The Joy of Coaching
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
I’ve spent most of my life leading teams, advising clients, and helping people win business. Those moments were exciting and meaningful. But the joy I’ve found in coaching feels different. It’s quieter, deeper, and somehow more lasting.
When I sit across from someone in a coaching conversation, I’m reminded that growth rarely happens in a straight line. It’s messy, emotional, and very human. What I love about coaching is that it gives people permission to stop performing for a moment, to think, to feel, and to be honest about what’s really going on. That pause is where something shifts. It’s where people stop reacting to the noise around them and start listening to themselves again.
Coaching Isn’t Advising
For most of my career, my world revolved around advising. My parents were big advice givers. Every conversation growing up came with their point of view, and I inherited that trait early. I liked helping people solve problems. Even when I led pursuit teams in my corporate life, my instinct was to say, “Here’s what you need to do to win.”
I remember one particular pursuit, a high-stakes global engagement that had everyone on edge. The client’s expectations were sky-high, the competitors were circling, and time was tight. I gathered the team and said, “We’re not overcomplicating this. Here’s what we’ll say, here’s how we’ll price it, and here’s who will speak.” It worked. We won. But as soon as the adrenaline faded, I remember thinking, “They followed my direction perfectly, but did they actually grow from the experience?”
That’s when it hit me. Advising wins moments. Coaching changes people.
Advice tells someone what to do. Coaching helps them see themselves clearly enough to know what to do next time. Advising solves problems. Coaching creates awareness. And awareness is what makes change last.
When I’m coaching, I still move between those roles, but I’m deliberate about it. My clients always know whether I’m offering perspective or inviting reflection. Both have value, but they lead to very different outcomes. Advice is useful. Insight is powerful. The real transformation happens when people stop looking for answers outside themselves and start hearing their own voice again.
Laura Embraces Her Authenticity
About a year ago, I began working with a senior leader we’ll call Laura. She had spent years as a trusted client-service partner in a large firm. Smart, intuitive, and deeply respected by her teams, she had built her career on empathy and collaboration. When a leadership role opened, she went after it with everything she had.
For six months before her promotion, we focused on clarity: how she wanted to lead, what energized her, and what kind of impact she wanted to make. She was ready and excited, eager to prove she belonged at that table.
Then the promotion came. And almost immediately, the joy disappeared.
Her calendar filled with senior-level meetings, internal politics, and constant trade-offs. One morning she said, “I feel like I can’t be myself here. I have to play a version of who they expect me to be.”
That line stayed with me. I hear it often from leaders, especially those whose strength comes from empathy and intuition. They’re celebrated for those traits, but when the stakes rise, they feel pressure to dial them back and lead in ways that don’t reflect who they truly are.
So we shifted our focus. We stopped talking about executive presence and started talking about what it meant to feel grounded again. We revisited the strengths that had carried her this far: empathy, intuition, and collaboration, the very qualities she thought she had to mute.
I asked what might happen if she stopped worrying about whether her style fit every stakeholder’s expectations and simply leaned into what came naturally. She hesitated at first, then began to experiment.
In one meeting, she opened with a question instead of a directive. In another, she paused before responding to a senior leader and asked for clarification rather than defending her point. Her tone softened, but her presence strengthened.
Her team opened up. Peers began seeking her perspective. Senior leaders noticed her steadiness. Within months, she wasn’t trying to fit the role anymore. She was shaping it.
At the end of one session, she said quietly, “I finally feel like I can breathe again.”
That was her breakthrough. Not a new skill or strategy, but the realization that being her authentic self wasn’t a liability. It was her greatest advantage.
What Coaching Has Taught Me
Every time I see someone make that shift, I’m reminded why I do this work. Coaching isn’t about fixing people. It’s about creating a space where they can see themselves clearly enough to choose differently.
When that happens, it feels less like I’ve accomplished something and more like I’ve witnessed something important. The client does the work. My role is to help them slow down, notice what’s already true, and then build from there.
What continues to surprise me, even after decades in business, is how much I grow from these experiences. Each coaching engagement leaves me with a deeper understanding of what great leadership, and great coaching, actually is.
Great coaching doesn’t give the answer. It helps people uncover their own. It doesn’t create dependence. It creates courage. It gives leaders a safe, judgment-free space to explore what they’re feeling, what they’re missing, and what might be possible if they trusted themselves a little more.
Many clients come to coaching because something isn’t working, such as a relationship, a transition, a loss of confidence. But the ones who come back, sometimes years later, come because they remember what it felt like to think clearly again. They remember the relief of being fully heard, and they want that space to keep growing.
Coaching becomes less about fixing and more about staying aligned. That’s when it moves from useful to transformative.
Why It Brings Me Joy
There’s a moment that gets me every time. It’s when someone realizes they don’t have to pretend anymore. You can see it physically. The shoulders drop. The breath deepens. The voice steadies. They stop performing and start leading.
That’s the moment that gives me joy. Not because I did it, but because they did.
Business happens to be the setting where these conversations take place, but the lessons reach far beyond it. When leaders rediscover who they are, their teams thrive. Their clients feel it. Their organizations shift in ways that spreadsheets can’t measure.
I often think back to my own transition from corporate life to coaching. I was used to intensity, deadlines, measurable outcomes. Coaching has its own rhythm. It’s slower, but somehow more powerful. You see the impact not in numbers, but in how people carry themselves. In how they start showing up differently for their teams, their families, and themselves.
That’s the reward: watching someone reclaim their confidence and joy, knowing they’ll carry that strength long after our sessions end.
And the truth is, I grow too. Each coaching relationship teaches me something new about human nature, leadership, and the complexity of business. That growth gives me joy as well, and it comes full circle. The more I learn from my clients, the better I become at helping the next one see themselves more clearly.
Every engagement is different, but the rhythm is the same. It’s about helping people reconnect with who they are and lead from that place.
That’s when real change sticks, and that’s when the work brings me the most joy.