Counsel Me

As a Professional Coach, a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Coach’s Coach, I consider it my responsibility to keep abreast on what is being written and spoken about the Coaching Industry. In my recent perusal of the Harvard Business Review’s (HBR for short) website, I read two articles, similarly titled, that I not only thought were interesting but also slightly disconcerting because the articles were accurate. Here is the first that I read; I will post the other this week.

The first of the articles that I read was called “What Coaches Can Do for You” and mentions the frequency at which the line between Coaching and Counseling is crossed during sessions. This is an enormous error for Coaches who are untrained in any form of Counseling as they can often do more harm than good.

Because Counseling is a profession where the wrong assessment and advice can lead to disastrous results on a professional, personal and emotional level, a counselor must be well trained and certified to handle these situations with great care, understanding how the effect of their advice garners great responsibility in the short and long term. Counselors go through years of schooling to prepare for minute and major nuances of their advice. They HAVE to understand what their counseling can do to and for an individual.

From the standpoint of a Certified Counselor, Coaches who are not Counselors can cause more harm than good. Please be wary and avoid the slippery slope.