I've heard many people dunk on coaches. Called them all sorts of things. The most popular of such derogatory descriptions being – those who can't do, teach. Yet coaches abound. Teachers abound. Why?
At first, I believed that statement. I even believed teachers were beneath. Which is ironic because it is the gift that I have. Which naturally meant I thought very lowly of myself. Entrepreneurs, the real builders, the real doers – they were the respectable ones.
And then I thought about Usain Bolt. The fastest man on earth. He had a coach. His coach can never run like him. Can never achieve the heights that he achieved. But if this is all about being able to do, then what was the relevance of his coach?
The classic human flaw is that we think in linear, hierarchical comparisons instead of systems. So when we're presented with two things, our quickest move is to contrast them instead of find the relationship between them.
So what's the use of Usain Bolt's coach? He's the one who sees the potential and has the knowledge of which levers to pull to make that potential manifest. That seeing, that knowing – that's his superpower. But if you judge him by Usain's ability to move his body at insane speeds, of course, he looks like a loser.
So I needed to answer the question for myself as to why coaches exist, if I was going to commit my life to being one.
Coaches are a key part of a system of results. Usain by himself is limited in what he can do. Even if he wanted to dedicate his entire life to learning the physiology and then applying it himself, it would be extremely inefficient. It's much better for him to outsource that primary responsibility to someone who has made it their life's work.
That was the logical answer. But it didn't quite do it for me. Until I found the scientific explanation.
The Science of the Thing
Let's make the scientific case for why coaches exist.
Coaches are catalysts. And the science of catalysis is more interesting – and more instructive – than most people realise.
Here's what a catalyst actually does:
A catalyst accelerates a reaction by lowering the activation energy required to reach the transition state, without being consumed in the process. It achieves this by providing an alternative reaction pathway that involves a more stable transition state, thereby reducing the energy barrier between reactants and products.
Before that means anything, we need to understand one other term: activation energy.
Activation energy is the minimum amount of energy that molecules must possess to undergo a reaction – effectively serving as the barrier between the current state and the desired outcome.
Put simply: for anything to change, there is a hill you must climb first. That hill is the activation energy. It's not a metaphor. It's physics. Every reaction in nature, whether chemical or human, has one. And most reactions that don't happen aren't failing because of a lack of potential. They're failing because the hill is too high.
This is the first and most important thing to understand about coaching. The client is not broken. The potential for the outcome already exists inside them – just as the energy for a chemical reaction already exists inside the molecules. What's missing is not capacity. What's missing is the pathway.
There is also something else worth noting. The transition state – the peak of that hill, the highest point of activation energy – is a moment of maximum instability. In chemistry, it's where the old bonds are breaking but the new ones haven't yet formed. In human experience, it's the messy middle. The identity crisis. The moment of maximum discomfort right before a breakthrough. Most people quit here. Not because they can't make it. But because they don't know what this place is, or that it's supposed to feel this way.
A coach knows what that place is. A good one has been there with enough people to recognise it, name it, and hold steady inside it. That steadiness is not a soft skill. It is the work.
And the catalyst, remember, is not consumed. It doesn't dissolve into the reaction. It maintains its own integrity while enabling transformation in another. That's not a small thing. That's everything.
There Are Different Kinds of Catalysts
Not all catalysts work the same way. In chemistry, there are three primary types – and they map onto coaching with uncomfortable precision.
Homogeneous catalysts
These operate in the same phase as the reaction. They're inside it, sharing the same environment, the same conditions. In coaching, this is the practitioner who has lived your experience. The ex-founder coaching founders. The recovered athlete coaching athletes. The lowest friction entry. The highest relatability. "I know what this feels like from the inside" – that is the value proposition.
Heterogeneous catalysts
These operate from outside the reaction. They provide a surface on which the reaction can happen, without sharing the same phase. This is the executive coach who has never run your kind of company but whose presence, structure, and questions create the conditions for your thinking to crystallise. The value here is not shared experience – it's a stable external structure. A different vantage point. The reaction happens on the surface they provide.
Enzyme catalysts
These are the specialists. Biological. Highly specific. Extraordinarily potent within a narrow domain, and not much use outside of it. A speaking coach. A sales coach. A grief therapist. A performance nutritionist. If your problem falls within their domain, the effect is remarkable. If it doesn't, the fit is wrong and the catalysis doesn't happen.
None of these is better than the others. The question is always: what reaction is actually happening, and which type of catalyst does it require? Mismatching the two is one of the most common reasons coaching fails.
What Makes a Good Coach
So what makes a catalyst potent? The science has something to say here too.
Specificity.
The best catalysts are not general purpose. They are designed for particular reactions. A good coach knows precisely what they are for and, just as importantly, what they are not for. The instinct to expand, to be everything to everyone, is the thing that dilutes potency. The coaches who are most effective are the ones who have gotten ruthlessly specific about the reaction they accelerate.
They are not consumed.
A catalyst participates in the reaction but is not changed by it. This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of good coaching. A coach who dissolves into the client's chaos – who loses their own centre in the process of serving – is no longer functioning as a catalyst. They are a reagent. They get used up. The work requires a kind of groundedness that is not coldness or distance, but is structural integrity. You can be fully present and still be distinct. In fact, you have to be.
They lower the energy without changing the destination.
This one is subtle but critical. The product of the reaction is determined by the reactants – not by the catalyst. A good coach is not shaping a client into someone new. They are reducing the cost of the client becoming who they already are. When a coach starts confusing their role with the outcome, the work goes wrong. They stop being a catalyst and start being an obstruction.
They work through alternative pathways.
The reason a catalyst is effective isn't that it makes the hill disappear. It's that it finds a different route to the top – one with a lower peak. A good coach does this constantly. They hold a different map. They ask the question that reveals a door you didn't know was there. They've seen enough people stuck in the same place that they know, almost intuitively, which alternative routes exist. That accumulated knowledge of pathways is the intellectual asset of a good coaching practice. It deepens with every client.
Why This Matters
If you picked up this essay as a sceptic, I hope the logic has done some work on you. Coaching is not a soft supplement to real work. It is a mechanism with a scientific basis. The outcomes it produces are real. The role it plays in a system of results is specific and irreplaceable. Not because a coach is more capable than the person they're coaching, but because that is not the point. The catalyst is not judged by the speed of the reaction. It is judged by the difference it makes to the speed of the reaction.
If you picked this up as a coach – or someone considering it – I hope it has given you a more precise language for what you do. Because precision matters. Coaches who can't explain their value tend to undercharge for it, undercommit to it, and eventually underdeliver on it.
You are not a lesser version of the people you serve. You are a different function in the same system. And without you, the reaction still happens. Just slower. At a much greater cost.
That, I think, is worth committing your life to