Coaching Accelerates People, But Can't Fix Them

Coaching Accelerates People. It Doesn’t Repair Them. Corporations Keep Confusing the Two.

Michael went quiet in the middle of a sentence.

We were deep into a coaching session, preparing for an upcoming quarterly review, when his demeanor shifted. When he spoke again, it was through tears. There were things happening in his life, he explained—trauma he wasn't comfortable discussing. It was disrupting him severely. He was afraid it was bleeding into his work, and he didn't know what to do about it.

I did the only useful things available in that moment. I gave him space to cry and to say what he needed to say. Which wasn't much, honestly. He really didn't want to share the details. I told him I would never pry, and that if he ever felt comfortable sharing what was behind the emotion, I would be there. And I told him something every executive coach should be able to say out loud: I'm not a therapist. I'm not qualified as one.

I spent 26 years in corporate leadership, including as CFO of Microsoft North America, and I've spent nearly a decade coaching senior executives at large and small organizations. Moments like that one have taught me more about my profession than anything else. And one of the most important lessons is understanding what coaching can't fix.

The Session the Corporation Never Saw

What happened next? Nothing the company could see.

My confidentiality policy is strict. I never share what a client tells me with anyone—including HR or the client's manager—unless the client expressly asks me to. Michael never asked. So the corporation kept paying for coaching while the thing actually disrupting their executive the most sat outside the engagement's scope. I helped him as far as coaching is equipped to help, and the only two who knew the intervention was misaligned were the two of us on the calls.

Nobody misbehaved in that story. Not the client, not the sponsor, not the coach. That's what makes it worth writing about: the problem is structural, and it starts with a fundamental misunderstanding of what coaching is.

Coaching Was Never Meant To Fix People

In corporate environments, coaching is frequently treated as a corrective tool. Leaders are handed what can only be described as repair tickets: an executive with a short temper, a manager struggling with insecurity, or a rising star known for sharp elbows. The implicit instruction is simple—fix this person, then send them back to work.

This approach misunderstands the fundamental purpose of coaching. The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as a partnership that inspires clients to "maximize their personal and professional potential." The emphasis is on optimization, not remediation. Coaching is not a repair service for broken executives; it is a developmental process for capable people who want to perform even better.

Optimization, Not Remediation

When coaching works well, it helps individuals see themselves with greater clarity. This often involves gathering stakeholder feedback, conducting candid interviews, and engaging in the deliberate, sometimes difficult work of behavior change. The goal is to build on existing strengths while addressing areas that need growth. It is a collaborative process that assumes the client is fundamentally capable and motivated—not defective and in need of fixing.

That distinction matters. A coaching engagement built on a repair ticket starts from a deficit mindset. It assumes something is wrong with the person and that the coach's job is to correct it. But coaching is not designed to resolve deep-seated psychological issues. When a client's difficulties stem from trauma, chronic mental health conditions, or other concerns that belong in clinical care, coaching is the wrong intervention entirely.

The Critical Boundary Between Coaching and Therapy

The line between coaching and therapy is not merely academic—it has real consequences for the people involved. Psychologist Steven Berglas addressed this directly in a Harvard Business Review article in 2002. He warned that coaches without psychological training can actually make an executive's situation worse. By working on surface symptoms without understanding their underlying roots, an untrained coach may reinforce harmful patterns or delay appropriate treatment. Berglas advised companies to consider psychotherapeutic help when an executive's difficulties are stubborn or severe.

More than two decades later, that caution has largely gone unheeded. The steady stream of repair tickets suggests that many organizations still expect coaches to handle problems that are clinical in nature. This is not just ineffective; it can be actively harmful. A coach who pretends to address trauma or deep psychological wounds without the proper credentials is a hazard to the very person they are meant to help.

What Coaching Cannot Accomplish

The therapy boundary is the most obvious limitation, but the repair-ticket mindset creates other false expectations. Coaching cannot succeed when the client is not genuinely invested in change. An executive who performs engagement in meetings but privately resists any real shift will not benefit from coaching, no matter how skilled the coach.

Similarly, coaching fails when the client commits enthusiastically but never follows through. Attendance at sessions and verbal agreement are not the same as behavior change. The work of coaching happens between sessions, in the daily choices and habits that either shift or stay the same.

There are also situations where the problem is not inside the person at all. Coaching cannot fix a toxic relationship with an abusive boss. It cannot make a role fit when the role itself is fundamentally wrong for the person. And it cannot resolve a values mismatch between an executive and the company they work for.

In cases like these, coaching can serve a valuable diagnostic purpose. It can help the client see the situation clearly and understand that the issue is external rather than personal. But the remedy is a decision—to change roles, to address the relationship directly, or to leave the organization—not a development plan. A coach can support that decision-making process, but they cannot coach the problem away.

The most effective coaching relationships begin with honest expectations about what coaching can and cannot do. When organizations stop treating coaches as fixers and start treating them as partners in development, both the coach and the client have a real chance to succeed.

The Diagnostic Problem Nobody Owns

When a misaligned coaching engagement winds down, the outcome often leaves everyone involved feeling disappointed—the organization doesn’t see the results it hoped for, and the client may feel the process missed the mark. The uncomfortable truth is that this failure isn’t anyone’s fault. It isn’t the client’s, the coach’s, or the profession’s. Rather, it is the predictable outcome of prescribing a solution before properly diagnosing the problem.

There is genuine sympathy for the people doing the prescribing. HR leaders and managers are frequently unable to see what is actually needed because the real issue often lives in deeply personal territory—space they shouldn’t access and aren’t qualified to assess. Some have argued, as Berglas did, for a psychological evaluation before coaching begins. That approach has merit, but U.S. law leans in a different direction. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the EEOC permits employers to require a medical examination—which can include psychological evaluations—only when it is job-related and consistent with business necessity.

Even then, it’s questionable whether the diagnosis can ever fully belong to the corporation. Important aspects of a person’s struggles may sit entirely outside an employer’s purview. The honest answer is that no one really knows who should own this diagnostic process. After a decade inside these engagements, I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to have a definitive answer.

That said, a few honest questions asked before an engagement starts would prevent most of the mismatches I’ve witnessed over the years.

The Question To Ask Before Hiring A Coach

If you’re thinking of sponsoring coaching for one of your leaders, or considering it for yourself, ask one critical question first: is this a development problem, or something else wearing a development problem’s clothes?

Here’s a rough test to help you distinguish between the two. A genuine development problem shows up in stakeholder feedback, stays specific to work, and has a nameable trigger—like a recent promotion, a new scope of responsibility, or a shift in team dynamics. The other kind is different. It follows the person across contexts and years, and it doesn’t budge under behavior tools or performance frameworks.

A skilled coach can help you make that call. In practice, that means an intake process that asks how long the pattern has existed, where else it shows up in the person’s life, and what has already been tried. It also means having a coach who is willing to recommend a therapist and walk away from the fee. Sometimes the most valuable thing a coach can say in the first conversation is: “This isn’t a coaching challenge.”

And if you’re an executive carrying something heavy into your work, hear the second half of what I told Michael. Wanting help isn’t a weakness. But choosing the wrong kind of help—or letting your company choose the wrong help on your behalf—is a mistake. A coach can stand beside you and support your growth. But for some wounds, only a therapist can do the real work.

Your go-do this week: pick one coaching engagement you’re thinking of sponsoring, or the one you’re considering for yourself, and write down in a single sentence the problem that needs solving. If your sentence starts with “fix,” stop right there. You’re holding a repair ticket. Coaching develops people. It has never once fixed one.

The opening vignette is a composite drawn from multiple engagements. Details have been changed to protect privacy.