The journal

Executive coaching or therapy?

An honest answer for women who have already tried to think their way out.

It is a fair question, and the people asking it are usually careful. You have read enough to know the two overlap. You want to put your time and money in the right room.

Here is the short version. Therapy treats what hurts. Coaching works on what you want to change in how you lead and how you live. Both are serious work. They are not the same work.

What therapy is for

Therapy is the right room for anything clinical: depression, anxiety that has taken over, trauma, grief that will not move, anything that is affecting your health or your safety. A licensed therapist is trained to treat those things. A coach is not, and a good coach will tell you so.

If you are not sure which side of that line you are on, start with a therapist. That is not a lesser choice. It is the careful one.

What coaching is for

Coaching is for the woman who is functioning, often very well, and who can feel that the way she is functioning has started to cost more than it returns. She is not in crisis. She is tired from being the woman who does the work, and she has been very good at her for a long time.

Coaching works forward. It takes one thing you are trying to change and stays with it until it moves.

Where they meet

Many women do both, at different times, and some at the same time. The work can sit side by side. Therapy may help you understand where a pattern came from. Coaching helps you stop running it at work on a Tuesday.

What neither should be is a third place to perform. If you find yourself arriving at a session with the right answer already prepared, that is worth noticing, whichever room you are in.

The trap most capable women fall into

You can name the pattern. You have read the books. You can diagnose yourself accurately, at speed, in language most professionals would be impressed by. And you are still doing the exact thing you can describe perfectly.

That is not a failure of insight. Insight was never the missing piece.

Knowing was never the bridge.

If that is where you are, and nothing clinical is in the way, coaching may be the right room. If you would like to know where you stand before you decide, the reading takes about four minutes.