Is life coaching 'white people nonsense'?
TLDR: it looks like it from the outside, but doesn't have to be
What I didn’t say in my last post, “Is life coaching quackery?” that I want to talk about here is that one of the things I also used to think life coaching was… was “White people nonsense.”
If you are an elder millennial like me you’ll remember that Tumbler page called “things white people love” complete with tongue in cheek jokes about khakis and golf and saying “oopsy daisy” and the like. And, in the past I would have put “life coaching” on that list too, and had a good chuckle about it.
At the time, the cues I was receiving about life coaching being nonsense, I have already discussed in my earlier “quackery” post. But the cues I was getting about life coaching being for and by white people… those are a bit more complicated and I think deserve some exploration. Especially for other people of color who might not feel like coaching is for them. Or maybe even that it might be harmful to them.
And so if you are a person of color, who is feeling that - let’s get into it.
Two things gave me information that made me think life coaching was not for me as a biracial, woman of color:
Lack of representation in the profession
The intense focus on the individual which wasn’t jiving with my communal values
Let’s start with representation:
My underlying assumption is that race matters. It’s not the only thing. It’s not the most important thing. But it does matter to me. But if I’m being really honest, as I started to explore life coaching as a profession, my representation binoculars weren’t actually looking for skin color.
As I scrolled the headshots of coach training school owners and instructors and poked around the coaching teams bios at various life coaching businesses I was using my perception of peoples’ racial identity and the visual level of diversity on their teams as a stand-in for safety. I was looking for understanding. I was looking for resonance. Shared experience. A promise of a lack of casual dehumanization that I might have to correct, ignore, resist, brush off, or absorb (and then pay my therapist to talk about later) during class and in a future workplace.
My real search was not actually - “are white people in charge” or “are there any people of color around here?” It was a yearning to know ahead of time: in which program am I least likely to experience or witness racialized harm or unconscious bias against me or other people of color? Where might I feel like I belong?
And before you jump in, you don’t need to remind me that people of color aren’t always safe people either - we enact prejudice and othering and harm on one another with as much frequency as non people of color - but that’s a topic for another day. But, what I did and do know, is that, statistically, people of color are more likely to share my experience and values and are significantly less likely to secretly belong to a pointy hat club, literally or ideologically… if you know what I’m saying.
So back to representation.
In my googling around to find a coach certification program, the lack of representation I was finding nearly confirmed all my suspicions about coaching being for white people and it almost stopped me from applying to any at all. I found a few BIPOC owned schools - yes they exist and they are doing great work but they didn’t have the particular type of program I was looking for. So while my somewhat trauma-related reaction to the lack of diversity in the profession almost made me stop looking, my more optimistic and hopeful side won out. And I registered for a program that focused on trauma-informed coaching.
The big question I wanted answered via a coach training program was not, “How can I be a good coach?" That’s boring. I wanted to know: can coaching be a tool for liberation from systems of oppression and healing from the impacts of systemic racism? Can coaching truly serve a person of color and support them to thrive when there are so many obstacles society puts in their way?
So as I registered for class my logic was: surely a trauma informed practice would be the place that would be best equipped to not only not perpetuate harm, they might even answer some of these questions I had. Because trauma can be one of the main impacts of experiencing racism. And frankly, any ‘ism’ or experience of systemic oppression.
And I’m glad I did. Because I learned a lot and I met some really amazing people and I feel like I got a good education. Shout out to Moving the Human Spirit. And because of that education, here’s what I’ve learned that I want to share with you.
Trauma informed life coaching, (and I’m being specific to this because I can’t speak for other kinds of coaching that I don’t have experience with) can be (in the words of Mariko):
A supportive environment for someone to be centered and seen. A transformative experience for those who are rarely centered or seen.
Intense curiosity and reflecting back from a good listener who helps you learn to trust and value your own voice and perspective. Which can be very empowering to experience when the spaces you are in at work or in relationships gaslight or dismiss your experiences of marginalization or harm.
An opportunity to shift perspective and reframe barriers. Which can help someone leverage their strengths to keep moving forward despite obstacles.
There’s a lot that a coach can do to support someone’s journey to liberation it turns out.
So while it may look like it from the outside, coaching isn’t just for white people. I think I want every person of color I know to find an amazing coach - and I want them to be able to find one that represents safety and belonging to them in the way that I wanted to find that too. And I want more people of color to become coaches. Imagine what expanding access and representation in the coaching world would do for our communities?
But even with that realization, I was still bumping up against my second hesitation - individualism.
Individualism in life coaching
Let me digress into a short lesson on culture. At a 30,000 foot level, there are two ways cultures value people - as an independent individual or as an interdependent member of a group. We call these values systems individualism or collectivism (a body of research on cross cultural communication supports this).
When taken to an extreme, individualism says that the needs of an individual person trump the needs of a group and on the flip side, collectivism says that the needs of the group trump the needs of an individual. What we know about communities of color in the United States is that they tend to be more collective than majority American culture, which has some characteristics of hyper individualism. And that can create a values conflict for many people of color who are raised by their families to think more collectively but are living and working in a society that values individualism more. This can cause a lot of tension for an individual caught between two cultures trying to navigate honoring their identities and families and also having to assimilate or code switch into white American society.
And I was noticing that the scope and intention of the style of coaching I was learning was limited to the change that can occur within an individual. Which, granted, is powerful and I believe, necessary for many of us.
I still wondered, does coaching reinforce and perpetuate hyper-individualism? And in doing so, does it implicitly communicate that if a person just does good inner work of shifting perspective that they will change their external circumstances?
To be truly liberated from a system of oppression, yes, we need to start by liberating our own minds from our internalized oppression and healing the wounds we inflict on ourselves and each other. And in doing so we may find new courage and motivation to go out and be a part of broader systemic movements for change. But you could do an infinite amount of inner work, perspective shifting, empowerment and strength based growth and still walk out your door and encounter an unjust world. And that might drive you right back to where you started.
So it felt like something was missing. Especially for someone with Japanese heritage. The Japanese are famously collectivist. I am sure “communal values” is written in permanent ink somewhere in my DNA. There must be power in not just the inner work of clarity and forward motion but the power of joining with others who are doing the same.
So, is coaching white people nonsense?
Here’s where I’ve landed. It’s not but it sure looks like it is. But don’t let that stop you from looking for a coach. Having a trauma informed coach in particular, could be pretty amazing for everyone. And I actually think people who experience marginalization and injustice could benefit tremendously from having someone listen to them, support them, and help propel them to their goals and to the life they want. Imagine the difference it would make if we all had that kind of support in the face of ongoing challenges?
But when it comes to the question of individualism in coaching and societal change… maybe what I’m looking for is just out of the scope of what a life coach can do. Maybe that’s outside the scope of a one-on-one session format. Maybe that will be the work for activists and policy makers and elected officials. But I haven’t landed anywhere on this yet. I’m still asking questions.
Here are the questions I would love to propose to other coaches:
How do you support your clients who are experiencing systemic challenges that inner work won’t solve? Or can it? What is your experience? Especially interested in hearing from other coaches who identify as a person of color!
What about group coaching - does that support collective change more than one on one? (Anyone out there doing group coaching for justice - let me know!)
If all marginalized or oppressed people had access to a coach who supported their inner liberation, would that lead to collective change in the systems we know to be unjust? Would the ripple effect be societal change?
If you want to talk more or if you would like the experience being centered, seen, listened to and believed… I would love to be your coach.