Psychology for Coaches

Why is it Important to Understand Psychology as a Coach?

Whenever we coach someone, we’re in close psychological contact with that person. Coaching people can help to improve their wellbeing, help them to improve their performance or reach their goals, or help them to manage themselves, their lives, careers or relationships.

Humanistic psychology teaches us about being person centred, about deep listening, creating space and silence for our clients to think, the use of Socratic questioning and unconditional positive regard. A lot of the psychological underpinning of coaching comes from therapeutic literature exploring how we create the right conditions for coaching to be most effective.

Cognitive Behavioural Coaching also draws from Psychology. We can learn how our client’s thoughts, emotions and behaviours interact, and how we can challenge maladaptive thinking or troublesome emotions or behaviours to help them to move forwards. Knowledge of neuroscience can help us to understand things like the stress response and how it can inhibit logical, rationale thinking and decision making.

As coaches, it can help us to understand how humans make sense of themselves via their comparisons with others, or how adults develop their ways of making sense of the world over time. We can benefit from learning how motivation and confidence are influenced by experiences, or why we take short cuts and miss important information that could help us to take a different view or approach, influencing long term sustainable change.