What a coach actually does that a friend cannot

Somebody suggests coaching and the first thought is usually some version of: I have a partner, two close friends and a sister who calls every Sunday. What exactly is missing.

It is a fair question and the usual answers to it are bad. "A coach is objective" is not quite true and sounds like a brochure. "A coach holds you accountable" has been said so often it has stopped meaning anything. So here is the specific version, four things, and one of them is genuinely uncomfortable.

1. A coach is on the side of the goal, not of your comfort

The people who love you have a job, and the job is that you are alright. This is not a flaw in them. It is what love does. When you say you are thinking about leaving, a good friend checks whether you are okay. When you say you have decided not to bother after all, a good friend is relieved, because the version of you that is not putting itself through something difficult is easier to watch.

A coach has no stake in your comfort. When you announce you have decided not to bother, the response is not relief. It is: last month you told me this mattered more than anything. What changed since then.

That question is not available from somebody who loves you, because asking it costs them something and reassuring you costs them nothing.

2. A coach remembers, on purpose

Your friends remember the headlines. They do not remember that in April you said the real problem was not the workload but the fact that nobody ever asked your opinion, and they will not notice in October that you have just said the same sentence again in different words.

That noticing is most of the value. Almost nobody solves a problem they only see once. People solve problems when somebody points out the third time it has come up, and shows them it is the same shape each time.

Most stuckness is not one hard problem. It is one ordinary problem that nobody has been present for often enough to see repeating.

3. A coach asks the second question

Ordinary conversation has a rule that nobody wrote down: one question, then you move on. Asking a second one about the same thing is intense. Asking a third is an interrogation.

But the useful answer is almost never the first one. "Why did you not apply" gets "no time". The second question, "what would have had to be true for you to make time", gets something real, and the third one gets the thing you have not said out loud to anybody.

A coaching conversation suspends the rule. It is the one setting where staying on a single subject past the point of social comfort is the expected behaviour rather than a breach.

4. A coach turns talk into work

A conversation with a friend ends when the conversation ends. That is what friendship is for and there is nothing wrong with it.

Coaching ends differently. It ends with something you are going to do, by a day, and a next conversation in which that thing will be raised whether or not you want it raised. It is the difference between an evening of good thinking and a change in what happens on Tuesday.

Does it actually work

Reasonably well, with limits worth knowing.

Coaching has been studied mostly in workplaces, and the meta analyses there find real positive effects on performance, wellbeing, coping and goal attainment. The effects are moderate rather than dramatic. Most of the studies are on employees coached at work rather than adults paying for their own, and a lot of the measurement is self reported, which tends to flatter any intervention. A more recent analysis restricted only to randomised controlled trials still found positive effects, which is the more demanding test.

So: a real effect, not a miracle, and better evidence than most things people spend this money on. Anyone who tells you the research is overwhelming has not read it, and anyone who tells you there is none has not either.

When a friend is the better choice

Plainly, because the opposite of a sales pitch is useful here.

• You need comfort rather than movement. Someone died, something ended, and what you need is a person who sits with you. Do not hire anybody. Call your friend.
• You already know the answer and you want company while you do it. That is what people are for.
• The problem is the relationship you are in. That belongs with the person, or with a couples therapist, not with a third party who only hears your side.
• You are not stuck, you are exhausted. Rest is not a coaching problem.

And if the honest description of your situation is that something in you is not working rather than that something in your life is not moving, the answer is a therapist, not a coach. We wrote a whole piece on how to tell the difference, and it says plainly when not to hire us.