Common myths about becoming a coach

People who consider coach training often arrive with a mixture of curiosity and imagination. Alongside thoughtful questions about learning and practice, there are usually a few ideas in circulation that come from social media, promotional language, or stories heard at a distance. Some of these ideas are entertaining. Some are harmless. A few can quietly shape expectations in ways that make the learning journey harder than it needs to be.

It can be helpful to name these myths explicitly, not to correct anyone, but to bring them back into proportion.

Myth: Coaching leads quickly to strong financial success

Coaching is sometimes presented as a shortcut to freedom, where meaningful conversations turn smoothly into a stable and generous income. In practice, coaching income tends to grow slowly, if it grows at all. Building a coaching practice involves learning how to describe your work, how to find clients, how to handle commercial conversations, and how to remain engaged during long stretches where results are uncertain. Much of this work happens outside coaching sessions and is rarely visible from the outside.

Myth: A thriving coaching practice can be built within six months

Stories circulate of people who complete a training programme and find themselves fully booked shortly afterwards. While this does happen occasionally, it is not a reliable pattern. For most coaches, practice development unfolds gradually and unevenly. Six months is often enough time to learn a great deal about coaching, clients, and oneself, and rarely enough time to build something that feels stable or predictable.

Myth: Coaches are spiritually advanced or unusually grounded people

Coaches are sometimes imagined as people who have resolved their own struggles and now guide others from a place of calm and clarity. Real coaches have complicated lives, shifting moods, and moments of doubt. Training does not remove these experiences. It often sharpens awareness of them. Coaching relies less on personal insight and more on the capacity to stay present with another person, even when one’s own life feels unfinished.

Myth: Once trained, coaches no longer have serious problems themselves

There is an assumption that coaching competence brings emotional immunity. Anyone who has spent time in a training group will recognise how unrealistic this expectation is. Coaches continue to encounter confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty. Often this happens precisely because they are paying closer attention to their own responses and reactions than they did before.

Myth: Coaching is a relaxed lifestyle with very little practical work attached

A familiar image places the coach in a warm location, earning a living through pleasant conversations. This image is appealing and not entirely fictional, but it leaves out much of the reality. Coaching involves administration, documentation, scheduling, marketing, professional development, and supervision. Even when the conversations themselves are meaningful, the surrounding work remains substantial and ongoing.

Myth: Coaching platforms are waiting to hire newly trained coaches

Platforms do exist, and some provide useful opportunities. They also operate within their own commercial and organisational constraints. Being trained or accredited rarely leads to immediate inclusion. Access usually depends on experience, availability, and a willingness to work within predefined conditions that may not suit everyone.

Myth: Coaches need professional expertise in the client’s field

Many people assume that coaches must be experienced professionals in the areas they coach in, whether that involves leadership, business, or career development. While domain experience can be helpful in some contexts, it is not a requirement for coaching. Coaching does not rely on advice or expert solutions. It relies on supporting thinking and sense-making in ways that respect the client’s authorship. In some situations, not being embedded in the client’s field helps the coach remain genuinely curious.

Myth: Good coaching always feels confident and transformative

Some people expect coaching conversations to feel consistently deep, smooth, or impactful. Over time, most coaches discover that ordinary conversations, small shifts, and moments of uncertainty are part of the work. These moments are not signs that coaching is failing. They are signs that real thinking is taking place.

Naming these myths matters because expectations shape experience. When people enter training with inflated images of what coaching should look like, ordinary learning moments can feel like personal shortcomings. When reality turns out to be slower, messier, or more demanding than expected, disappointment can arrive early and unnecessarily.

Coach training does not offer a new identity that replaces everything that came before. It offers a way of relating to conversations with more attention, responsibility, and care. It invites people to notice how they listen, how they respond, and how they hold their assumptions while another person is thinking out loud.

For people considering coach training, it can be useful to approach it with curiosity rather than projection. Coaching is not a promise of speed, certainty, or transformation. It is an invitation into a demanding practice that develops over time, shaped by experience, reflection, and continued learning.

That reality may be less glamorous than some of the myths suggest. It is also more sustainable, and often more interesting, once the work begins

If you want to explore coaching, how to become a coach or figure out what your next steps are, why not join one of our free meetups and exchanges?

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