Analysing your IQ
Please Wait
Therapy is health-focused and often addresses distress, patterns, and healing. Coaching is performance-focused and often targets goals, accountability, and skill-building.
People often treat Therapy and Coaching as opposites or competitors. The reality is more nuanced: they're different tools for different problems.
Clarity here matters because interventions differ. What improves Therapy doesn't necessarily improve Coaching.
Therapy has its own failure modes. Understanding the concept means understanding where it breaks down, not just where it excels.
Coaching operates through different mechanisms. Conflating it with Therapy leads to misattribution and ineffective interventions.
| Metric | Therapy | Coaching |
|---|---|---|
| Primary aim | Reduce suffering; improve functioning | Increase performance; reach goals |
| Tools | Evidence-based modalities (CBT, ACT, etc.) | Plans, accountability, experiments |
| Best for | Trauma, anxiety, depression, patterns | Execution, strategy, skill practice |
| Red flags | No safety plan for risk | Treating mental illness without training |
As coaching grew in business, the boundary became blurry. Good practice separates clinical care (treatment) from optimization (performance).
Therapy is only for “broken” people (it’s for patterns and skill-building too).
Coaching replaces therapy (it cannot ethically treat clinical disorders).
More talk means more progress (behavior change requires practice).
Don't ask which is better. Ask which you're weaker in, then build systems to close the gap.
Choose therapy when distress or patterns are central. Choose coaching when you're stable and want structured optimization.
Stop debating the theory and measure the reality. Take the Emotional Health Test to see your specific score.
Therapy is health-focused and often addresses distress, patterns, and healing. Coaching is performance-focused and often targets goals, accountability, and skill-building.
It depends on context. Choose therapy when distress or patterns are central. Choose coaching when you're stable and want structured optimization.
Yes. Therapy and Coaching are often independent or only weakly correlated. You can be strong in one and weak in the other.
Improvement requires targeted practice in the specific domain that Therapy measures. Generic effort doesn't transfer effectively.
Improvement requires targeted practice in the specific domain that Coaching measures. Different skills require different interventions.
Both contribute, but their relative importance varies by role. Technical roles may weight Therapy more heavily; leadership and client-facing roles often require stronger Coaching.