#139 Self-Belief: The Confidence Balancing Act in Coaching
Why Coaches Fail
Over the next 12 weeks, I’ll be posting a little more about why coaches fail. Being a great coach is about getting the balance just right between not enough and too much, the so-called Goldilocks Effect.
Coaches might underplay or overplay certain behaviours and derail the chances of successfully helping their clients reach their goals. Great coaches manage to strike a balance between these extremes and get it just right.
Today, I’ll explore self-belief, or ‘confident humility’, and show why getting the confidence balancing act is so important for effective coaching, and how to cultivate it for yourself.
Self-Belief: The Confidence Balancing Act in Coaching
In coaching, confidence is a double-edged sword. When a coach lacks self-confidence, their presence can feel tentative, even apologetic. They may second-guess their interventions, hesitate to challenge limiting beliefs, or overly defer to their coachee’s story. This dilutes their impact, leaving the coachee without the stretch or structure they need to achieve their goals. The coach’s uncertainty subtly signals, ‘I’m not sure this process will help you’, which can erode the coachee’s own self-belief.
On the flip side, overconfidence can be just as limiting. A coach who is overly invested in their methodology may inadvertently impose their process, steering the conversation toward predefined outcomes. The coachee’s goals risk being sidelined in favour of the coach’s process. This can feel rigid or even disempowering, as the coachee becomes a passenger in a journey that’s no longer theirs.
The sweet spot lies in what I call ‘confident humility’. When a coach believes in their capacity to support transformation and remains attuned to the coachee’s evolving needs, magic happens. They hold space with conviction yet stay flexible. They trust their process but use it in service of the coachee’s agenda. Most importantly, they role model self-belief - because coaching is, at its heart, an invitation for the coachee to believe in themselves. And that begins with the coach believing in their own capacity to change.
Three Tips to Cultivate Confident Humility:
Anchor your practice in purpose: regularly revisit your coaching ‘why’, not just your process, but your intention to empower.
Engage in reflective practice through supervision: Use supervision to explore where your confidence wavers or overreaches.
Focus on impact, not perfection: Shift from ‘Am I doing this right?’ to Is this helping my coachee move forward?’
Confidence isn’t fixed; it’s dynamic. And achieving the balance that generates ‘just right’ coaching is a practice you can nurture.
Visit https://www.growthecoach.com/free-resources to download an at-a-glance summary of all the coaching derailers.
