Coaching the Person, Not the Problem

Most of the coaching we encounter throughout our lives is coaching for compliance. We see it in families, schools, and workplaces. Someone identifies a problem, sets a goal, and tries to move another person toward a preferred behavior or outcome. This kind of coaching often serves the person or system doing the coaching. At times, it serves us too. There are situations where structure, correction, and external accountability are appropriate and even necessary.

But this model assumes that something about the person being coached needs to be fixed, corrected, optimized, or brought into alignment. The focus stays on the problem, the gap, or the desired result. Over time, many of us internalize this way of being coached and begin to relate to ourselves the same way.

There is another way to coach that is far less common.

Coaching With Compassion

Compassionate coaching starts from a fundamentally different stance. It holds that the individual being coached is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. Not “eventually,” not once they get their act together, but right now. From this perspective, the work is not about extracting potential from someone or steering them toward an externally defined outcome. It is about creating the conditions for their innate intelligence to come back online.

This is the difference between coaching the problem and coaching the person.

People typically come to coaching with something concrete: a decision they are struggling to make, a habit they cannot sustain, a relationship that feels stuck, or a sense of restlessness or dissatisfaction in one or more areas of life. These issues matter, but they are often less central than they appear. What matters more are the perspectives the individual holds, how they understand themselves, what they value, what they long for, and what they have learned to ignore or override.

When those deeper layers become clearer, the practical questions tend to reorganize themselves. Coaching works in reverse of what many people expect. We do not start by fixing the problem. We start by understanding the person.

Self-Worth and Self-Determination

One of the most influential pieces I encountered during coach training was written by Richard Boyatzis, a well-known organizational psychologist and leadership scholar. In it, he writes:

“The individual’s sense of self-worth and self-determination is their most important and valuable possession, which overshadows any specific behavior or goal the person might desire.”

This statement reframed much of how I think about growth and change. Our most important and valuable possession is not our productivity, success, or ability to meet expectations. It is our sense of self-worth and our capacity for self-determination. Everything else rests on that foundation.

My coaching is aligned with two assumptions that flow directly from this understanding. First, you are enough right now. You are whole, full stop. Second, you have always had, currently have, and will always have the authority to decide how to live your own life. You are creative and resourceful, not dependent on someone else to tell you who to be.

For many people, especially women in midlife, truly realizing this is the work.

Midlife and the Loss of Inner Authority

By midlife, most women are serving many masters. Children, partners, aging parents, employers, financial realities, and social expectations all make legitimate claims on our time and energy. Even the people who love us often have strong preferences or anxieties about how we should live. Support and encouragement are rarely offered without some kind of agenda attached.

In this context, learning to rely on yourself as your own true north is essential. Too much depends on your functioning and your ability to live in alignment, including the well-being of the people who rely on you.

No one is coming to save you. This has to be an inside job.

What Coaching Actually Offers

Many capable adults are surprisingly unaccustomed to examining their own thinking or listening inward without immediately correcting themselves. Our deeper self is under-consulted and has largely grown silent over time.

Coaching offers an opportunity to reestablish contact with that inner knowing. Through careful listening, mirroring, and exploration, you begin to see yourself more clearly in the context of the issue you bring. That shift in perspective alone can be profoundly insightful. When you understand yourself differently, your choices tend to change as well.

In my work, we often deal with very practical matters: a decision, a habit, a difficult relationship. But the frame that guides our work never moves off of you, the person experiencing the issue. I am not coaching you toward a predefined outcome. I am helping you see yourself more clearly so that your next steps emerge from a place of self-alignment.

You are unlikely to experience a sweeping life transformation in a brief, three-session engagement like my introductory coaching program The Catalyst. But you may catch a glimpse of what becomes possible when you stop treating yourself as the problem and start listening to the voice inside. For many people, that glimpse is enough to change how they relate to themselves, and everything else begins to shift from there.

If this way of thinking resonates, you may find that coaching becomes less about fixing a problem and more about learning how to live with greater personal integrity. My work is designed for people who want that kind of space. If you’re curious, you’re welcome to learn more about how I work or explore whether a short engagement like The Catalyst is a good fit.