How Coaches Get In Their Own Way (And What It Really Takes To Change)
Sometimes, the most significant growth edge for us as professional coaches isn’t another skill or model.
It’s learning how not to interfere.
It’s learning how coaches get in their own way.
I learned this, not in a classroom, but in the quiet hours feeding baby flying squirrels this summer.
Tiny bodies, warm in my hand at 6am.
When you’re holding a creature that small, you can’t rush.
You can’t multitask.
You can’t future-focus your way through the moment.
Their tiny breath forces you into presence.
Presence Is The Real Work We Think We’re Teaching
This is the punchline most coaches don’t like to admit:
We talk presence.
We recommend presence.
We teach presence.
But we’re not always in presence.
Even with years of experience, our personality patterns (Enneagram) can quietly pull us out of the moment and into self-created pressure.
It’s similar to what I wrote about here: 9 ways personality can undermine effective coaching
Here are some common patterns coaches fall into:
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wanting to offer value quickly
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wanting to “earn” our place in the session
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wanting to create the insight
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wanting it to look like coaching is working
The instant it becomes about us, the client stops being fully seen.
That is how coaches get in their own way.
Coaching Is Attunement, Not Performance
Wildlife doesn’t respond to urgency. Flying squirrels don’t care about efficiency.
They meet the world one sensation at a time.
Attunement is their default state.
Imagine if our coaching sessions were more like that:
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slow enough to notice what’s actually happening
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grounded enough to let truth surface instead of forcing it
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present enough to feel the moment instead of thinking through it
Presence isn’t passive. Presence is power.
There’s now a growing body of neuroscience showing how presence literally changes the brain — here’s one research overview that I love: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_mindfulness_changes_the_brain
Most coaching self-sabotage comes down to this foundational truth:
When we slip out of presence, we slip into performance.
I’ve written about this from another angle here too: Is Your Attitude Getting in the Way of Your Success?
Knowing Your Patterns IS Professional Development
Most coaches believe the next level in their coaching comes from more techniques or more tools… yet the data shows the biggest leaps actually come from increasing self-awareness.
When we know our own patterns and can feel when we’re slipping out of the moment, we can catch the subtle shift in real-time. That’s where real mastery begins. Because clients don’t change because we say brilliant things… they change because they are deeply seen. And the cleaner we are inside the coaching space, the more accurately we can see them.
That’s why understanding how coaches get in their own way isn’t personal criticism, it’s professional development.
This Is Where Coaching Mastery Lives
When coaches learn how not to get in their own way, coaching becomes more:
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honest
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effortless
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precise
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intuitive
This is the deeper work:
- Unravelling the automatic patterns that take you out of the moment.
- Understanding your Type.
- Understanding your instinctive strengths.
- Understanding the subtle ego moves that keep you in control, instead of connected.
Mastery isn’t about doing more. It’s about being more available.
Those tiny flying squirrels taught me more about real presence than any methodology ever could.
Want to go deeper than technique?
This is exactly what we explore inside The Enneagram & The Coach.
We don’t just teach the Enneagram, we teach you how to use it to coach from presence, not pressure.
So you stop getting in your own way, and your clients stop getting stuck.
Learn more here:
https://coachbrilliant.com/the-enneagram-and-the-coach/