A continuing challenge for coaches is to balance the focus of the coaching between the personal and professional aspects of the client’s issues. This is an especially vexing tension for new coaches, but it’s there for all of us.

Here’s how I try to think it through for my students and supervisees, as well as for myself.

There’s a difference between Executive Coaching and Life Coaching. The former is paid for by an organizational sponsor, is evaluated by their representatives, and is intended to make the client better at doing the organization’s current and future work.  

Life Coaching is paid for by the client, doesn’t involve an organizational sponsor or anyone else, and focuses on improving the client’s ability to enjoy a fulfilling life and career.   

We can dispute these rough definitions but I think most of us would agree there is a basis for distinguishing between these two forms of coaching.

We also probably agree there are important overlaps.  

The coach-client relationship builds along similar lines. There is goal setting and implementation, and there is the long-term desire to leave the client with the ability to self-manage more effectively. Successes in either the personal or professional domain tend to spill over into the other one.

And there are important differences.

The location of the boundary identifying topics that are properly included or excluded is one difference. Data sources are likely to be different because there’s no access to sponsors or other employees. Measures of success are different.

Two other factors apply here:
• What does the client want to work on? Is the client’s issue largely connected only to work, or does it extend broadly to the personal world?  

• What does the coach feel comfortable working on? Is the coach okay going into more personal topics?
Many clients want to work on issues such as work/life balance, career plans beyond the current employer, or ‘personality’ factors such as perfectionism, anger management or shyness.

My view is that these can be dealt with by an executive coach if the connection is maintained to the work setting. If the connection becomes too thin it may be necessary for the coach to reestablish it. The executive coach should always be prepared to say “That’s out of my sphere of competence, or outside of what we are here to deal with. Let’s talk about where else you can get some help.” This is obviously the case if the client has a ‘clinical’ problem – such as significant, long-standing psychological pain.

The other key factor is: What does the coach feel good about working on? There are executive coaches with clinical backgrounds who feel quite comfortable working the more personal issues, but may have less comfort with complicated business problems. There are former business people doing executive coaching who back off from the personal stuff, but dive right in when it comes to helping with business matters. With 50,000 or more coaches in this world, almost all willing to take on organizational assignments, there will be every possible combination of skill and strategy.

What’s the right answer here?  

Ultimately it comes down to “Know your competence, know your contract, and try to stay within both.”

The coach’s competence should be expanding over time, and a coaching contract can be renegotiated, so we’re not dealing with absolutely fixed elements. Still, both the competence and the contract should be outlined early on with refinements as needed.

Where does that leave us?

Coaching is a whole-person activity for both the client and the coach. Two vibrant human beings come together for a time-limited journey. Honest discussions of who they each are, followed by an agreement about what they’ll be doing, should lead to a workable boundary. If all goes well the client will benefit as both a professional and a person, and so will the coach.