Coaching vs. Therapy: Navigating the Grey Area
Summary: Transformative coaching often brings clients into contact with emotion, personal history, and moments that might feel therapeutic—without becoming therapy. This piece reflects on where coaching and therapy overlap, how to work ethically when emotions surface, and why self-awareness is central to effective coaching. Through examples from practice and insights from a Coaches’ Corner webinar with renowned coach and author Jenny Rogers, the article illustrates how MSLOC prepares coaches to navigate this grey area with discernment, confidence, and care.
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New (and experienced) coaches often worry about "crossing the line" from coaching into therapy. It's a valid concern, especially because in practice, the boundaries aren't always clear-cut. While both coaching and therapy involve deep listening, purposeful conversation, and commitment to growth, they exist on a spectrum rather than in separate silos. Understanding this grey area is essential for coaching ethically and effectively.
At Northwestern University's Master's in Learning and Organizational Change (MSLOC), we prepare coaches to navigate the messy, profound overlap where real transformation happens—not by pretending there's a bright line, but by developing the ethical self-awareness to work skillfully within the complexity.
In our recent Coaches' Corner webinar, we were joined by Jenny Rogers, renowned coach and author, whose book Coaching Skills: The Definitive Guide to Being a Coach has been a cornerstone text of our coaching programs for years. We explored recent updates, including new chapters on becoming trauma-aware and putting that awareness into practice. I wanted to build on that conversation here to illuminate this nuanced territory—and to acknowledge the therapeutic aspects that often emerge through effective coaching.
The Spectrum: Future and Past Are Always Intertwined
The traditional distinction suggests therapy looks back while coaching looks forward. That's a useful starting point, but human beings don't exactly work that way. Our past shapes our future, and our passions and strengths reveal our wounds.
This sets the stage for mutual discovery in coaching: As I learn about the client in front of me, they also learn about themselves. It's different from therapy, but when done well, it often has a therapeutic effect.
Rogers offered a similar insight: "We're not posing as trauma therapists. We're not ever dealing with traumatic experiences themselves. That is the task of a therapist… I think what we're doing is understanding how it's shaped people."
Coaches help clients recognize how their past informs their present. The question isn't whether to acknowledge the past – it's how to decide on the depth to go to, and when to refer.
Rogers illustrated this beautifully with a vivid example: a senior leader who couldn't delegate and constantly rescued her staff had been the child who came home from school to find her alcoholic mother passed out on the sofa. She cared for herself and her younger brother, hid the vodka bottles from her father. This left her with a deep-seated belief that her role was rescuing people who couldn't do things for themselves—regardless of whether they needed rescuing. She had never made these connections between her personal past and her professional present until coaching.
As coaches, we acknowledge these connections without attempting to touch or heal the original wound. There is an art to staying within the scope of organizational and leadership coaching while honoring the whole person.
When Emotions Surface: Working the Edge
Clients cry. They get angry. They share stories they've never told anyone else. This is where many coaches feel uncertain: Am I still coaching, or have I crossed into therapy?
Taking Rogers' example above, some coaches may not feel comfortable receiving and holding stories like these. Perhaps the story is too close to their own unresolved feelings and early experiences. Perhaps they fear retraumatizing their clients. Perhaps they feel responsible to heal the other person, even knowing that's not their role. It's important to know yourself—your vulnerabilities, capacities, and boundaries—as a person and as a coach.
Drawing on my life-story research, where participants frequently showed strong emotion, I've learned that such openness often signals safety and trust rather than an automatic need to refer out. Just because something is therapeutic doesn't mean it's therapy.
As Rogers observed, beginner coaches often ask, "What if the client cries?" Her advice: "You don't need to do anything. You just need to listen and be there."
But there's nuance here. Often tears are a natural release in a growth process. Occasionally, however, tears accompany challenges that interfere with everyday life and signal something deeper that needs clinical support. In these instances, it's the coach's ethical responsibility to offer additional resources. MSLOC's coaching programs train coaches to stay grounded and present in such moments, learning to discern not through rigid rules but through developed judgment and ethical awareness.
The Grey Area Requires Self-Awareness
What happens when a coach's comfort level doesn't match a client's emotional expression? I encourage coaches to notice their own reactions without making those reactions the client's responsibility.
Ideally, I work on becoming more comfortable with emotional expression—both my own and my clients'. I use reflective practice and seek feedback from others to see where my clients' experiences might be touching my own unresolved needs. When examined and "metabolized," our own reactions become a set of clues to support our clients more effectively. This is "doing our own work" as coaches.
That said, if a coach doesn't have the energy or desire to develop in these ways, that's okay too. They might suggest the client work with another coach whose experiences are a better fit.
This is the sophistication MSLOC cultivates: recognizing that ethical coaching isn't about avoiding the grey area at all costs, but about learning to work skillfully within it—or choosing to offer ourselves the space to know it better before we work with our clients in it.
Rogers noted that in coaching's early days, there was "a kind of assumption that everybody knew where this purported ‘line’ was... And the more people talked about it, the more I realized it was a personal line. There was no ‘line.’"
MSLOC programs build this reflective mindset through empathic observation, structured feedback, and critical reflection—helping students notice whether they lean toward steering too far from emotion or diving beyond their competency. Neither extreme serves clients well. The goal is developing wisdom to know when to venture deeper, when to refer, and when to simply be present.
Why MSLOC Coaching Certificates Prepare You for Reality
MSLOC acknowledges that real coaching happens in the complexity. We offer two pathways:
Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certificate (OLCC)
A twelve-month, graduate-level program for experienced professionals seeking rigorous education and training in organizational and leadership coaching.
Executive Learning and Organizational Change (ELOC) Coaching Certificate
A fast-track program for senior leaders seeking robust coaching skills they can apply immediately.
Both pathways are grounded in experiential learning, evidence-based practice, and structured reflection that foster effective coaching through ethical self-awareness.
Ready to Coach Through the Grey with Confidence?
Our application deadline for spring 2026 is January 15, 2026. If you're ready to navigate the grey in a community dedicated to learning to coach with clarity, confidence, and compassion, MSLOC is your next step.
Explore our coaching programs today.
Executive Learning and Organizational Coaching (ELOC)
Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certificate (OLCC)
Attend an upcoming coaching programs information session
Questions? Email us at msloc@northwestern.edu for a recording of the full Coaches’ Corner webinar or to schedule time with an advisor.