"I am a coach myself, and sometimes I wonder if I truly make a difference...

Dear André, I am a coach myself, and sometimes I wonder if I truly make a difference. How do I deal with self-doubt? — A Fellow Coach

Dear Fellow Coach,

You ask if you, as a coach, truly make a difference. If your work leaves a mark. If the hours spent listening, guiding, and holding space amount to anything real. And yet I personally wonder, aren’t these questions part of what make you a good coach?

The weight of uncertainty is a familiar one for us coaches, isn’t it? The silent, unacknowledged work of our profession. Unlike architects, we do not always see the buildings rise. Unlike surgeons, we do not stitch wounds shut. Our work exists in the intangible, in the pauses, in the moments when a client exhales and something unspoken shifts within them. But we rarely get to witness the full transformation.

And so, we begin to wonder: Did I matter? Did I truly help? Or did I merely offer words that disappeared into the open space?

I would like to offer an additional view —perhaps we confuse making a difference with the desire for validation. A desire to be told, explicitly, "Yes, you changed my life". But coaching is an art of vanishing. We guide people to their own insights and then, more often than not, we let them go. Their absence, their silence, is often a testament to their success. And yet, because we do not see it, we doubt it.

The paradox is this: the better we do our job, the less likely we are to witness the direct outcome after our coaching sessions. And that absence, that void, can gnaw at us. But it is also a sign that we have done exactly what we were meant to do - empower, not tether; support, not dictate.

So perhaps the real work lies in making peace with the unseen. In trusting that we have made a difference, even if we are not the ones to measure it.

With quiet certainty,

André