6 Most Common Critiques of Life Coaching
Life coaching is becoming increasingly popular. With greater visibility comes more criticism. My own relationship to life coaching (and coaching is such) isn’t as straightforward as you might think for someone who is a coach. I came to life coaching from psychotherapy, via mindfulness. Not because I realized that being a life coach is a dream of mine, but because I realized that it’s perhaps a better label for some ways of working and helping people grow that I have developed over the years, but that decisively weren’t psychotherapy. That doesn’t mean that I like or approve of everything (or most) of what I see in the world of life coaching. In this article, I’d like to consider some common critiques of life coaching and articulate my position and/or solution.
1. Lack of Regulation
One of the main criticisms of life coaching is the absence of standardized regulations or qualifications required to practice. A coach doesn’t even need a high school degree. Unlike licensed therapists or psychologists, anyone can claim to be a life coach without extensive training or credentials, which raises concerns about the quality and effectiveness of coaching services.
This is a valid point of criticism, one that I completely agree with. However, I am not necessarily interested in formal education, as much as I am interested in defining some core competencies that a coach must meet. There are accreditation bodies for life coaching such as the International Coaching Federation, but they aren’t necessarily made up of knowledgeable people. Like most such bodies, they are a group of experts who have declared themselves primus inter pares and who then proscribe criteria for coaching courses and charge for accreditation. No one is obligated to be accredited by them and they have no power to sanction anyone. There is no such thing as a coaching license.
Having completed ICF accredited courses and comparing that to my psychotherapy training – they provide almost no relevant psychological knowledge, some of what they teach is replete with toxic positivity, and they don’t seem bothered with any kind of theoretical uniformity. In other words, if a life coach is meant to learn some actual psychology, the standards set by ICF are sub-par.
On the other hand, do you know what else is unregulated? You can call yourself an economist and run a country’s economy even without any formal qualifications. Being a president is also an unregulated profession. There are jobs with far more responsibility and power that are completely unregulated. In fact, having a profession regulated isn’t a guarantee of anything. Psychotherapy is heavily regulated, yet that created a generation of therapists prejudiced toward CBT and ignorant of other approaches. While I am all for regulating psychotherapy (please don’t misunderstand me here!), regulation also had its downsides. That’s my point, nothing more and nothing else.
In all honestly, this is largely a valid critique. I wish life coaches had psychological knowledge and I wish there was some consensus on what that knowledge is. As someone who is also a psychotherapist, I gasp at the stuff that some coaches say with no self-reflection whatsoever. But because life coaching doesn’t have to involve any meaningful psychological work, but sometimes only accountability or alternative/spiritual coaching, it’s really difficult to find one paradigm or one set of facts that will fit every possible form of coaching.
2. Lack of Evidence
Critics argue that life coaching relies heavily on subjective and anecdotal evidence rather than empirical research. The field often lacks rigorous scientific studies to support its effectiveness, making it difficult to evaluate the true impact of coaching techniques.
While this is completely true, I don’t necessarily consider this to be relevant. There are some studies that indicate that life coaching is useful. Are there enough? No. Would I like to see more? I honestly don’t care. Evidence base is important in medicine and psychotherapy, but it’s, at the same time, not something to simply take uncritically and without context. Just because you know that CBT works, it doesn’t mean that Jennifer is going to be a good therapist for you just because she’s a CBT therapist. And just because most psychiatrists are weirdly suspicious of psychoanalysis, doesn’t mean that Melanie Klein hasn’t helped anyone.
Ultimately, whether something works for you isn’t a matter of large-scale studies but a question of your personal experience. What works for you.
Take mindfulness for example. I didn’t start meditating because of scientific studies, but out of curiosity awakened by a brief experience with the practice itself. I continued to meditate because it made me feel like I was growing as a person and because I could see, slowly, over time, changes in my behavior and feelings and ways of thinking. We know that mindfulness is supported by a significant amount of evidence at this point, but if there were zero studies, I’d be practicing it still. Because of what my experience is with it. I don’t go around looking for scientific evidence for every choice I make in life. I make choices because of their aesthetic or moral value or some other psychological benefit for me, not because studies support them.
People can test it out for themselves. Coaching isn’t an area that deals with severe mental illness or suicide and, at least in my experience, most of my life coaching clients are people who want to do better. People who are completely capable of deciding if something is useful for them.
At the same time, I already mentioned that life coaching is incredibly diverse because it’s not regulated. In my view, this makes studies only partially useful. If you have nearly as many approaches to coaching as you have coaches – what exactly are you assessing?
3. Expensive Services
Life coaching can be quite costly, and the fees charged by coaches can vary significantly. Some critics argue that these high costs make coaching inaccessible to many individuals who could potentially benefit from it, creating a privilege gap in accessing personal development support.
I am completely on board with this critique, and I was quite surprised when I realized that people are more willing to pay for my coaching services than they are for psychotherapy, especially because my psychotherapy training involved 5 grueling years of personal therapy, psychological theory, supervised work, etc. while most life coaching courses don’t run past a year and can’t even remotely measure up to psychotherapy training.
But this is an easy one for me: I don’t charge as much as I could, and I’ve done my best to develop affordable coaching programs. Why? Because that’s my value. I believe that personal development should be affordable.
4. Overemphasis on Positive Thinking
Life coaching often emphasizes positive thinking, promoting techniques like affirmations or speech patterns that lead to suppression of negative internal experiences. Some critics argue that this approach can overlook or trivialize the complexity of life's challenges, potentially neglecting the importance of addressing underlying issues or negative emotions and those critics are absolutely 100% right.
If there is one aspect of life coaching – a trend, rather, since it’s not an aspect of my method – is the ridiculous reliance on fake optimism and positivity at the expense of genuine contact and meeting a person where they are. If your coach lacks serious psychological knowledge, this is where it’s most likely to show. The moment someone tells you that you that poverty is a “mindset”, slap them and go find someone normal.
To put it simple: this is cringy, it doesn’t work, it makes me want to vomit.
There, I said it.
5. Limited Scope
Life coaching primarily focuses on personal growth and self-improvement, but it may not adequately address mental health concerns or deep-seated psychological issues.
If you’re criticizing coaching as a whole, then this is likely true, at least to a certain extent. On the other hand, if someone comes to coaching because they want to improve their mindfulness practice and use it to gain clarity in some areas of their life, why should I be so smug to tell them “no, you actually need something I think is deeper”? Doesn’t that seem a bit condescending? In the moment in which a person desires something other than coaching or realizes that their problems are better dealt with using other methods – they usually follow their hunch and seek that.
It's true that I sometimes see that certain people have issues that they are not addressing. As I hear about people’s lives, I can hear them circling around deeply painful topics but never actually choosing to work on them. But both as a therapist and as a life coach, I don’t think it’s my business to point out what *I* consider a problem because that’s not my life. And no amount of expertise can give me the right to impose my value system or knowledge onto other people’s lives. I am there to help people change what they want to change. To become what they want to become, not what I or any other normative systems wants them to be. And if they’re not sure what that is, then we embark on a journey to help them find out. Both psychotherapy and life coaching have the utmost respect for an individual’s autonomy, for each person’s ability to choose and decide for themselves.
Most coaching programs that I’ve encountered encourage coaches to find a niche, something that aligns with their interests and skills. Presumably, many coaches are aware of their skills and also their limitations. Many, I’m sure, aren’t, but many therapists also aren’t, and we won’t vilify the entire profession because of it. In every profession we witness oblivious people. I’m afraid no amount of regulation will fix that.
In my experience, clients look up their coaches before starting coaching. I am almost never approached for business coaching, because when people visit my web site, they see that I’m a psychotherapist, psychotherapy supervisor and mindfulness instructor. Naturally they won’t come to me to help coach them to be more effective social media managers. Not that social media managers or business executives aren’t some of my clients, but they come to me for different reasons. They come to me when they want personal growth or when they want to get to know themselves, when they want to learn how to utilize mindfulness to manage their anxiety or because they want to improve their relationships, etc. They come to me to help them deal with those things that a therapist might, only they come to coaching because they’re not interested in traditional forms of psychotherapy: some people because they like to have more autonomy, because they like to be creative, others because they have had bad experiences with therapists, some because they don’t want to set time aside for therapy, others because they want to be self-reliant, etc.
Even though that may be the case sometimes, I don’t think coaching has a “depth limit”, I just think it offers different tools than traditional therapy. This isn’t to say that there aren’t any limits to coaching. It’s genuinely not appropriate for people who are suicidal or want to harm others, it’s inappropriate for people who have a psychotic disorder, etc. Just like any other tool, life coaching has its limitations.
6. Lack of Accountability
Unlike therapy or counseling, which often have ethical guidelines and professional oversight, life coaching operates with limited accountability. Critics contend that this lack of oversight can lead to unprofessional behavior, ethical breaches, or the exploitation of vulnerable individuals.
It’s not true that coaching doesn’t have any ethical guidelines. ICF and other professional associations and all schools that I know of have them. Individuals may choose to transgress but that happens with every profession (sadly), and I haven’t been presented with evidence that suggests that life coaches tend to be more unethical than surgeons or psychiatrists or engineers or politicians or psychotherapists. While I recognize that this is an issue, I’m not sure it’s an issue that coaches face exclusively.
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The bottom line is that there are plenty of bad life coaches out there, because coaching is and will likely remain an unregulated profession. My impression of ICF approved courses is that this isn’t a good protection against charlatanism, although it is, perhaps, a step in the right direction. Perhaps it’s advisable for us life coaches to organize into more specialized organizations based on the type of practice we use or a specific problem we deal with, because that would help us guarantee quality standards in a way in which a vast and diverse organization like ICF can’t.
Regardless of how life coaching ends up organized one day or disorganized, it is always up to you as a consumer to make an informed choice. The same applies for other approaches to personal development. Just because someone is a licensed therapist, it doesn’t mean they’re good for you or good at their job in general. Just because someone is an engineer or a manager, it doesn’t mean that their title is backed up by actual knowledge.
When you want to find a life coach that suits your needs, send out emails or call them and get at least some of the following:
- See if they have the training; in my opinion, a life coach should have a psychology degree, they should be psychotherapists or counselors. At the very least, they should have extensive courses completed to understand the human psyche in a more comprehensive way. Being “intuitive” isn’t enough.
- Ask about their approach to your specific issue: have the coach outline, at least with a broad brush, how they approach problems such as yours.
- Ask for a name to check their references – a former client or a colleague or a mentor. See if they have any reviews.
- Decide (alone or with a coach) on a time that you will give them to see if you “click”, if you begin to see benefits from your work together.
- Don’t be afraid to ask them to clarify anything that may confuse or intrigue you; if you’re not sure why they’re asking a certain question or suggesting an activity, ask. A good coach must be able to explain their way of thinking.
