For many executives, coaching is akin to having a recuperative massage – a welcome relief from the stresses of work, where they can relax and re-orientate. For others, it’s more like going to the dentist – they would rather not be there, but they know they have to. In both cases, they come to coaching in a passive role: coaching is just another service, where they can let an expert take charge.
It can be very seductive for the coach, too. It feeds our need to feel useful and needed. If we accept the relatively passive role of the coachee, we end up with “cosy coaching”, where transformational change is unlikely.
One of the reasons for the passive coachee is that organisations often tacitly encourage this mindset. The responsibility for educating the client in how to be an active participant is abdicated to the coach – who may or may not rise to the challenge. Coach education almost never focuses on how to enable the client to become an ideal partner in the learning conversation. There is little emphasis on this in the coaching competency frameworks. And why would the client take the trouble to educate themselves about being an effective coachee, when no-one is encouraging them to do so?
Coaching is becoming increasingly normalised in companies, as something all executives and many others can expect from time to time. If all that effort and energy is to be harnessed productively, then enabling everyone to become competent at being coached is essential. We don’t have accurate figures for how much coaching – whether delivered by internal or external coaches – is unproductive or less productive than it should be. Yet the costs of coachee education are minimal compared to the costs of employing external coaches, or the cost of internal coach time, continuous development and supervision.
Seems like a no-brainer…?!
©️David Clutterbuck, 2026