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Gill Corkindale
Avoid the Coaching Niche
2:07 PM Thursday August 16, 2007

One of the first questions I was asked when I started out as a coach was “What’s your niche?” The “correct” answer, it seems, was “top team,” “high potentials,” “leaders,” “women,” or “board members.” But with little experience of coaching any of these clients, I was unable honestly to answer that question.

Seven years on, I am still unable to answer this question. In fact, I think it’s a pretty redundant one. It’s like being asked which people you associate with or the criteria for selecting your friends. People are who they are and where they are. In fact, at the risk of alienating many of my fellow coaches, I’d dare to say I’m a better coach because I’ve consciously avoided a coaching niche. What’s more, I think it’s pretty redundant to refuse to work with certain people because of their role or situation. We can learn something from everyone we meet.

The huge growth in the coaching sector and the lack of regulation have led to individual coaches redefining themselves as specialist “leadership,” “development,” or “transition” coaches, which are essentially meaningless labels. HR directors have colluded in this in order, they believe, to match the right coach with the right client. But this is misguided. Coaches cannot be classified in simple niches: the real work and development emerges from the relationship between coach and client rather than industry experience or qualifications.

The most significant attribute of coaches is their “signature presence,” a phrase coined by author Mary Beth O’Neill in Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart. She defines it as ”bringing your self when you coach — your values, passion, creativity, emotion, and discerning judgment — to any given moment with a client.” If managers is presented with coaches who simply mirror their experiences or backgrounds, how can they look at their issues from a different angle or move out of their comfort zone?

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