Why Your Family Member or Friend Will Never Be Your Coach

It’s amazing how many people would immensely benefit from coaching, but don’t want to pay for it. They argue that they can’t afford it or wouldn’t want to talk about their problems to a stranger. They think that talking to family members or friends will do the job, because family members or friends know and will understand them.  Here’s why your family member or friend will never be your coach and coaches therefore have tremendous value for the society.

Talking to your family member or friend will never be the same as talking to a coach because:

Subjective versus objective

1.  a family member or friend will most likely hold the subjective view of your problems, while a coach will hold the objective view. You can argue that your family members or friends will hold an objective view. But it’s impossible because friends share life with you, thus highly likely think similarly to you. Similarities made you friends, because you were likeminded, hence you started a friendship. Friends will also be emotionally involved in your problems, and that can present a problem. Family members will even more emotionally participate in your problems, because families stick together and family members look out for each other. Blood is thicker than water. A coach will not have any of these biases.

Training

2. a coach has special training, such as training in NLP. The training will keep the coach from getting hooked on the content. The coach will be free to look for physiological and linguistic clues, and observe patterning [=programming] that will tell the coach how you help or hinder yourself from solving the problem in question. Your family members or friends won’t have this special training.

Content versus process

3. while a family member or friend will highly likely concentrate on the content of your problems, a good coach will concentrate on the process. This is another important distinction for finding solutions to your problems.

Different ways to approach it

4. a coach will have many interesting techniques and ways of thinking about your problem thanks to his/her special training. Your family member or friend won’t. There’re many ways to tackle a problem. A coach will have ways that your family member or friend would not think of, because they will highly likely think similarly to you. A coach will come from a completely different world, which with the coach’s special training will make imparting different ways of thinking about your problem a lot easier.

Paying = commitment

5. the very fact that you pay for coaching will inject commitment to your learning and development. You’ll take it far more seriously than you might a chat with a family member or friend.  The atmosphere in a coaching relationship will never be the same as that in a chat with a family member or friend.  We westerners are conditioned to take things that we pay for more seriously. We’d be fools not to, right?  Exactly the point!

So every time a person argues that s/he can’t afford a coach

or wouldn’t feel comfortably talking about his/her problems to a stranger I present these 5 points. The person has no choice but to admit that the 5 points make perfect sense.  There is a lot to be said for the fact that we get what we pay for and free has no value. And the fact that the person believes that s/he can’t afford coaching is in itself a belief, skill, and a rich area for coaching.

So you see why your family member or friend will never be your coach.

If you’ve been looking for coaching for you and perhaps even your family members and this article convinced you, let’s talk.