Executive Coaching vs. Psychotherapy

Is it time to switch careers?

(This article was first published in Singapore Psychologist, by the Singapore Psychological Society, in May 2023.)

Dr. Jonathan Marshall is a psychologist, executive coach, and leadership trainer with two decades of experience. He received his doctorate in counseling psychology from Stanford University and his post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He licensed in psychology in California, became a member of both the American Psychological Association and the Singapore Psychological Society, and is a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation.

Executive coaching can sound like the next best career for a psychotherapist. It’s a helping profession that carries the promise of working with resourceful, motivated clients who impact the lives of many people and who aren’t in the high levels of distress commonly associated with psychotherapy. Book titles like The Trillion Dollar Coach and A 7-Figure Coaching Business make the money sound great. So whether it’s for ease, influence, or money, it can be an attractive option. In this article, I’ll describe some differences between executive coaching and psychotherapy as well as things to consider if you are a psychotherapist who wants to become an executive coach.

The Similarities Between Executive Coaching and Psychotherapy

Contrary to popular belief, the line between executive coaching and psychotherapy is, at best, fuzzy. Colleagues who try to distinguish between these fields tend to claim that coaches focus on work-related performance, not well-being; they look only at the future, not the past; and that coaches never deal with psychopathology. They also claim that the primary executive coaching topics[1] simply don’t require entering the realm of psychotherapy. Psychotherapists, they say, only focus on the past and don’t consider current performance; instead, they focus uniquely on working with clients who are mentally ill. As if to create a territorial line between these professions, they may quote the American Psychological Association’s definition of psychotherapy: Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is a way to help people with a broad variety of mental illnesses and emotional difficulties.[2]

While coaches and therapists often focus on different areas, most coaches and therapists I know work with psychological injuries from the past, goals for the future, challenges in well-being, and performance. Many psychotherapists work with clients who do not have a DSM diagnosis and, contrary to the ethical guidelines for executive coaches, several coaches try to treat psychopathology. For example, one of the most prestigious international coaching firms I know trains its associates in EMDR to help coachees with their childhood trauma!

I’ve attempted to show the fuzzy line between these two professions in the graph below. Coaches generally tend to work with clients who experience less distress and are more focused on performance. Contrary to the American Psychological Association’s description above, psychotherapists may also work in that space. For example, a highly acclaimed lawyer told me she could never have been so successful without regular psychotherapy to help her with her priorities and performance. She started psychotherapy to help with her loneliness, but her therapy quickly departed from the usual realm of psychotherapy and moved into peak performance coaching.

The Differences Between Executive Coaching and Psychotherapy

While the practice areas overlap, these two professions have very different training requirements. Psychotherapists have much more training, and it is generally more rigorous. The exact amount depends on the country. I don’t think I’ve met a psychotherapist with less than 5000 hours of formal training, and several of my colleagues, e.g., those with doctorates, received more than 16,000 hours before fully qualifying. The Singapore Psychological Society requires full members to have a bachelor’s degree in psychology and two years of relevant working experience[3]. By contrast, an executive coach needs only 60 hours of coaching education and 100 hours of unsupervised coaching experience to register with the International Coaching Federation[4] (ICF). A large study conducted by the ICF in 2020[5] shows that only 43% of coach practitioners have received 200 or more training hours. That includes hours for registering and continuing education. While coaching programs offer some form of examination, many are conducted by for-profit organizations and are less likely to fail participants than universities that train psychotherapy students.

Despite the hype about how much money coaches make, the difference in income isn’t large. Based on reviews at Glassdoor (2023)[6], psychotherapists make more money from psychotherapy than executive coaches make from coaching. It reports that in Singapore, the average monthly income from executive coaching is SG$3315 while it is $4300 for psychologists. The ICF study comes up with a similar figure, stating that in Asia, coaches typically make $3745 a month. It goes on to point out that 93% of coaches augment their income with other work, e.g., consulting (60%), training (60%), and facilitation services (54%). So while executive coaches make less money from coaching, it’s unclear whether their overall income is less than psychotherapists. From my experience, executive coaches have more volatile incomes, and those at the very top of the profession make more money than psychotherapists. But the majority of executive coaches I know make much less than the top-tier coaches and they augment their income with other work.

So should I become a coach?

Psychotherapists can offer a lot to the coaching community. They have a substantial amount of relevant training and can treat psychopathology – something that shows up in coaching far more than most people realize. But I found real challenges when making the transition.

Boundaries

As psychotherapists, we’re used to seeing clients at our clinics, starting and ending sessions roughly on time, getting paid for each meeting, and having minimal contact with clients between sessions. By contrast, coaches may have multiple unpaid meetings with a company representative before seeing a coachee. They may be asked to wait a long time in the coachee’s waiting room or restaurant of choice and may be expected to be contactable night or day if their coachee regards an issue as urgent. The lack of clear boundaries can be uncomfortable and can lead to relationship misunderstandings, e.g., the coachee assuming a friendship.

Many psychotherapists starting out as executive coaches are not accustomed to third parties trying to pry confidential information from them. When I started out as an executive coach, I encountered the anger of multiple firms when I refused to divulge my client’s information. “But we hired you to help our company. It’s your job to tell us if you think your coachee has what it takes to be promoted, even if we previously agreed your coaching is confidential. Afterall, all the other coaches on our panel do it!” By sticking to the letter of the ethics code, I have been removed from the panel of coaches from two of my higher-paying clients, and my company may soon be removed from a third as an associate bravely faces the same battle.

Marketing

Compared to psychotherapists, executive coaches spend a lot of time marketing themselves. They may hunt for clients by approaching human resource departments, attending networking meetings for business professionals, and may feel the pressure to publish books. Even if these books are self-published, and never read, authoring a book helps a coach to sell their services because they can add it to their bio and therefore seem more credible. By contrast, many therapists regard self-promotion as unethical. In some countries, e.g., Australia, simply using a testimonial can lead to being professionally censured[7]. 

I fell into coaching by chance. I did my postdocorate at a business school with highly ambitious students. The head of the clinic, a physician, kept referring clients to me who wanted the equivalent of gold medals for their academic, business, and sporting performance. His only instruction was “see what you can do.”  I felt miserably out of my depth. I wondered if my graduate school was meant to have trained me in getting clients into the national soccer team or if there had been a huge misunderstanding. As I worked out what I could do, I began to find the work exciting. I now have both a clinical and coaching practice, and much of my work is at the intersection of the two. I find the combination of these fields invigorating. While executive coaching and psychotherapy are different fields, they can combine to help many clients achieve greater well-being and performance.

[1] Topics may include: team leadership performance, sustainable organizational change, increased emotional intelligence among leaders, higher levels of leader resilience, and the development of strategic thinking skills)

[2] https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/psychotherapy

[3] https://singaporepsychologicalsociety.org/sps-criteria-and-categories-of-membership/

[4] https://coachingfederation.org/credentials-and-standards/credentials-paths/acc-credential

[5] https://coachingfederation.org/research/global-coaching-study

[6] https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

[7] https://psychology.org.au/for-members/publications/inpsych/2011/june/new-regulations-regarding-the-use-of-testimonials