But Isn’t All Coaching Transformational?

No. Transformational is coaching at the masterful level.

I first heard the term transformational coaching when I was a coaching student, and I admit that for quite some time the meaning eluded me. Now, I have come to see that there are fundamental differences in coaching approaches, and it’s helpful for all coaching practitioners to understand what these are.

First, there is “Transactional coaching” – best described as an exchange (or transaction) between a coach and a coachee to improve performance, solve problems, find solutions, get better at something (lead better, feel better, perform better), or achieve self-set goals. Transactional coaching is highly issue-focused, and most often about “doing different”.

Transformational coaching, on the other hand, is primarily being focused. The intention is not for the coachee to leave a session with new insight, shifted perspective, or a ‘must-do action list’, but to have experienced a significant ‘felt shift’ in BEING. That shift is the focus of the coaching session. Once that shift has happened, the client will naturally start to think, perceive, feel, and act from that higher sense of self.

These are coaching approaches, not niches.

The fundamental difference between them is this: transactional coaching starts from the assumption that coachees will uncover what they need to based on their existing way of being.

Transformational coaching begins with a different assumption: an expanded way of being and the leveraging the change in energy and perceptions reveals what is needed.

Transformational coaching dives below the surface and gets to the essence, connecting us to the core of who we are. The great transformational question is always, “Who do you choose to be?” And the transformational journey is the movement into the embodiment of that choice in being.

Transformational coaching includes yet transcends transactional coaching. This is the reason that transactional coaching is taught in foundational coaching programs—it is the bedrock of all good coaching.

Transformational coaching is a more advanced form of coaching, in part because the process of shifting a person’s way of being, and then helping them sustain that shift, requires a more thorough and holistic understanding of the human development process.