I’ve been part of the coaching world for around six years now, and as much as I love and respect its transformative power, there’s a side to this industry that is causing harm, and it needs to be addressed. 

One of the major issues I see playing out in the coaching world is coaches over-promising results their clients can expect after working with them. You might not initially think that this is a very detrimental practice, but let me invite you to consider the following:

A feeling of failure

When a client chooses to invest time and money into their vision, this is a courageous act of self-love. But when that course, session, programme or workshop doesn’t deliver what it said it was going to, the coachee is often left feeling like they have failed instead of interrogating the coaching process itself. This is not to say that coaches are solely responsible for their clients’ results, but there is an important question that all coaches should consider here: “is my offering likely to get my ideal client the result I’m promising?” 

The client’s feeling of failure can be heightened further by the fact that they were promised an exact “how to” approach that would solve their problem, and it worked like a dream for their coach, so why didn’t it deliver for them? If people are left in this psychological state it can be incredibly damaging to their confidence and self-worth.

The comparison spiral 

When coaches over-promise to their clients, it’s easy for clients to fall into a comparison spiral, adopting the view that everyone else has been able to make their goal a reality apart from them. This is particularly true if the programme is based on what worked for the coach. Feelings of failure, coupled with a lot of time spent on social media with everyone talking about their overnight success, will often result in a person’s growing sense of insecurity.

Lack of transparency 

Because people often feel like they have failed, instead of critiquing their overall coaching experience, they don’t speak out or raise their concerns which means that these issues rarely get discussed within the industry. This results in coaches over-promising and not delivering again and again. Testimonials are great, but in reality, who is going to share a negative testimonial with a person they’ve invested a huge amount of money in? They’re either not going to say anything or simply focus on the positive aspects of their experience.

I first entered the space of coaching because I wanted to build a business and a life that was different from the traditional world of work. I wanted to do this because the environments I had been working in were severely detrimental to my mental health. I wanted something different, something real, more supportive, more sustainable. And I know that a lot of other coaches are here for those exact same reasons. But to achieve this, we as coaches need to start being honest with ourselves and in what we offer our clients. We have to build our businesses on the foundations of truth, respect and trust, instead of ego, material success and false promises.

We need to ensure that our coaching practice is ethical. We need to do this by asking ourselves real questions like, “is there a part of my offer that’s taking advantage of the fact that I know my ideal client wants this change so much that they will invest anything?”. 

All of the coaches I know are incredible souls who would feel mortified if they thought their work over-promised and under delivered, but this practice has become so normalised that one can find themselves doing it without even noticing. A perfect example of this is that last year I nearly fell into this trap too. I was in the process of developing and launching a six month programme for my clients, but after taking time away, processing everything that was last year, tuning in to what I’ve experienced and learnt as well as the values I stand by in my business and my life, I know that it’s unethical for me to promise the life changing results that I want for my clients in that timeframe. 

If you’re an aspiring coach with the dream of having your own coaching business, that’s amazing, but it’s unethical for other coaches to promise you a fully fledged coaching business with a plethora of full paying clients in just a few months, or even a few weeks. Yes, there are examples of people who launch a business and get full paying clients in this short timeframe, but this story is not the norm. There’s also another side to this story that we don’t hear, which is that people who achieve quick success often struggle with the logistics of their business suddenly exploding. They don’t have the systems and processes in place, they struggle psychologically with suddenly earning large amounts of money and the pressure of delivering what they’ve promised.

What I know through my own life experience, my work in organisational change and as a qualitative researcher is that change takes time, it takes unlearning, relearning, exposing, sitting with, going back and starting again. It needs space and time to breathe, it needs opportunity for vulnerability, for experimentation, for having fun. These are non-negotiable elements that I commit to applying to all aspects of my work as I help aspiring coaches launch sustainable, profitable and outcome driven coaching businesses. 

I’m here for slow growth, intentional action, and hard work that goes on behind the scenes. It isn’t sexy and it doesn’t fit nicely into a compelling Instagram advert, but this is the work that it takes to build a real coaching business that is not only going to stand the test of time, but that’s going to positively impact your life and the lives of the people you serve as a coach.
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