Long Tail Thought of Coaching

The Politics of Purpose: Why Coaching Was Never Neutral

Recently I read an article that put me in a more critical frame of mind in the best way — "That's Political! A Freirean Perspective Towards Coaching as a Social Practice." This was a pre-read for a course was hosted by John Raymond offered in HK. By the time I walked out of the training room, I had a page of scribbles titled "My own reflection on Politics of Purpose," and a question I couldn't shake: have I, as a coach, thought I was in a neutral position but really, it wasn’t?

This article is my attempt to answer that honestly — and to invite you, whether you're a coach, a team manager, into the same reflection.

Coaching Has Never Been Neutral 

The paper's central provocation is this: coaching is a social practice, not just a functional one. When we sit across from a coachee, we are not two neutral parties exchanging insight in a vacuum. We carry history, culture, power, and privilege into that room — and so does our coachee. Pretending otherwise is itself a political act, because it quietly protects the status quo.  The dominant individualised, outcome-oriented form of goal setting reflect Western culture as assumption, as John reminded us in the class. Coach training taught you a process, ethical foundations, and active listening; these are useful forms of scaffolding. But the process isn't the same as purpose, and it certainly isn't the same as politics.

I think of my own coaching journey — helping healthcare professionals expand from clinical or technical experts into commercial leaders. I used to believe I was "unlocking potential." Reading this paper, I had to ask myself a harder question: Am I guiding someone towards a particular definition of potential?

“What are you ALERT to?” is a Sign of blind spot

Paternalism can sound like "I know what's best for you," dressed up as encouragement. Mutual empowerment may imply genuine partnership, where the coachee owns the definition of their own transformation. My own blind spot, which I'll admit here: I sometimes walk into a session already primed for struggle — "I'm with you in this.", by portraying compassion. But what happens when there is no struggle? What if the coachee is exploring, not suffering? If I only know how to show up for pain, I may be projecting a narrative onto someone who never asked for one. That's not empowerment. That's a subtle form of control, however well-intentioned.

Can you test your assumptions against opposite worldview?

The 3Ps: Philosophy, Purpose, and Practice

John offers a useful framework, the 3Ps — philosophy, purpose, and practice. Coach training can be heavily emphasis on practice: tools, models, questions. But practice without an examined philosophy and purpose is just technique performed on autopilot.

Element	What it asks	Common trap
Philosophy	What do I believe about people, change, and power?	Assuming coaching is automatically neutral or "good"
Purpose	Why am I coaching this person, in this moment?	Confusing my need to be useful with their need to grow
Practice	What tools and questions do I use?	Relying too heavily on process as proof of quality

If we judge coaching only by whether the coachee "achieved their goal," we've reduced a deeply human, social process to a performance metric. That's comfortable for coachee expectation, but it can quietly sidestep the harder question of whether the goal itself was ever truly theirs.

Empowerment Without Abandonment

Here's the tension I sit with most, and it doesn't resolve neatly. The paper — and my own client, stayed with me for days. This paper pushes coaches to acknowledge injustice and constraint as real, not imagined. Someone navigating survival mode, mental health strain, or systemic inequity in their workplace is not simply "resisting change." They are responding rationally to real conditions.

And yet, coaching cannot stop at acknowledgement. The partnership becomes transformative when the coachee also reclaims responsibility for what they can influence, even within constraints. This is the fine line: validating the injustice without letting it become the whole story and inviting agency without dismissing what's genuinely hard. It's a continuing commitment for the coach.

My Coaching Offer: What Has Changed

This paper changed how I want to talk about what I do and the following quotation has sharpened my view,

“Coaches should  ‘no longer view themselves as ‘neutral technical experts’ but as active political agents’– Shoukty 2017”

What I offer is something closer to this:

• A space where coachee’s context — material conditions, institutional constraints, power relationships, and identity — is treated as reality, not noise to be coached away.

• A process that honours both coachee’s right to be affected by real constraints and their capacity to act within those constraints.

• A relationship measured not only by goals achieved but by whether coachees leave more able to act, not more dependent on me.

If self-discovery is genuinely a lifelong process, I can't promise to "complete" it in four to six sessions. What I can promise is to open a door — and walk through the first stretch of it with the client.

An Ongoing Quest

The course, the paper, and my own notes forced me to admit that coaching was never the neutral or apolitical space as I once assumed.

Power shows up. Privilege shows up. My own history shows up

The most honest thing I can offer clients isn't certainty. It's a coach who is actively examining their own philosophy and purpose, not just polishing her practice.

Reference

Shoukry, H. and Fatien, P., 2024. That’s political! A Freirean perspective towards coaching as a social practice. Management Learning, 55(1), pp.17-40.