How coaching supports personal development

How is personal development achieved? It’s a concept that is central to coaching and often one of the outcomes clients are seeking. But how coaching supports personal development is not clearly understood by clients – at least when they first contemplate coaching. This is partly because of the way coaches market what they do.

The received wisdom about coaching is that it is about change. An individual considering working with a coach is looking to move towards a more desired state: for example, to become a better leader, build confidence, or change careers.

This is a key assumption expressed in standard texts on coaching. Jenny Rogers, in Coaching Skills, discusses clients coming to coaching because they want something to change. John Whitmore, author of Coaching for Performance, similarly describes coaching in terms of helping people realise their potential and improve performance.

But for neither author is this all there is to be said about coaching. Jenny Rogers distinguishes between “the being self” (the inner personality, values and beliefs) and “the doing self” (the externally focused person with tasks to accomplish). She says it is the doing self which initially presents for coaching. She doesn’t explore why this is so. But she is clear that coaches need to work with both sides of the person, the being self and the doing self, in order for the client to reach meaningful and sustained outcomes.

In my view, it’s the connection that’s made between the being self and the doing self that is the personal development that can occur in coaching. It reflects the coaching principle that clients can often develop their own understanding of how they want to move forward, with the coach creating space and asking questions that support that process.

One reason this can be difficult is that we live in a largely action-oriented culture. In some business contexts, there can be greater emphasis on impact and results than on making time for reflection. The intuitive, feeling side of the self can get shunted to a second-order priority at best.

Coaching as a profession may collude with this dynamic through its strong focus on change, effectiveness and performance. At one level, it’s good marketing to talk up the useful aspect of coaching in language that people are attuned to taking seriously. But because coaches understand that the being self and the doing self are the same person, exploring the wider context around the issue may help the client understand what is really important to them.

Rogers also emphasises the importance of taking a whole-life perspective rather than treating the client’s initial agenda as the whole story.

While coaches routinely accept this, I’m not sure to what extent clients understand – at least, not until they’ve experienced what coaching can do for them. I want to make explicit the idea that coaching can be a journey into self-awareness, and that the change-oriented, doing agenda is only part of the story.

The counter-intuitive idea is that sometimes stepping back from the immediate drive for change may create useful space for personal development.