How to Stop Switching Hats
The hidden costs of switching from coach to advice-giver
If coaching is like dancing tango, then it sometimes feels like internal coaching is like improvising dancing, to different music. While walking a tightrope.
One of the privileges of my professional journey so far is that I have worked with hundreds of internal coaches. Often in training or in supervision, I’ve provided support, advice, assessment and some coaching itself to internal coaches ranging from corporate law firms, consultancies and financial institutions, to sprawling public bodies and a range of NGOs and charities.
In 2025 many of those in a coaching role do so while balancing other roles. This could be, but is not limited to: Founder, CEO, people partner or director, L&D professional, line manager or mentor.
As we review recordings together in mentor coaching, or discuss self-reported experiences in supervision or tutorials, I regularly hear, ‘I’m just going to take off my coaching hat for a moment, and put on my [other] hat’.
The most simple and singular challenge I can offer to anyone coaching internally, or blending their roles within an organisation is this: stop switching hats
Comfortable Coaching
I first learned to coach in a working environment where I was senior and experienced enough to know how most things should be done. I was responsible for best practices, for sales success and customer service excellence. Much of what was sought for me in the coaching space was instructive, for me to tell them how they should do it. I remember my inner panic wonderings when someone’s topic they sat down with was, ‘How can I be in your role in 5 years?’
It would be snooty to suggest that this isn’t coaching. It is, perhaps, one form of coaching. More directional, more instructive and involving the direct conveyance of knowledge or insight from coach to coachee.
It is often business-friendly in that it delivers quick, actionable results, and can leave both parties feeling useful - the coach feels valued, with clear value demonstrated. Their ego purring from being needed and helpful.
The client has left with something they didn’t have and wanted help with. It seems to work well for busy people, for whom finding a spare hour for coaching among a busy schedule might be a challenge enough.
And yet, I wonder if the role of internal coaches might be more heretical. More provocative. Not simply the human equivalent of an AI chatbot or best practice handbook. But someone to really instigate new consciousness. Deeper and broader thinking. Someone who doesn’t just sway to the same mood-music of the organisation, but helps change the tempo. The record. The genre.
Keep Your Hat On
There is often an inner itch. A burn. A desire to impart advice in the moment. There is a pang of ‘know-how’. A knowledge of the right way to go.
But if we honour coaching as deeply relational work. Work that is predicated on a strong, emotional agreement of trust and connection. Then it feels to me that pressing pause to take off your hat will only serve to undercut the value and emphasis of the coaching and the coaching relationship.
If we’re aiming to facilitate an environment of psychological safety, then to switch roles - whether offered or not - will often harm the rapport, the depth, the thinking. You will perhaps sacrifice deeper awareness or further insights, for the ephemeral pang of a ‘quick win’.
As a fellow coach offered on a lively discussion thread on LinkedIn, ‘If you are using your "other hat" to solve the problem then that really defeats the purpose’.
The cost of switching hats might not be felt immediately, in the moment. But they will tap away at the quality of connection, relationship and the mutual trust you are placing in the coaching.
The costs may well be to your credibility and identity, but they may undercut the coaching program or coaching culture in the organisation.
What’s an internal coach to do?
One transition point from beginner coaching to more advanced coaching is your ability to sit with and to notice. Not just in your client, but in yourself.
If you are feeling the lure of advice giving, of steering - the urge to take off your coaching hat - I offer that you notice it first. Give it some pause, reflection. Perhaps to make a note to come back to it in your notes, or your supervision.
But instead, to play with it. To show it curiosity To bring it into the relationship. Perhaps something like: ‘You know, I notice within me a strong urge to tell you what I think you should do. What’s going on for you?’
As with so much in our work, it will all come down to delicate contracting. There is no write or wrong here. There is no pure or impure coaching. As a fellow coach offered on a lively discussion thread on LinkedIn, ‘‘Always Be Contracting’ comes to mind’.
Deeper, wider contracting, honouring the different dynamics at play, and drawing on them for insight, support or challenge.
The internal coach can also be a dynamo, an agent of change. A provocateur who doesn’t always go with the flow of the company, the culture, the system. But notices, gives voice to, and models a slightly different way of being to facilitate something else.
If you are eroding that faith in coaching - both in the moment and more broadly - where does the value lie?
Your Coaching Edge
I’m shaping supervision groups and advanced development programs for the coming year, and I’d love your input. What feels most important in your coaching development right now?
If supervision feels like the next step for you, I’m opening new Advancing and Advanced Supervision groups this autumn.
Small cohorts, trusted space, CPD-accredited hours. Designed for coaches who want to deepen, stretch, and grow alongside peers. If you’d like to join or simply hear more details, reply to this email or click here to register your interest
With gratitude,
George