Should You Coach Your Friends and Family?
This is a tricky question! There are valid arguments on both sides of the issue. For new coaches just breaking into the business, this blog should serve as a starting point for you to think about whether you want to coach friends and family. You won’t want to start your practice without considering this!
ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF COACHING FRIENDS AND FAMILY
Your friends and family are your biggest supporters and your biggest evangelists. They want to see you succeed and being among your first customers is one way that they can support you. Not only that, you already know them well, including the context of their lives and the issues they might have that you can help them with. So, in some ways, they are like "built in" clients with the potential to keep you busy right from the start. When you help them, you can gain real insight into the value of your coaching because you can watch their success unfold before your eyes.
ARGUMENTS OPPOSED TO COACHING FRIENDS AND FAMILY
When you are coaching friends and family, it can be potentially difficult to draw that line between when you’re spending free time with them as a friend and when you are spending billable time with them as a coach. Should you step in as a coach if you are spending time with them as a friend and you see them do something that goes against what you are coaching them about? Should you mention it in a billable session? Billing can become an issue, too, as friends and family may want to enjoy the benefit of your services at a lower cost (or at no cost), and confusion can erupt over what constitutes billable time. Furthermore, it can be difficult to sell to your friends and family, so presenting your services to them might not be enjoyable for you (or for them); and neither will it be an enjoyable coaching experience if you ever have to give them an honest assessment that goes against what they want to hear.
I’ll be honest, I’m torn. In my own practice I try not to coach family and friends, but if they do ask for a bit of coaching I’ll keep it really casual and remind them that I have paying clients and will be happy to chat with them for free over dinner. I don’t like to bill family and friends and I want to avoid the messy disputes that can occur over billing. A dinner conversation is an enjoyable way to spend time with friends and it also helps to limit my "free coaching" time. In some ways, I have the advantage of being a business coach, which automatically excludes many of my friends and family (in a way that a productivity or goals coach might not be able to so easily exclude). But that’s not to say that I don’t coach any friends. There is one friend who I’ve been coaching for a while (he was my very first client) and it has worked out great, although we both work hard to keep professional stuff professional and casual stuff casual. (For example, we use our professional email for coaching and our personal email for friendly conversation).
If you are breaking into the coaching field, you will need to think about this; and chances are, you’ll experience a lot of internal pressure one way or the other.
If you decide not to coach family and friends, just decline their request for coaching and tell them that you’d rather not coach them because you want the freedom to coach appropriately and you don’t want there to be any awkwardness or tension between you. Offer to give them a few tips over a nice dinner at a restaurant (and keep it casual).
If you decide that you do want to coach family and friends, create boundaries and clear definitions. Be strict against coaching outside of office times. Encourage the use of personal contact information for friendly matters and professional contact information for professional matters.
I’d like to hear from you! Do you have a success story or a horror story to share about coaching family and friends? Do you have advice for new coaches to sway them one way or the other? Leave a comment and tell us about it (and I don’t need to remind you that this is a public blog so avoid referring to identifiable people or situations).
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Related Articles:
- A Place for Professional Coaches
- What is family coaching about?
- Why do you coach moms?
- Family Coaching
- When Good Help is Bad
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