There is a question I am regularly asked: “But ultimately, is coaching psychology?”
Short answer: no.
More interesting answer: no… but it would still be rather strange to work with human beings without ever taking an interest in what several decades of research have taught us about human beings.
Coaching is neither psychology, psychiatry nor psychotherapy. Nor is a coach an amateur psychologist who simply happens to be missing the diploma on the wall.
They are different professions, with different aims, methods, training pathways and fields of intervention.
That absolutely does not prevent coaching from drawing on knowledge, concepts and practices from different disciplines.
That is actually how I see my profession:
as a practice at the crossroads.
Coach, psychologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist: they are not the same thing
Let’s put our cards on the table.
In France, a psychologist has regulated university training and the title of psychologist is legally protected.
A psychiatrist is a doctor specialising in psychiatry. Among other things, they can make medical diagnoses and prescribe medication.
The title psychotherapist is also regulated in France and subject to specific conditions.
The term psychopractitioner, on the other hand, does not correspond to the same kind of regulated title: it is used by professionals offering various forms of psychotherapeutic support according to their training.
And then there is the coach.
A coach’s job is not to diagnose or treat a mental-health disorder.
And that distinction is not an administrative nicety.
It defines the boundaries of our work.
So what does coaching actually work on?
Coaching generally starts from a present situation and a question, difficulty, objective or desired change.
How do I set a boundary?
How do I handle this conflict?
Why do I keep postponing this decision?
How do I change the way I communicate?
How do I prepare for this difficult conversation?
How do I stop repeating this particular relational pattern?
We may need to understand what is happening. But understanding is not the end point.
The question quickly becomes: what can we try?
Psychology can provide useful maps
That is where psychological knowledge becomes extremely useful to me.
Cognitive psychology can help us understand certain biases, habits of thought, attention or decision-making.
Social psychology can illuminate group dynamics, influence, conformity, attribution and interpersonal perception.
Research on emotion, motivation, learning or behaviour can also offer useful hypotheses.
But a psychological concept is not a magic label.
If I tell you that a cognitive bias may be involved in a situation, the interesting part is not that we have found a clever name for it.
The interesting part is:
“What changes once we know that?”
Meditation and attention: useful practices, not magic spells
I may also draw on practices inspired by meditation or attention training.
Not because closing your eyes for three minutes will magically solve your relationship with your manager.
But because learning to notice what is happening in us before reacting can sometimes create a tiny but very useful gap between stimulus and response.
Notice the tension.
Identify the emotion.
Observe the thought that has just appeared.
Then decide what to do with it.
Again, the aim is not to turn every coaching session into a spiritual retreat with incense and Tibetan bells.
The practice is useful only if it helps you act differently in real life.
Role-play: because knowing what to say and saying it are two different things
This is probably one of my favourite tools.
You can understand perfectly well that you should set a boundary.
You can even write the ideal sentence on a piece of paper.
Then the person is in front of you.
They insist.
They look disappointed.
They challenge your decision.
And suddenly your beautiful sentence disappears into another dimension.
So we practise.
I play the colleague, partner, manager, client or difficult person.
You answer.
We stop.
We look at what happened.
Then we try again.
Because a skill is not acquired merely by understanding it.
Exercises between sessions: no, I am not giving you homework for the sake of it
I also like proposing exercises between sessions.
But I have very little interest in generic worksheets that could have been given to absolutely anyone.
If I suggest an exercise, I want it to make sense for your specific situation.
Observe one particular behaviour for a week.
Try a different response in one precise situation.
Write down what happens immediately before a recurring reaction.
Ask a question you normally avoid.
Test a boundary.
Experiment with a new way of communicating.
The purpose is not to behave like a good pupil.
The purpose is to collect information from real life.
And sometimes I use tools that are not scientifically validated
Yes.
I also use frameworks such as Human Design.
And I think it is important to be perfectly clear about their status.
Human Design is not a scientifically validated psychological model.
I therefore do not present it as scientific truth, diagnosis or explanation of your physiology.
I use it as a symbolic and exploratory framework capable of generating questions or hypotheses.
And if the framework tells us something that does not match your lived experience?
Your lived experience wins.
The tool should never become more important than the person
This is ultimately the principle that connects all of these approaches for me.
I can use a psychological concept.
A role-play.
An attention exercise.
A symbolic framework.
A practical experiment.
But if the tool does not help the person in front of me understand, experiment or act, then it is the wrong tool.
The method must adapt to you.
And sometimes the work simply begins with this question:
“All right. You already know a great deal about your problem. Now, what are we going to try?”