Awareness coaching

What it is

Awareness coaching puts most of its weight on one question: what can you see now that you could not see before? The coach helps you notice your assumptions, your habits, what you pay attention to and what you tend to avoid noticing, before deciding what to do about any of it. The client is treated as the person with the most direct access to their own experience, and the coach's job is to help widen the view.

The approach rests on the idea that performance is often held back by interference: the running commentary of doubt, self-judgement and over-control that gets in the way of doing. Its claim is modest. When you can see that interference clearly, you are better placed to choose differently. Awareness alone is not assumed to change behaviour; that is a working assumption the coach tests in each session.

Where it comes from

John Whitmore set out the approach in Coaching for Performance, a book that has run to several editions; the third edition is cited on this page. Whitmore and Timothy Gallwey are the two names usually linked with its pairing of awareness and responsibility.

Self-awareness has since been studied as a construct in its own right. A 2021 systematic review of 31 articles on self-awareness in management education found no consistent definition of it (Carden et al., 2021).

The principles underneath

Seeing before advising

The first move is to see what is happening. Advice comes after you can see the pattern for yourself, so that any change you make is one you have chosen.

Awareness and responsibility go together

Once a pattern is seen, it can be owned. Blame and self-criticism are treated as ways of looking away from it.

Interference is the target

The coach listens for the inner commentary that gets in the way of doing, such as doubt, self-judgement or trying too hard.

Questions do most of the work

Open questions, such as what you notice now, are preferred to suggestions, so that the insight stays yours.

Clearer seeing is tested in action

Noticing is checked against what happens when you try something different, rather than being left as insight alone.

How a session runs

1. Start with the situation or habit you want to look at, in your own words.
2. Ask what you notice about it now: what you think, what you feel, what you sense in your body and what you tend to do next.
3. Reflect back the pattern you have described, so you can hear it from outside, and ask what you notice about it.
4. Ask what you may have been avoiding noticing, and what it costs you to keep not looking.
5. Ask what you will choose to do differently, and how you will notice whether it helps.
6. In the next session, start with what you noticed between the two conversations.

When it tends to fit

• You keep doing something you do not fully understand, and you want to see it more clearly before you change it.
• You know you are reacting, but the reaction still runs the show, and you want to notice it as it happens.
• You are about to make a decision and want to check what you are seeing before you act on it.

Where it stops

Noticing a pattern does not by itself change it, and this approach has no outcome study under its own name. Treat it as a practice to test in your own life, not as a proven result.

Looking closely at painful things can be unsettling. Trauma, panic or low mood that does not lift are better taken to a qualified professional, who can work with them safely. If a session leaves you more distressed rather than clearer, slow down and talk to someone qualified.