Countertransference is not a malfunction. The problem is not that I am moved by my client. The problem is when I do not recognize that I am moved, or when I act on that movement before I have understood it.
Here is a short, non-exhaustive list of the reactions that commonly arise in coaching. Which of these have you had to learn to watch for in yourself?
Any of these reactions, once noticed, can become useful tools for self-awareness. However, left unnoticed, they can begin to steer the coaching, as we see in the hypothetical case of Morgan below.
Morgan is an experienced ICF-credentialed coach. Eighteen months ago, her father died after a two-year decline. There was a difficult conversation she had long meant to have with him, but by the time his cognition was clearly slipping, she felt the window had closed. What stayed with her was not only the missed conversation but the fact that she never found a way to speak more fully to him while there was still time. She cared for him kindly while holding a full client load, and she now says the grief is no longer as raw as it had been. Morgan has also undergone therapy and believes she is fit to coach well again.
Her newest client is Alex, the COO of a mid-sized, family-owned manufacturing firm. Alex is in her early forties, about 15 years younger than Morgan, and comes to coaching wanting to “step into the CEO role with confidence when the time comes.” Morgan learns that Alex’s father, the company’s seventy-eight-year-old founder, and current CEO, has early-stage Parkinson’s and refuses to discuss succession. Alex’s two siblings, also in the business, want clarity. So does the board. Alex’s father wants the subject to be dropped.
Morgan stays within the coaching contract but finds herself unusually invested in Alex’s case. She prepares more, thinks about Alex between sessions, and becomes less curious and more inclined to advise as she grows concerned for Alex. In session four, Alex shares that her father wants to avoid discussing succession. Morgan reacts, urging Alex not to stay silent. Alex thanks her and moves on. Afterward, Morgan realizes her anger is directed at Alex’s father. By session seven, Morgan finds herself giving more advice as Alex opens up about her father. When Alex asks directly for direction, Morgan holds back, sensing both relief and disappointment. She chooses to discuss the pattern in supervision.
In supervision, the pattern comes into focus quickly because Morgan presents it well. She says, “I know what it is to stay quiet with a father when something important needs to be said. I do not want my client to keep giving away her voice.” Once she says that aloud, the rescue becomes clear: Morgan is trying to protect Alex from the cost of staying silent with her father, and from the regret she imagines may follow. The age difference, Morgan realizes, matters because she has begun to relate to Alex as an older mentor. Separate from that is Morgan’s unfinished feeling toward her own father, rooted in what was never said before he died. And alongside both sits anger at Alex’s father, a man she has never met, whose refusal to face succession has become loaded with meanings that do not belong in the coaching.
None of this means Morgan has failed Alex. It does, however, mean Morgan has been coaching with one hand on the client’s wheel.
Supervision returned Morgan to two questions: Whose work is this? What is mine to set down before the next session?
From a supervision perspective, the task is to help the coach see more clearly what belongs to the client, what belongs to the coach, and what has begun to blur between them. In a case like Morgan’s, that usually means revisiting the contract, withdrawing opinions disguised as coaching, and taking grief or anger that exceeds the coaching frame to therapy or other appropriate support. The goal, instead of near perfect detachment, is a cleaner return to the work the coach is actually there to do.