Archetypes of coaching engagements from real client stories
Stories from real coaching engagements on how I help as a coach
Note: This piece is best read as part II of a series. I talk about my philosophy & principles in part I of this series: What I do as a coach.
Prospective clients often ask me what types of problems people come to coaching with and how I help them solve those. I’ve found its helpful to reference stories from real coaching engagements to answer these questions.
‼️ I’ll begin with a BIG caveat
I don’t have a standard coaching engagement or structure. In my experience, it’s not very helpful to dogmatically follow a rinse-and-repeat process when approaching inner work. What’s far more effective is leveraging a set of principles and tools as guiding lights on the journey toward your vision. As Maslow puts it, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”.
Client stories
I’ve found that most clients are seeking help with 3 archetypal issues. We’ll walk through three real client engagements (anonymized for confidentiality) that map to each archetype. While my principles and approach are reflected across all engagements, the way they manifest in the work can be very different.
Issue 1: I want to identify and shift old mindsets and beliefs that are blocking my growth & progress
Tommy is a seasoned executive. He arrived at coaching with the goal of becoming a better leader, executive, and professional. His last few years have been a mix of highs and lows, with a cocktail of rapid professional success and tremendous personal loss. The losses were so painful that he coped by numbing himself from feeling anything extreme, pain or joy.
As we dug deeper, we realized that the real work was about shedding the masks he wore to cover up his pain so that he could lead authentically. These masks kept him trapped in “victim” consciousness. At the core of the issue was a tension between his values of service and love and his perception that the world didn’t value those things in a leader. This tension manifested in apathy, perfectionism, and harsh self-criticism that kept him in a constant state of anxiety-induced performance.
To change his psychology, we started with his physiology, revamping his energetic protocol. Then, life threw a wrench in the works. We arrived at a session where Tommy was consumed by an emotional storm.
“I feel dread, anxiety, and stress”.
He spoke about dreading failure to adequately step up a new role at work new responsibilities and manage a large team with budgetary pressures.1 We met this budding self-awareness and fear with compassion. This took many sessions to integrate. There was no clear end to the storm, but meeting himself with self-awareness and self-compassion helped abate some of its effects.
As the storm passed, we pulled back up and focused on implementing Tommy’s energetic routine. This time around, the results were markedly different. Tommy showed signs of moving towards a “creator” consciousness, where we are empowered to change the world instead of being the victim of it. For example, while the pattern of perfectionism didn’t go away, he more often chose to respond to it with self-compassion instead of harsh self-criticism.
The beautiful thing is that almost nothing in Tommy’s external environment has changed. Rather, the work of understanding his internal landscape, accepting his reality, and leaning into his unique genius bore fruit.
The result (in Tommy’s words, edited for anonymity): The most significant transformation I experienced after working with Yash was a significant increase in energy, discipline, and focus throughout my day. Prior to our engagement, I often felt tired and spent a lot of time on the couch. Now, I’m 100% more productive and energetic. He has helped me approach each day with a greater sense of intention, leading me to achieve higher levels of performance and experience more joy in my work and life.
Issue 2: I want to make better decisions that get me closer to a life that I enjoy
Ajay is entrepreneurial, kind, and brilliant. We began coaching as he started to think about his transition from business school to his next career move. He felt unable to access excitement and clarity of thought around his next step because he felt tired, overcommitted in his obligations, and resentful towards others for overstepping his boundaries.
We began with the principle of Radical Acceptance of Reality to assess how Ajay was complicit in creating the results he didn’t want. Beneath the anger, fear, and confusion was a pearl of wisdom - Ajay viewed life as a zero-sum game where his sense of approval was directly tied to “doing” for others. As a result, he would overcommit himself in an effort to remain connected, while feeling bitter and resentful to those people for pushing his boundaries. This insight was HARD work and took time to realize and accept.
By naming and speaking this underlying pattern, we removed the unconscious power that it had over Ajay’s actions. This opened up space to move to tactical exercises to map out where his time and energy were currently going, and where he wanted them to go instead.
Then, we got to work implementing these changes in his life.
The result (in Ajay’s words): My biggest transformation from coaching has been profound self-discovery. I reaffirmed some existing knowledge about myself and purposefully and intentionally cultivated new habits for managing time and energy. The more I implemented the learnings from our sessions, the greater impact and transformation I felt in my life. I'm now more mindful and effective. I’m seeing results and an improved life, and have a felt sense and deeper understanding of what it feels like to be effective.
Issue 3: I know what I want to do with my life and business, but I need help developing the courage and accountability to make it a reality.
Phoebe came in skeptical of coaching. As the co-founder of an early-stage startup, Phoebe was time and cash-strapped. Her business was in a state of flux as she looked to expand her team to handle the growing complexity of her company.
She was held back by fear that the people in her life would not believe in her vision. She already had a few examples of friends who were skeptical of her business. Phoebe came from a pedigree of name-brand universities and consulting firms. Despite acknowledging that she was miserable there, she missed the social acceptance that came from not having to explain why her work was valuable.
As we dug deeper, we realized that what Phoebe was really seeking was a transformation in how she sourced her senses of security and approval. She had a deep-seated sense that “good” meant that things needed to appear a certain way. This came from her childhood experiences of her parents telling her to be “more logical and less emotional” when faced with adversity. In her adult life, she expected that vulnerable conversations with almost anyone would have painful and adverse outcomes. For example, she’d broken an agreement she made with her parents to be honest and forthcoming about her life with them because she was in fear of their disapproval.
In parallel, we also connected her back to the inspirational vision behind the work she was doing: “to improve the lives of other beings”. This provided solid internal ground to weather the storms of stepping through her fear to explore what was beyond. We used this grounding to direct the search for how to handle cleaning up her broken agreements. The answer that arose from inside was to have honest conversations about her work and life on her terms: empowered, confident, and fearlessly authentic.
The result (in Phoebe’s words): When I started working with Yash, it felt like I was drinking life from the fire hose. As a first-time entrepreneur, I found myself in unfamiliar territory. I was grappling with isolation and mental and emotional load that I didn’t feel I had a strong capacity to handle. The most valuable aspect of coaching has been gaining a deeper self-understanding. Yash made observations about me that I'd suspected but never explored. Recognizing when I'm working against myself has been eye-opening. I now perceive myself and the world differently. I’m more emotionally authentic and reflective in my personal and business life. This shift has led me to value relationships more and have frank conversations with my co-founder. Yash's guidance often surprised me; we didn’t just work at the philosophical and emotional levels, but also at the tactical level to integrate these learnings into my day-to-day.
In summary
I don’t have a “standard” coaching engagement structure because there is no “standard” client. I work with clients to help them carve their own paths to the next level of leadership. This often involves a transformation into a fundamentally different way of being in the world.
While the specifics of the work are often very different, 80% of the questions I hear fall into these three archetypal issues. At the end of our work, my clients often leave with deeper senses of self-awareness, self-compassion, and empowerment to create the outcomes they seek.
A final note
If you find yourself with a coach that has a “standard” engagement structure for every client, I encourage you to ask them for the reasoning behind their methodology and give thought to whether it is in service of your goals. I’m not suggesting that all structure is bad, but the intention and application of it is what really matters.
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Note: This was a beautiful expression of self-awareness. Just a few sessions earlier, Tommy mentioned that he’d cut himself off from feeling pain.. and now he was articulating a very raw expression of it. As a coach, it’s often my job to call out progress and highlight behavioral changes that my clients may not see themselves. Put another way, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees.