Is it a good idea?

Email coaching is something we’ve offered in the past, but never really promoted very much (I’ll tell you why below). If you want to know more about how the process works (at least how we do it), then you can see our offer page (careful, it’s a bit dusty) here: E-mail Life Coaching.

On balance, it’s not something I’d recommend, particularly if you have access to face-to-face coaching, but it can work in certain circumstances. In this article I’m going to give you the pros and cons both from a clients and from a coaches perspective.

My Email Coaching Experience

Not that much actually. I’ve only done this a few times. Each time it was with a client I had already coached and the coaching relationship either progressed to email coaching, had an aspect of email coaching or had a temporary period of email coaching.

The important point here is the relationship. In every situation that I’ve used email coaching I already had a relationship with the client, the trust and understanding was already built and this is an essential part of any successful relationship.

Isabelle has also done email Life Coaching a number of times, but like my experience also knew the clients before the coaching began (hence already had good established relationships).

Unfortunately I don’t have any experience of email coaching from scratch with a new client I’ve never met face-to-face. It doesn’t mean I never will but just haven’t so far, partly because I’ve never been asked (most people at least preferring to use video conferencing if not physical face-to-face meetings) and partly because it wouldn’t be my preferred method of coaching.

Limitations for The Client

It goes without saying that rapport is extremely important in a coaching/client relationship. Who wants a Coach they don’t trust? For a client, building rapport and trust via email is usually a lot more difficult (though not impossible), so I’d say this is the main limitation of email coaching.

Some people work better when given time to word things the way they want to and that may mean writing things down. Others work better verbally and need, or at least do better with interaction to help them structure their thoughts. So if you’re someone who does well with interaction, email coaching is not going to be the most optimum mechanism for you (unless it’s very convenient or your only option but this is, in effect only out-weighing your preferred method of communication, not beating it).

Sometimes you need immediate answers. Depending upon the type of goals you have this may be more or less important but with the best will in the world, email coaching will not give you immediate answers, so there’s that.

Benefits for The Client

• For very thorny issues which may be difficult to explain in detail verbally, email coaching can actually be very effective. You then get to take your time wording things exactly how you want to, writing and re-writing the email to explain your situation as perfectly as possible. You don’t really get this ‘re-work’ effect verbally.
• Also for very sensitive issues some people may feel better with a more anonymous relationship and not having to verbally explain things instead using the medium of email.
• One big advantage of email coaching is that you have all your coaching there in one place and by its nature it’s going to be pretty well structured (it’s a series of emails). This means at any time you can go back and look over the discussions and material you have been given, even years later.
• Email coaching is more economical – it is almost always a lot cheaper than face-to-face coaching
• Finally, in terms of your schedule, there is no denying that Email Coaching is extremely convenient. Diary clashes, finding the best time for you and your coach, missed appointments, forgetting, re-arranging, last minute prep for your meeting with the coach that you thought you had more time for but which unfrtunately just crept up on you – all of this disappears.

Limitations for The Coach

As I already said above, rapport & trust are extremely important in a coach/client relationship. From a coaches point of view, it is very difficult to build this rapport and trust with the client via email alone.

A good coach gives his/her client the tools they need to move forward. This is not the same as giving advice or an opinion. Through the coaching process it is very important for the client to ‘own’ the issues, the actions they are going to take and the outcomes. The coaches job is to guide and help the client to find their way through whatever issues they face. This is very important. In fact it is not unusual for clients to question why they needed a coach at all as they feel like they came up with all of the answers themselves, they solved their own problems, took responsibility and made incredible progress. Ironically, if that is the case, they actually had a great coach.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that coaching is easy because the client comes up with all the answers, far from it, the coach is needed to help the client find those answers. This means supporting, encouraging, motivating, challenging, questioning, guiding, offering tools and techniques, exploring options, even offering suggestions (without pushing the client down a particular route) or resources. The decisions along the way need to come from the client but getting to the point where those decisions can be made effectively is what the coach can help with.

So hopefully you can see from all this where the challenge might be with Email coaching – all of this requires a good deal of trust, effective communication and rapport between the coach and the client.

The coach will also lack instant feedback from the client so it is more difficult for the coach to judge whether whatever guidance he/she has to offer have been received or acted upon in the way intended. Again, not impossible, but more challenging via email.

Benefits for the Coach

You’ve probably guessed already I prefer face-to-face coaching and a big cautionary note running through this entire article is the importance of the trust and rapport.

That being said, there are actually lots of benefits for the Coach.

• Just as the client has time to perfect their emails and word things just the way they want to, the same applies for the coach.
• The coach can generally manage their time more effectively with email coaching
• Having a blend of in-person coaching and email coaching, the coach can then spend time on email coaching when between meetings, on the move etc
• The coach can work on a particular email in stages, like a document making notes, preparing a draft of what they want to say, putting reminders to add links or attachments they know they have, then present the client with the finished article – this is obviously not possible in a face-to-face meeting
  Refs, links, attachments can all be added easily to an email – in a face-to-face meeting the coach may say ‘I’ll send you a link’, with email coaching, the link is right there for the client with the rest (in the email)
• In terms of tools and techniques, exercises, etc. it is easier for the Coach to use such references as part of the email relationship than when using face-to-face calls – as the email is a fundamental part of the relationship and expected, the coach can and is likely to draw upon more material than they may otherwise in a face-to-face situation

Types of Coaching

I’m not going to say too much about different types of coaching here. The coaching I have done via email is mainly business coaching (I have also done some financial/wealth/investment stuff but to be honest in that case the line between coaching and mentoring was a little blurry – that was a lot more like mentoring than coaching).

If we are talking about coaching, then the above applies just the same whether Life Coaching, Business Coaching or any other type of coaching – because coaching is about helping a client, not telling them what they should do and that applies to all types of coaching.

Consulting, Training and Mentoring via Email

Whereas coaching is primarily about guidance, consulting, training and mentoring each draw upon the experience of the consultant, trainer or mentor.

It goes without saying that training can be done via email. You have probably seen this already, this is basically an online training programme managed via email (though it is also possible to have a training programme which is nothing more than a series of emails, whether entirely automated or with a trainer at the other end responding to a trainee/trainees and writing training emails back). This is useful when the trainer has skills and knowledge to pass on.

Mentoring is similar to training except rather than dealing with training in a particular skillset, it is more about getting the experience of the mentor themselves, i.e. something that is unique about them which you couldn’t get elsewhere (unlike training).

With Consulting you are engaging the consultant for their knowledge, experience and advice. The consultant will likely do some work themselves to help you solve your problem.

Though this article is not about consulting, training or mentoring, I wanted to mention these as often coaching gets confused with one or more f these disciplines but also because of the distinctions, each of the above is actually far more suited to the email medium than coaching.

Conclusion

In general and particularly for a new client I would not recommend email coaching on its own.

If a face-to-face meeting is not possible (perhaps due to distance), then what could work is an initial video call or a number of video calls for the coach and client to get to know each other, explore how the relationship might work and how the coach could help with an on-going interaction via email.

These days it is just too easy to communicate via video conferencing (using whatever platform you prefer) so why wouldn’t you?

For special circumstances as highlighted above (someone who really prefers a more anonymous relationship via email and in the case that the rapport/trust thing isn’t an issue) it can also work.