via teleclasses—long-distance group conference calls. Each week at an assigned time I phoned in for an hour class and began to meet other student coaches from all over the country or—as the program expanded—the world. It was fun to meet virtually on telephone bridgelines.

The core curriculum consisted of thirty-six classes, each one month long, organized into six areas of study: first, an introduction to coaching including an overview of the basics of both personal and business coaching; then, specific coaching skills, such as strategizing, challenging, and advising; a series of personal coaching skills for the student to use to improve their own lives including how to develop a vision, find a personal path, become financially independent, and get “buff”— a class that upped the ante on having it all; the specific objectives for coaching a variety of client types, from artists to entrepreneurs to CEOs; solid models of business coaching to use, including how to help a new business become highly profitable and the principles behind organizational coaching; finally, practice-building tips and strategies for building a coaching business of one’s own. The materials for following along with the teleclasses at home came in the form of an eleven-pound, loose-leaf textbook full of self-tests, diagrams, and detailed explanations of terms and concepts. The curriculum, as well as new courses added each year on topics such as “Personal Evolution” or “The Million-Dollar Coaching Practice” took me three years to complete, but I began to use the tools and concepts immediately in my practice.

The coach training had some overlap with my therapy training. Both emphasized the value of helping clients build sound, balanced, happy personal lives. Both devoted time to honing the skills necessary to develop a good relationship with clients—how to listen closely, empathize, ask good questions, challenge, and advise. But even with these basic skills, I soon developed a coaching style that was different than what I was doing as a therapist.

In an initial session with a client as a therapist, I listen for symptoms and problems, paying close attention to my client’s emotions and to my own nonverbal, body-based reactions. I listen without solutions in mind, letting my mind be blank, staying open to vague impressions, images, and feelings—the transmittal of unconscious information that can occur between client and therapist. Therapy sessions last 50 minutes and I work long-term with clients, so I can be patient and let things play out. I trust that the deeper, core issues of each client will surface, given enough time. As a therapist I freely make interpretations, or sit in silence with a client when appropriate. I watch for and welcome the emergence of transferential material or projective identification, which often further my goal of helping my clients better understand how their personal history may be influencing their current thinking, feelings, or behaviors. Since insight often brings affect, I have a toolbox of therapeutic techniques learned over many years that I use to help clients process deep feelings.

As a coach, I listen differently. I pay primary attention to a client’s value system and ego strength, noting behavioral patterns that are obstacles to achievement, but not delving into their origins. Instead of listening blankly, I silently consider strategies. I ask questions designed to help clients expand their vision. I help them focus and stay on track, rather than encouraging free association. I make specific requests for action each session. I challenge clients to go beyond their comfort level to achieve more, faster. I avoid an exploration of childhood issues and don’t make psychological interpretations. I know, of course, that my coaching clients have their own set of psychological issues; I just don’t explore them by saying, “I hear a lot of pain and anger in your voice as you berate yourself. Who taught you to think so negatively about yourself? How far back does this go?” Or “Do you notice how that pattern of negative thinking plays out, even between the two of us?” Instead I diffuse the transference, opting for more mutuality, and direct the focus to the future, saying, “All of us have to deal with negative self-talk from time to time. Your negative self-talk is clearly getting in your way when you sit in meetings. As your coach, I’d like to support you to think more positively about yourself and have a confident demeanor. What’s the best way to start?”

In coaching sessions we talk a lot about money, achievement, balance, success, the future, and passion. I float broad concepts that I hope will stimulate out-of-the-box thinking: abundance, vision, integrity, legacy, and effortlessness. I brainstorm with clients to strategize their way through sticky business problems, make needed corrections, work smarter instead of harder, or get comfortable with a new level of professional success. We talk about topics that don’t often have a chance to surface in therapy, such as optimizing one’s life with grace and ease. I find that I rely on humor to help lighten up the coaching sessions, so we laugh a lot.

I know that my persona is different when I am coaching than when I am being a therapist. As a therapist, I’ve been told I seem serious, empathic, and direct. As a coach I present as optimistic, pro-active, and strategic. It’s wonderful to have a practice of both coaching and therapy, which allows me to stretch and work in different ways.

The Distinctions Between Coaching and Therapy

The public, the coaching community, the media, and even some therapists would like an easy explanation of the difference between coaching and therapy. I have heard the following sound-bite definitions offered in newspaper articles or at various coaching conferences to explain the difference between therapy and coaching: Therapy deals with a person’s past, coaching deals with a person’s future; therapy provides understanding, coaching creates action; therapy focuses on resolving a person’s pain, coaching focuses on helping a person achieve pleasure. The definitions may satisfy nontherapists looking for a way to distance coaching from therapy, but it’s not possible to reduce the field of therapy, a vast, hundred-year-old profession of many schools of thought and hundreds of methods, to a pat phrase. The differences and similarities between coaching and therapy take more than a sentence to clarify and can be better understood by exploring the following five categories:

Who (Population)

The majority of people who seek therapy come at a low point in their lives, facing a high degree of distress or in pain. The issues are often entrenched and tough to address for both the therapist and the client. Traditional training for therapists follows a medical model for dealing with this level of distress and pain—the therapist is a medical expert who diagnoses, treats, and hopefully cures the client or patient. Clients range in functioning from seriously impaired to well-functioning, but regardless of how well a particular client is functioning, he or she seeks therapy for the part of his or her life that is dysfunctional, wounded, or hurting.

Coaches attract that segment of the population economists call the “worried well”—higher-functioning adults who would rate themselves as “content,” but want more or feel blocked in some area of their lives. According to Marisa Domino, Assistant Professor of Health Economics at University of North Carolina, 85% of the worried well don’t seek psychotherapy or counseling even when they have personal problems, because they don’t identify themselves as psychologically “ill.”⁵ When the worried well want help with relationship problems, parenting concerns, career changes, boredom, or unhappiness—the same issues that cause others to seek counseling or therapy—they look for other kinds of help. The worried well, underserved by therapy, are considered a target market for coaches.

Coaching clients can be more demanding than therapy clients, bringing high expectations about the outcome of their sessions. Coaching clients don’t “see” a therapist for treatment, they “hire” a coach for results, and they want to see evidence of the results. Most like to be challenged and have less patience for the slow tempo, long silences, or vague language of a process-oriented therapist. To satisfy this type of client, therapist-coaches need to be skillful, direct, get their points across clearly, and pick up the pace.

What (Purpose)

The purpose of therapy is hard to sum up briefly, but in 1995, Martin Seligman, Ph.D., writing for the American Psychologist on the effectiveness of psychotherapy, tried to do just that. He defined psychotherapy as “concerned with the improvement in the general functioning of clients/patients, as well as amelioration of a disorder and relief of specific, presenting symptoms.” When therapy works, he wrote, clients report robust improvement with treatment in the specific problem that got them into therapy, as well as in personal growth, insight, confidence, well-being, productivity at work, interpersonal relations, and enjoyment of life.

However, the progress of therapy is rarely linear; some aspects of a person’s functioning improve while other aspects stay the same or change more slowly. When the goal is to help a person gain insight, heal emotional wounds, eliminate self-destructive behaviors, or bring about characterological development, therapists must use a broad perspective to evaluate progress, one that takes into account the complexity of the problem and the intractability of the system in which it occurs. A therapist might consider the therapy successful if, after treatment, a client has made substantial internal shifts in thinking, feeling, and behaving, even if the client is still functioning in the world in a low to moderate range. A coach uses a different assessment and might see success only if a client has made substantial external change and is functioning at a high level.

Thomas Leonard, author of The Portable Coach and one of the early founders of the coaching movement, defines coaching as a threefold process that helps people set and reach better goals, do more than they would have done on their own, and focus better so as to produce results more quickly. According to Leonard, coaches position themselves not as experts, but as equals with their clients. They see themselves as collaborative partners, ready to work in tandem with a client to solve an interesting challenge. The issues that coach and client address are rarely life-and-death, so the coach uses a less diagnostic, analytical approach. In coaching, emphasis is placed on a person’s present state of mind and future potential. Action is the byword of coaching. Most coaches rely on markers for concrete outcomes, since coaching is less about process, and more about doing.

Harriett Simon Salinger, Master Certified Coach, (and a former therapist) sees the distinctions between therapy and coaching as the “therapy-to-coaching continuum.” At one end of the continuum is the traditional version of psychotherapy, say psychoanalysis, and at the other end the traditional version of coaching, say sports coaching. Just looking at the ends of the continuum, one can easily discern many differences between the two approaches. In psychoanalysis, there is little expectation for a patient to take action or meet goals; uncovering unconscious material and developing insight is tantamount. The analyst is a neutral presence, non-directive, and wants to help the patient weaken defenses as a way to develop self-awareness and feel repressed emotions.

Contrast this to sports coaching, on the other extreme end of the continuum. The feelings and inner desires of the athlete are not examined; winning is the sole focus. The coach is tenaciously influential, directive, opinionated, and expressive, trying to strengthen—not weaken—defenses.

But as one starts to move toward the middle of the continuum, away from the classic approaches of psychotherapy and coaching toward the middle ground, the differences begin to blur. Helping a client to feel happy, self-actualized, and more productive? Building a person’s confidence, self-awareness, or ability to have better relationships? These goals could fit into the stated purpose of either therapy or coaching. At the very center of the continuum we might see an area of shared common territory simply described as “personal growth.”

Although the differences between therapy and coaching tend to overlap in the center of the continuum, many coaches and therapists use methods that place them more toward the ends. The distinctions between therapy and coaching become sharper when we add to the discussion of “who” and “what” the other categories of where, how, and why.

Where (Setting)

Most therapists agree that to provide optimal therapy they need a controlled, consistent, private setting so that they can have confidential face-to-face sessions with a client at regular, anticipated intervals. Licensed therapists adhere to the ethical and legal guidelines of their professions to protect the client and promote safety and trust. The therapist-client relationship is usually a hierarchical one for good reason; sometimes the therapist, in the role of expert, needs to make a hard call to protect the life or well-being of the client, or to set a course of immediate medical action. The hierarchy also encourages the emergence of transference, one of the powerful methods that some therapists use to help clients work through unconscious material.

Coaching is notable for its flexibility in regard to setting. Coaching sessions can and do take place in the coach’s office, the client’s office or workplace, a hotel, restaurant, in the field, on the phone, or over the internet. It’s not necessary for a coach and his or her client to have ever met face to face for the sessions to be effective. Sessions may be regular, infrequent, or packaged to fit the terms of a specific contract.

The coach may purposefully keep the professional boundaries of the relationship loose, revealing more about self, for example, in order to diffuse transference. Traditional therapeutic guidelines such as confidentiality may or may not apply in coaching, depending on whether the coach is hired by an individual or by that individual’s employer. In coaching, dual relationships may exist—the life coach may be a social friend or business associate of a client, the executive coach may play golf with a client after hours, the peak performance coach may open his or her home to house a client during a training season. For this reason, coaches often seek to keep relationships authentic and mutual, to make it possible to work within varied and changing conditions.

How (Skill Set)

Post-modern therapists and coaches both rely, at least in part, on standard cognitive-behavioral methods—asking questions, listening carefully, establishing rapport, reframing, giving advice, making suggestions, proposing assignments—to help clients think and behave differently. Whereas therapists draw on a century of methodology and development, coaches have limited approaches upon which to draw, because the field is still in its infancy. As a result, coaches often borrow from other disciplines. What distinguishes a method as a coaching tool versus a therapy tool is not just the skill set, but how it is applied, in what setting, with what population, for what intention, and with what results.

Some coaches use a set coaching model that has been developed by a coaching organization. Most coach training organizations provide students with a lot of coaching tools (assessments, checklists, exercises, programs). Other coaches design or collect their own tools and approaches. Similar to therapists, some coaches work eclectically while others use a structured approach based on pre-and post-measurements and assessments. An eclectic coach might borrow techniques from organizational development, human resources, psychotherapy, psychology, personal growth, sports, career counseling, movement specialties, or spiritual meditative practices.

Let’s imagine a therapist-coach with an understanding of family systems therapy who wants to work inside corporations. She might start with what she knows about a systems model and then adapt it to theory from the field of organizational development, develop a program of how to work with executives or teams, purchase a variety of assessments and measures that work in a corporate culture, read business magazines to become familiar with corporate language, and then begin to test out her approach by getting small contracts.

Therapist-coaches pick and choose from a long list of methods developed for therapy that work equally well within the parameters of coaching—EMDR, guided imagery, relaxation, reframing, paradox, self-administered tests, solution therapy protocols, Neurolinguistic Programming, or stress-release exercises, to name only a few.

The second “how” of coaching concerns how therapists decide to position themselves as coaches, usually in one of three ways:

• Reorient: Therapists that reorient cease working as therapists and use the professional title of “coach.” They may work in-house as the resident coach in a corporation, work as a consultant or sub-contractor for an organization, build a coaching firm, sell products that augment individual or group coaching (studies, assessments, trainings, etc.), or work as a sole proprietor in private practices. They may travel a lot to see clients, work from an office, or work from home.

• Diversify: Therapists that diversify have a therapy practice and a coaching practice operating side by side. Their practices allow them to switch back and forth between professions, being a coach one day (or one hour) and a therapist the next. Some completely separate the two practices, working out of separate offices with two different business set-ups. Others have both practices under one roof working more fluidly. The ability to successfully diversify and shift roles back and forth relies on having clear boundaries and well-articulated services.

• Integrate: Therapists that integrate complete a coach training program but continue to work only as therapists, using their coaching skills as yet another skill set. In this case, the coaching skills allow them to offer an expanded set of therapy services for a broader population. These therapists find that their coaching skills come in handy for retaining clients because they have an expanded menu of services to offer those clients who progress from “ill” to “well” and still want to keep growing and learning.

Why (Intent)

Intention is key in terms of determining the difference between coaching and therapy. A therapist-coach can use the same skill, say guided imagery, with a therapy client or with a coaching client, and based on her intention, can create dramatically different results. This means that a therapist-coach needs to determine first, his or her intention. If the intention is to help a person further his or her progress, take action, set and reach better goals, do more, focus better, and produce results fast, the therapist-coach will make choices that will reflect a coaching style. If the intention is to help a person heal, get in touch with feelings, resolve past issues, or relieve symptoms, the choices will be more reflective of therapy. Each therapist-coach is presented with choice-points several times during each coaching sessions, and needs to be clear on his or her intention in order to successfully set the framework for coaching.

Shifting Identities

Because coaching is a newly emerging profession, therapists who transition sometimes get confused about their professional identities. Well-seasoned therapists graduate from a coach training organization and mistakenly think that they need to abandon their “therapy smarts”—their professional knowledge base and demeanor—in order to be a coach. Years of hard-won professional confidence and competence, refined relational skills, expertise at helping clients make behavioral change, and awareness regarding the complexities of interpersonal dynamics are cast aside. These newly minted coaches draw a blank at their first coaching session, and ask me what to say to a client or how to react because they want to make sure they are “being a coach, not a therapist.” A sense of dissociation settles over them and they forget what they know best, how to simply be with a client.

Any coach-training program that does not recognize the expertise in empathic, relational, and strategic skills that most therapists already have does a disservice to the confidence of newly-minted coaches. Therapists do need to set aside some of their previous training and mindset—the medical-model so many are taught to use to diagnose, the hierarchical stance, the passive neutrality—and learn to be more “coach-like.” They need to normalize behaviors, put aside a pathological framework and adopt a mindset of wellness and possibility. They need to be consistently positive, action-oriented, focused, expansive, optimistic, non-judgmental, and non-hierarchical. They need to understand about holding a vision and learn to think strategically.

As one who mentors new therapist-coaches, I find that whether or not a new coach will successfully build a coaching practice rests partially on his or her reason for making the transition. Some therapists shift to coaching because they feel financially frustrated due to the difficulties in operating a healthcare private practice. These therapists soon recognize that it is not necessarily any easier to build a coaching practice than it is to rebuild a failing therapy practice. Adding the word “coach” to a therapy business card will not automatically attract clients or insure that the therapist creates a bustling, fee-for-service practice. Building a coaching practice, just like building a therapy practice, requires investment, planning, time, networking, and, yes, marketing.

It’s an easier transition if therapists see becoming a coach as part of a logical progression, one that fits how they already define themselves professionally. Therapists who naturally gravitate toward a coaching style of working, look to incorporate an array of talents and skills under one professional title, or simply want a change of career tend to find success in becoming a coach.

One of the common questions I hear from therapists who consider becoming coaches is whether or not the role of therapist and coach can ever be combined, or whether the two roles must always be kept separate. For example, is it possible to switch roles with a single client and be that person’s therapist for a while and then, later, his or her coach? How much sequential overlap is permitted?

Therapist-coaches need to be mindful about the potential problems inherent in having multiple relationships, so that they adhere to the ethics of their licensure and don’t place themselves or their clients in compromising situations by exploiting them or developing a conflict of interest.

Therapists usually have styles, boundaries, and policies that differ from those used by coaches, so the idea of crossover can be problematic. For example, in the coaching profession it is not unusual to find executive coaches who make friends with their clients, socialize with clients, or have additional business interests with clients. In these cases, it would strain the ethical boundaries of psychotherapy to try to go from executive coach to therapist with a client or vice versa. Another issue to consider is that the normal transference encouraged in a therapy relationship would be impossible to contain or undo, once the shift into a coaching relationship is established.

Because I have a diversified practice and work as both a therapist and a business coach, I have had occasion to be asked to crossover by clients. Much of my coaching is on a national or international format, which means I am often working by phone and email. Virtual contact brings limitations; I would not try to do therapy over the phone with a client I have never met face-to-face, so my phone-coaching clients understand that I will refer them for psychotherapy when needed in order to make our coaching relationship possible. When a psychological issue comes up in the coaching call that feels beyond the scope of what I want to address, I might say, “I think this is something you need to take to therapy and work on, in order for us to be able to progress with your coaching.”

Occasionally a coaching client’s personal problems become too obstructive for us to proceed and then I suggest that we end the coaching relationship so that he or she can focus on getting the therapy that’s needed. Sometimes a coaching client will ask me to “put on my therapist hat” for a single session and offer some advice or direction on how to deal with a personal issue, say a problem with depression, or some feelings of heightened anxiety. If the issue persists, I refer the coaching client for therapy with someone other than me to keep my role clearly defined.

Similarly, sometimes a therapy client will ask me to put on my coaching hat for a session to talk about an issue at work. Again, if it involves extensive coaching, I simply refer out to another coach. Working as both a therapist and a coach, I need to evaluate what services I am willing to offer, to whom. Sometimes a person comes to see me in person for executive coaching and at the initial session it becomes evident that he or she needs psychotherapy rather than coaching. In a these cases I may say, “This session seems more like psychotherapy and less like coaching. I think you could use some psychotherapy around this issue. If you’d like, I would be willing to work with you, but only as your therapist.”

Therapist-coaches who continue to practice as therapists must take care to be highly professional in all of their client-based relationships. Their licensure usually requires that they adhere to the highest standards of their ethical and legal professional duties whether working as a therapist or a coach.

For this reason, it is not uncommon to see therapist-coaches with diversified practices maintaining identical boundaries and identical policies whether working as a coach or a therapist. These therapist-coaches have clear, consistent financial boundaries with all clients; they engage in professional relationships only; they don’t socialize with clients or undertake additional business ventures with clients. They don’t step outside of normal therapeutic behavior with clients by making “friendly” gestures, such as initiating spontaneous phone calls or sending gifts. They may use a partnership model of coaching, but don’t disclose inappropriately about themselves.

It’s important to remember that even when we therapist-coaches keep our roles completely separate, there is a natural blending of perspective and knowledge that informs us no matter what our current role. I call this the “added value” component. The fact that I am a therapist is an added value for my coaching clients, and the fact that I am trained as a coach provides something extra for my therapy clients.

I believe that the best-informed therapists have been through their own therapy, and the best coaches have been coached. My first coach, Pam Richarde, helped me look at the lack of vision in my life, find more purpose, and gave me a lot of great advice about balancing my compulsion for hard work with more play. I hired writing coaches who helped me untangle confusion and feel more confident while working on writing projects. I hired an entrepreneurial business coach who had a lot to teach me about money, setting up my business, and having more fun in the process. Similar to getting continuing education as a therapist, I attend coaching conferences, take courses, and stay connected to a community of coaches.

The experience of being a client who pursues her own therapy and coaching feels like swimming in the Caribbean Sea. Coaching moves me through the water at a rapid pace: I stay buoyant on the surface, keeping one eye on the horizon, moving purposefully and watching for rough currents. Therapy pulls me to the bottom now and then in dramatic bursts: Once there I swim in cloudy depths that eventually, with effort, become clearer. I recognize long lost parts of myself in the depths, and I work to integrate these parts of self. Then pop! Back to the surface, moving with more ease, pleasure, and calm. In my experience, the process of therapy and coaching enhance each other. Each helps me develop different aspects of my life.

The therapist-coaches you will meet in the chapters in this book demonstrate in detail, the variations and distinctions possible in today’s coaching practices. Following in the coaching tradition, each author writes as a mentor, hoping to make the journey easier for other therapist-coaches who follow behind. My hope is that readers will use this book to become more knowledgeable about coaching and to take the next step toward creating their new private practice.

About the Author

Lynn Grodzki, LCSW-C, is a psychotherapist and business coach. She lives and works in Silver Spring, MD.

ISBN: 0-393-70379-X
January, 2002
Hardcover, 288 pages