The first thing I said to a new client last year was: “I am not here to fix you.” The look of relief on their face was immediate. And, honestly, a little heartbreaking.
Because it told me something about what they had been carrying into the room — perhaps for a long time. The idea that they were somehow broken. That the coaching engagement was remedial. That having a coach meant something had gone wrong.
The Remedial Myth
Coaching carries, in many organisations, an unfortunate stigma. It is offered when someone’s performance is flagged, when a promotion has been withheld, when a 360 has surfaced a pattern the organisation wants changed. In those contexts, it arrives with an implicit message: something needs to be fixed about you.
This framing is not only inaccurate. It actively works against the very outcomes coaching is designed to produce.
Because the most generative coaching doesn’t begin with deficit. It begins with capability — with the recognition that the person in the room is already thinking, already capable, already closer to their own answers than they might believe.
The Shift From Fixing to Exploring
The shift I’ve seen make the most difference in coaching engagements is simple to describe and genuinely difficult to embody: moving from “what’s wrong with me?” to “what’s possible for me?”
One question narrows. The other expands.
One locates the problem inside the person. The other locates the opportunity inside the work — the role, the relationships, the context, the moment.
And here is what I’ve consistently observed: leaders who make that shift don’t just feel better. They perform differently. They make different decisions. They lead differently.
What Coaching Is, When It Works
Coaching, at its best, is a thinking partnership. A space where the fog lifts — not because someone else hands you a map, but because you’re given the conditions to find your own way.
The coach’s job is not to solve your problem. It is to trust that you can — and to ask the question that makes that trust visible.
Coach’s Reflection: If you’ve been offered coaching and felt the sting of the implicit message — here is a reframe worth sitting with: being coachable is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of intellectual courage. The willingness to examine your thinking, to be genuinely curious about your own patterns, to grow beyond your current edge — that is not remediation. That is leadership.
Call to Reflection: What would shift for you if you approached your own development from possibility rather than deficit?
Yatish Chandrasekhar is an Executive Coach and Leadership Consultant at The Yogi Compass. He works with senior leaders across industries to help them discover their True North. If this resonated, he’d love to hear from you.