Can Coaching Help You Kick the Habit?

Want to quit smoking?

Working with a coach can give you a better chance of kicking the habit, according to research just published in the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring.

“Compared with other interventions for smoking cessation such as NRT, self-help, hypnotherapy and acupuncture the success of (Motivational Interviewing) via life coaching is noteworthy,” writes Jen Irwin of the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

The study focused on “highly addicted” young adults—men and women between 19 and 29 years old with an “above average nicotine dependence.” The participants set a “quit date” four weeks into the intervention, and agreed to saliva testing to check whether they really were giving up the smokes.

And they did in surprisingly large numbers—on average a quit rate ten percent higher than the average of other comparable methods.

“Compared with NRT interventions, which boast a 14% cessation rate, life coaching in this study was associated with a cessation rate of 22%,” write the authors. “In a review of self-help cessation studies, quit rates were found to be between 1% and 11%, averaging 5%, substantially lower than the cessation rates found in this study.”

Why does coaching work with such a notoriously difficult habit to drop as smoking?

The researchers suggest that working with a coach helped smokers find better ways to handle stress that had previously triggered them to smoke. Coaching also helped smokers separate cigarettes from their identity and to see a future of possibility.

“Participants indicated that they experienced a shift in control regarding their relationship with cigarettes. This shift may be indicative of a shift in their locus of control, which has been deemed important for long-term smoking cessation.”

“I would say that the meetings that I’ve had with [the coach] definitely [gave] me a different way of looking at things,” said one of the smokers in the study. The people who had the best results—remaining smoke-free after six months—credited their coaches.

“One said ‘I think… coaching can actually work’ and the other participant further explained ‘the coach gave me the skill and then I just did it and [the coach] supported me.’ One participant stressed the value that would have come with more sessions. He explained ‘… I feel the study should be more than nine weeks,’” wrote the researchers.

In each case, the participants found the strength to avoid lighting up from seeing—with the help of their coach—that they always had a choice. “I am definitely more aware; I think the sessions really helped me be more aware of why you’re doing what you do, when you do it, how you feel about it and if you can change it. So right now I’m feeling more aware of my choices, even if I still have that cigarette, it’s nice to be aware [of] why I want to do it,” explained one participant.

The coaches who assisted researchers were certified professional co-active life coaches trained at CTI. The coaches had nine thirty minute coaching sessions with each smoker over the course of three months. The co-active model was chosen specifically for the study, researchers said, because of a belief that motivational interviewing (MI) would be effective given its “client-centered counseling style for eliciting behaviour change by helping people resolve their ambivalence for change.”

The researchers concede a larger study—and one, unlike this one, with a control group—would be necessary to truly test coaching’s power in giving up smoking.

But the writers remain exceptionally encouraged.

“The clinical relevance is clear in terms of all the positive gains for participants, in terms of cigarette dependency, average number of cigarettes smoked per day, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and smoking cessation.

These gains suggest life-coaching skills may have important and meaningful potential for reducing smoking behaviours.”