This post is a collection of takes pulled from the comprehensive write-up of an experimental program to train a cohort of 9 life coaches called Tee Barnett Coaching Training (TBCT) that largely served the effective altruist, rationalist and other nearby communities.
To help deepen familiarity with receiving and providing coaching within impact-oriented communities, this post is intended for two potentially overlapping audiences:
Takes for self-improvers, clients, & those serious about self-development
These takes are derived from a combination of my firsthand experience and analysis of data in training coaches at TBCT.
- Addressing emotional cruxes along the way (in doing hard things) will probably yield the highest and most enduring gains – the TBCT report makes a point of emphasizing this as crucial to how we supported the cohort coaches, but it’s also fundamental to our style of coaching practices. (It underpins whatever success I’ve had in coaching leaders across different roles and organizations.) Note: this is definitely a particular orientation to coaching and the potential effects of coaching that others might not share.
- Fit is key – How you gel with a coach is hugely important and not something to discount. There’s so much subtle yet critical information in the concept of fit. We launched the matchmaking service partially because of the substantial empirical support for the importance of relationship fit for client outcomes, which includes the ‘alliance’ in counseling. What a great fit should feel like is contingent upon what types of relationships cause you to feel safe enough to grow. That is to say, not too chatty, safe and passive. And not too pressurized. A ton more to say here, but hopefully that helps.
- Render legible your path to growth – getting a firmer sense of where you’re at and where you’re going according to different conceptualizations of developmental arcs, lines, and cycles can be very illuminating. It can normalize difficult-to-decipher periods in your life like ‘liminal’ periods (i.e. disorientation and deconstruction of previous identity associations) and highlight future states you might aspire to. It’s also sometimes helpful to see various models of ‘progressions’ or ‘stages’ that can be orienting and reassuring.
Our ‘Planning for Developmental Arcs’ curriculum module covered a handful of these developmental models, including Constructive Developmental Frameworks, conceptions of seasonality, and metaphorical journeys.
- You might be surprised by your returns on personal growth – especially services that have a chance at fundamentally altering your perception, your experience and what it’s like to be you. Unless you have a fair amount of experience with coaches, therapists or other personalized support providers, it’s hard to know how to value ‘coaching’ more broadly. I know people who’ve experienced growth that’s worth tens-of-thousands of dollars (or more) to them. Some utilize coaching to change jobs, earn substantially more income, or reach elevated states of being. It’s hard to know what you’d value those things at if you try. More in-depth discussion on that in this episode of Any Thoughts On (01:04:51).
- Ask about your (potential) coach’s personal and professional development. It almost certainly matters for your outcomes – I’d be optimistic about coaches that undergo serious continued education and training, are active in a larger coaching/supportive network, and regularly receive personalized support themselves (coaching, therapy, etc.). There are just so many glaring benefits as a coach in things like sharing information and understanding, testing hypotheses and perspective, and getting support in trying to help others. For example, my sense is that client outcomes almost certainly improve when coaches can talk through their feelings, perspectives and potential solutions with other coaches. (Usually these conversations are appropriately anonymized.)
I’ve seen enough in working with both new and seasoned coaches to be concerned when coaches engage in little to none of these practices.
- Willingness to try coaching often hinges on self-conception and experience – I've encountered very few people that have decided against any form of coaching or therapy after thoroughly testing it for themselves. More common is coming to a fairly precise understanding as to how it's useful for them and when it makes sense for them to engage. (Here's a public example.) Often this means working with coaches on particular things during phases when skilled outside input is desired.)
Blanket rejections of coaching and therapy based on little to no investigation feel like they'd rarely translate into good advice for others. If the person truly doesn't require any input of this sort (not necessarily paid coaching) in order to live the good life, or make personal growth investments, or be a virtuous leader/manager, then I'd consider them among the very privileged few. It seems far more likely to me that there's conclusions being drawn from places that could use reexamination.
- The term "coaching" is likely so broad as to be nearly meaningless – what this thing we call "coaching" is can be so different from practioner-to-practitioner, from relationship-to-relationship, that it's really difficult to make sweeping evaluative statements about 'all coaches' or 'the industry' of coaching.
Many choices and assessments made by individuals, even relating to therapy, seem to be working with abstracted, universal or objective quantified forms that make far less sense in a setting like this. When in reality for this type of domain, so much that is specific to the distinct intermeshing of people as specific individuals is quite important, even when considering all of this at the community level.
As a result of this experience, I’m much more likely to ask “who specifically is involved?” to answer very general questions like “should I join a coaching program?”. Also I’d reply to “do you think coaching is good for most people?” with “who is coaching and who wants to be coached?” This lends to more accurate approximations in my opinion, though perhaps less elegant macro answers.
In short, if you've had experiences where the words and presence of another person were meaningful to your growth and trajectory – be it a parent, friend, mentor, public intellectual, etc. – there's likely a practitioner out there who can enhance your life. (This is very different than advocating for all of 'coaching' or even most coaches out there.)
- Is coaching purely a service? Is it a relationship? Both and more? Some of the clash in expectations on both sides of a coaching can come from how each party treats and handles the relationship. It can be good to think through your expectations in this regard beforehand. For some, the sharpness of a more professional service container is best. For others, a more flowing and flexibly relational container feels best.
For reference, my own coaching practice is geared toward working with people who want to build a wide-ranging relationship, which can include friends, mentors, collaborators, coaching peers, etc. I invited two former clients to my wedding, for example. I do draw professional lines, however, just not in the same places as those who treat what they offer as more of a standard service.
- One-off sessions are only indicative of certain things – for many types of coaching and therapy that work at deeper emotional and perceptual levels, it's often the case that the biggest effects arrive after cumulative work. This means that what you likely experience from a one-off session isn't as revealing as it might seem. As the 'developmental arc' point (above) might imply, progressing along a path of growth might take two or more sessions depending on how things go. One-off sessions can be great for vibe reads, getting a sense of potential, etc.
Our coaching cohort was pretty divided on giving one-off sessions. Advice from my own practice was to not give one-off sessions, but some coaches elected to offer them. It makes more sense that less established coaches are more likely to be in a position where one-off sessions make sense. Where as more established coaches might have more opportunities, less time, a legible track record, etc. that makes it less worthwhile to have one-off sessions with new clients.
- Trialing with multiple coaches at once – many clients engage in a linear journey of testing out working with practitioners. This can work, but the prospect of how slowly information comes by experimenting with one coach after the other, where trialing with a coach can realistically take a few months per coach, can be daunting and demotivating.
Experimenting with two (maybe three) coaches at once can speed up those timelines, while also providing nice contrasting and synergy benefits. Some decide to keep working with two or more coaches at different frequencies because they make very different, but nonetheless valuable, offerings.
- Deliberate meta-discussions are almost always worth it – taking stock of perceived progress is a great way for building the basis upon which to make future decisions about the coaching. (In good worlds, it can also feel good and be incredibly motivating!) Effects can fade, things can be forgotten, etc.
Collaboratively reflecting with the coach can be even better. You have another source of information about how the relationship is going, but also outcomes rest on the coach’s experience of the coaching session as well. You can learn quite a bit about the coach’s reported experience, their perception of your progress, and their plans moving forward. Lots of opportunities to strengthen that relationship, or notice differences in perception that could be grounds for course-correction conversations, or even ending the coaching relationship.
Some TBCT coaches were shy/scared about this at first. But upon witnessing the reactions of their clients, seem to have embraced doing this. I’ve valued these discussions highly both as a coach and client myself.
Takes for prospective and current coaches
This section includes thoughts related to being an individual practitioner and the landscape of coaching. Interested readers can hopefully bring generalized forms of this to bear on themselves and their own circumstances.
- Feeling lost as a new coach is the norm, not the exception – it’s not just you and feeling lost for at least the first 3-6 months is common. Virtually all of our cohort coaches reported this being the case. What matters most is trying to arrange circumstances that are not inhospitable to this type of ongoing uncertainty, setting up a number of indicators inside and outside of your subjective feelings, and getting help interpreting how you’re relating to the uncertainty.
- Inner work is critical to when first starting out, but also along the way – check out Choose Your Own Odyssey #3 where I say more about how taking stock of, and getting support in addressing, emotional cruxes along the journey of becoming a coach is something we feel is essential for so many reasons.
For example, it’s important that branding and marketing yourself not feel too icky, forced or rote. Having your presentation efforts dominated by feelings like this is not only unpleasant, but likely ultimately ineffective.
The example from the Choose Your Own Odyssey #3 regarding key questions when just starting out:
A perennial example from coaching and therapy revolves around how okay it feels to help people in this way at all. As evidenced by questions that commonly arise like:
- What makes me think I can help people in this way?
- What level of ‘figured out’ does my life need to be in order to help others with improving their lives?
- How much does my basis of authority, or justification for my position, affect what service I feel comfortable offering? (e.g. beliefs like “unless I’ve exited a unicorn startup, I won’t hazard to help founders with how to build a successful startup.”)
- In what ways do these beliefs around permissioning affect what I can claim about my practice?
- What makes me think I can help people in this way?
- What level of ‘figured out’ does my life need to be in order to help others with improving their lives?
- How much does my basis of authority, or justification for my position, affect what service I feel comfortable offering? (e.g. beliefs like “unless I’ve exited a unicorn startup, I won’t hazard to help founders with how to build a successful startup.”)
- Comparing the stats of new coaches to Tee's personal practice – the maximum "full-time" caseload for me was 40 - 50 session hours per month across 15 - 20 clients. I get the sense that this amount of session hours is in the ballpark for many practitioners making a living from this.
This would be 120 - 150 session hours over three months. Mostly over 4 months, the cohort managed to log ~650 session hours, with 422 of those being paid session hours. That breaks down to ~18 hours per coach per month over four months in total session hours, with ~12 hours per coach per month over four months in paid session hours.
The average amount of hours put in by cohort coaches over four months is about 1/4 of my typical full-time amount, but probably closer to 1/3 considering that all 9 coaches didn't have an equal share of sessions. (i.e. 3-5 coaches drove most of these hours).
Taking on 1/4 to 1/3 of a senior coach's full-time caseload seems roughly appropriate for new coaches juggling plenty of other things, including attending curriculum modules, working groups, and other TBCT programming demands.
- Getting clarity on how to figure this out for yourself is the almost certainly best thing you can get from someone else – while there’s a place for directly importing the know-how of others on the journey to becoming a coach, related to the point above, what’s probably most enduringly valuable will be getting support with making sense of things for yourself and deciding what to do.
- Skill (up) in environments with a mix of stakes – practicing as a coach in multiple environments with differing stakes can be quite illuminating. Restricting yourself to only certain environments as you train up as a coach is likely to be quite limiting.
For example, giving away your coaching for free (e.g. with close friends) as a way of practicing as a coach removes very practically important effects of paid coaching relationships.
On the other hand, only practicing as a coach through paid sessions can limit exploration because one might feel obligated to stick to what is acknowledged as valuable by clients.
The same applies for tiers of pay rates and the perceived stakes that come with each tier.
- Consistency is surprisingly tricky to master in coaching – as I feel the cohort would attest, arranging your life, even across a matter of months, in a way that allows you to consistently provide the requisite spaciousness and supportive intentions, is remarkably tough for many. As people consider whether becoming a coach could be right for them, I’d encourage them to take a close look at their personal track record in this regard, or at least develop plans to prioritize the importance of consistency.
- If you’re struggling with a question, the key to resolving it may be tackling ‘bigger’ or ‘harder’ questions upstream – a quick example to illustrate the point: “how much should I charge per hour?” can be elevated to “how much should I charge such that I can consistently feel good about the balance of pressure and incentives that I’ll face on every call?”
Charging too low of a rate could warp the incentives of the dynamic and make each session not feel quite real. Charge too much and the pressure to deliver value can contort the interaction.
Occasionally wrestling with bigger questions, even moral questions (see Tee’s Experience for more description and examples), such as the ethics around advocating for change and growth in others, can make the journey smoother and protect against large downside risks.
- Try to explore coaching without financial scarcity – building a coaching practice under financial stresses can have substantial warping effects. It can be hard for anyone to exhibit the patience and leave space for creative inspiration to flourish while feeling pressed with finances. Where possible, it’s likely best to keep a day job and/or explore coaching with some comfortable runway. We attempted to filter for this when selecting coaches to join the program. For those who felt financial scarcity while in the program, it undeniably colored their experience.
- Explore becoming a coach with a peer group – coaches in the cohort seem to uniformly agree that undertaking this journey alongside a group of others in a similar position was valuable in a variety of ways. I’d hazard that, at the very least, reaching out to (aspiring) practitioners at a similar level could be valuable. Joining some kind of program with a cohort is likely more so – it doesn’t have to be TBCT, but somewhere that you can find support among peers in a similar position will return distinct benefits.
- Set up multiple concurrent feedback indicators – our coaching development infrastructure was primarily modeled off of what I’d researched regarding how therapy training programs are constructed, literature on how skill building (in related and unrelated) areas works, and my best guesses about how to upskill in coaching based on experience.
After spending hours and hours reviewing other coaches’ recorded sessions, reviewing their post-session reflections, reviewing their client feedback, and working through their technical and emotional cruxes, I’m more convinced now more than ever that getting into this sort of feedback apparatus is vital for aspiring and relatively new coaches.
Really any of these forms of feedback are better than nothing. Some work for people better than others. But engaging in multiple concurrent forms of feedback that cause one to face a variety of things that will arise can be very potent. Something like this could provide rapid returns to your skill growth on the order of months, not necessarily years.
My actual feelings are that these things are vital for any practitioner at any level of perceived experience and seniority. Coaching is so high-dimensional, and there’s such a broad spectrum of outcomes that can be interpreted in so many ways, such that getting more lines of sight on what could be happening is really valuable. Couple that with a supportive and ideally skillful presence to help with interpretation and your own self-growth – that’s the recipe for getting better at this.
- Address emotional cruxes related to receiving feedback – volumes could be written about the nuances in interpreting feedback. But a high-leverage thing to pass along about this would be that nearly all of the cohort coaches encountered serious emotional cruxes related to interpreting feedback about their coaching. In one case, working through a couple of the cruxes was the difference between getting good insights from the feedback versus not checking the feedback at all out of fear. (Scoring anything other than a ‘9’ or ‘10’ was unbearable for this person and they couldn’t move past that feeling without one-to-one coaching with me). In another case, unresolved emotional cruxes around feedback on their work made it so that they were unable to complete the entire ‘coaching training’ portion of the program. New and existing coaches who haven’t implemented any feedback indicators would likely benefit from reflecting on why exactly that is. That’s not to say everyone who hasn’t is a bad coach, but there’s likely something deeper at play if you don’t want to set up ways to figure out how you’re doing and whether you’re improving as a practitioner.
- Set up granular session indicators in particular – related to the above, many coaches found the Session Rating Scale (SRS) to be valuable as a way of correcting and strengthening the ‘alliance’ or relationship. The Session Rating Scale (SRS), originally developed by Scott Miller as a quantitative scale for client feedback in therapy. Rather than taking at face-value the scores representing the quality of each session delivered, coaches treated the scoring as quantitative signals that could be qualitatively addressed (based on Miller’s recommendations). Receiving a lower than expected score along one of the axes is a great opportunity for the coach to potentially course correct, including the option to directly address the feedback with the client in the next session. (Miller also advocates for using the SRS in this way).
- Set up indicators for ‘where people are at’ – in short, as the reasoning goes, if you don’t know where people are starting from, you will struggle to know whether there has been any progress made.
We’ve had more luck measuring this in the form of tracking counterfactual events and decisions (e.g. did this happen or not? Would it have happened otherwise?) and other qualitative indicators that are upstream from goals and targets that people typically have.
Our attempt to get a sense of where people are at quantitatively worked less well. We attempted this in the form of the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS), another quantitative scale formulated by Scott Miller often used for tracking therapy outcomes. The cohort coaches got much less from this than the Session Rating Scale (SRS), likely because there’s far more noise in eliciting a number from a client relating to how an entire area of their life is going. As a result, we have far less ORS surveys issued because coaches weren’t motivated to distribute them after testing it out. This probably reflects on the notion of how granular, or how well-placed, quantitative indicators need to be for these purposes.
- Choose a mix methodologies with a sharp intention for what you want to find out about your practice – there aren't dominant universally-accepted methods of assessing the quality and value of coaching, partially because the concept of "coaching" is intractably broad. Deciphering what's going on from a collage of deliberately chosen and well-justified indicators is currently my best guess at how to assess coaching. This concurs with the takes of other authoritative sources I've seen.
Important to note: choose some indicators that will have a direct response to the fundamental focus of your coaching style. If your coaching is being assessed by an external party, I'd try to co-create the evaluation metrics and communicate clearly about your coaching practice to the best of your ability. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where conclusions are drawn about your coaching based on irrelevant and inappropriate indicators.
- An ounce of synthesis is worth a pound of reflection – one of the catchier phrases that coaches found useful in thinking about their post-session reflections. In reflecting on previous sessions, it can be easy to go through the motions, simply documenting what happened and perhaps how you felt. Taking the time to theorize about what happened, what the relationship and developmental arcs could be, and following up on threads with self-study is likely to be far more valuable.
- Being a coach as your life occupation may not be for you, and that’s okay – as Emily has been one to say, the great thing about establishing yourself as a coach is that you can dial up or down the amount of time and effort you spend on it alongside other pursuits. Choosing to become a coach shouldn’t negate embarking on other things on different timelines.
In fact, neither Emily nor I (Tee) believe that being a coach is the terminal goal. We both aspire to do other things, of which coaching and coaching-related relationships and skills will likely be a part.
- Becoming a coach may not be for you, and that’s okay – being a coach may be a bad fit for you in ways that aren’t clear from the outset, even if it makes sense as something for you to do on the face of it. There are still nearby occupations and callings that could be a good fit if you’re open to them.
What I often say, among other things, to people who are on the fence about becoming a coach, is that what you get out of the (hopefully) whole-hearted attempt (6-18 months) to be a coach needs to be worth it to you if it doesn’t work out.
Working as a coach is one of the best ways that I can imagine to accelerate certain skills and sensibilities in a matter of months, but cultivating all of that needs to feel worth it regardless.
Stray example – holding the dual awareness of modeling what could be going on with someone, while also holding an active listening presence, has been a key part of my coaching. This improved radically my first 6 - 18 months of coaching. Building this skill seemed worthwhile even if being a coach didn’t work out.
- Sustaining a coaching practice is likely harder for most people than it looks – despite the meme that everybody is becoming a coach, making a consistent living at this is often harder than people realize. Sustaining being a freelance coach is even harder than people realize.
Similar to the ‘everybody has a podcast’ trope, it may be the case that there’s been an explosion in people venturing to start their own podcasts. It’s almost never the case that they’re able to make a dependable living at it, or perhaps more importantly, have the impact that they’d hoped for.
In short, it’s incredibly high-dimensional interpretive work that, as far as our approach goes, demands that you sort out a vast amount of your subjective experience in order to sustain.
- There’s likely enough demand to make a living as a coach* – * but it’s highly contingent upon the individual. Approximations of demand out there for coaching are tricky for any single actor to pinpoint, but my experience running TBCT doesn’t lead me to conclude that the market is too saturated. For example, in the By the Numbers section, you might recall that the TBCT program received 110 applications from May – December. I’d consider this a weak signal of demand for coaching because TBCT is a different but related offering. Nonetheless, it gave us a glimpse of the potential demand for a “service” that requires nontrivial monetary, time and energy investment.
There does seem to be more coaches on offer than before, but because of how hard it is to make a consistent living at this, and how others have found it flexible to coach alongside other endeavors, I don’t think that means each new entrant into the coaching market represents a full-time equivalent amount of competing hours. It would be great to get hard data on this, but my guess would be that most coaches out there are doing between 15 - 30 paid hours per month. My best guess is that it hovers around 15 - 20 hours.
Speculation about demand seems to be mediated by i) the reach/visibility of a given individual, and ii) quality of the individual’s service. Some people can do zero marketing and have more clients than they can handle. Some have to expend great resources and energy to build a funnel for clients and still can’t seem to attract or retain enough. There’s a lot of complexity to unpack here, but I feel this is important to point out.
I also think that there’s a fair amount of attrition happening in the industry. Getting hard data on this is also tough, but many people launch a coaching practice but never close the site, or make any declaration about quitting as a coach, if things don’t work out. Most people likely leave the site up and go on to do other things, happily accepting the few people that trickle in.
And finally, in most cases, certainly if you'd like to be a solo practitioner, it's likely the case that a nontrivial amount of effort will be required for business development, marketing, etc. Solo practitioners who don't need to spend much time on this I'd consider privileged and uncommon. A handful of coaches in the program expressed surprise at how much effort is required for this. It's not often the case that someone who is a skilled coach will also be skilled at business development. That's certainly a point worth highlighting.
- Diagnosing client churn is hard but still worthwhile – even from the position of being able to compare the client conversion and churn rates of several coaches participating within a single system, sussing out the reasons for client attrition was challenging, though not entirely in vain.
The rule of thumb I’ve come to after this experience is that it’s good to get basic infrastructural pieces from others in order to minimize making avoidable mistakes. However, getting to the bottom of client churn in your own practice takes sustained efforts at tracking what’s going on and occasionally inquiring as to what the reasons could be.
In one case, a cohort coach thought it would be logistically easier to ask for payment upfront when clients booked a time through their scheduling software. This had the effect of decreasing follow through dramatically. It’s unclear why, it seems that decoupling (session-by-session) scheduling and payment improves client follow through.
Sometimes the issue is methodological. A couple of coaches noticed correlations between increased client retention and the implementation of ‘developmental arcs’ that were communicated to clients. The leading theory for that is that clients are more likely to follow through when they can see legible paths towards progress and have some visibility on where they’re currently at on that developmental arc.
- (related to above) Having the right balance of automation and manual investment into your systems can vastly affect the relationship – most would think of this in terms of the client experience, but should be seen as something that bears on the relationship between the coach and client. Without any automations, things can fall off track. Automate too much and things feel impersonal. A solid rule of thumb is automating highly personalized reproducible things (e.g. automating emailed prompts that the coach created)
- (related to above) Collaboratively formulating and communicating about client developmental arcs is good for outcomes – developmental arcs in this context is basically the progression of client growth. It seems essential for practitioners to have at least one developmental arc in mind when working with clients. It’s better if an arc can be agreed upon by both parties after being communicated to the client. Ideal seems to be that the coach has multiple developmental arcs in mind for the client, with some (not all) communicated to the client and agreed upon. Examples of arcs in various paradigms include natural cycles and phases, narrative arcs (hero’s journey), and cognitive developmental theory progression.
This one is in the column of anecdotally feeling true across several cohort coaches. We didn’t track this at the granularity of checking session satisfaction outcomes upon doing this with clients, though I do remember coaches citing improvement in quantitative indicators after introducing developmental arcs in their sessions with clients. Cohort coaches had the sense that not including developmental arcs tended to subtract from feelings of continuity from session to session.
- Transformational v Integrational concentration focus – the binarization of this distinction can be helpful for new and existing coaches to consider. Almost without exception, coaches would love to be of transformational importance to their clients (though I’d question this). But in terms of concentration of effort in being valuable to clients, because most coaches don’t have the means or reach, there’s typically a choice between conducting ‘intensives’ (e.g. retreats, very long sessions, bursts of sessions) vs. providing sessions of a more typical duration consistently. My practice and the tilt of this program leans toward the latter (integrational), but both types can have their place.
- Lean towards branding your practice to attract the clients you’d love to work with, not for the widest pool of people willing to pay – special care should be paid to not making this too narrowly appealing, though with the reach of communication mediums in this age, people often underestimate how large and sustaining ‘specific niches’ can be.
More potentially useful insights can be found within the full TBCT program write up.
You can express interest in future programs and coaching training cohorts here.
Please feel free to comment on this post, DM, or reach out to me at [email protected] with anything you'd like to discuss further!
