Interview with Fernando Huerta: coaching as a psychological intervention

What are the characteristics of coaching and how does it differ from psychotherapy?

Psychological intervention can take many forms and, although psychotherapy is probably the most popular, it is good to know about others.

In this sense, coaching is one of the concepts most commonly used to designate various forms of application of psychology in non-clinical contexts. It is especially important in processes linked to the achievement of personal or business goals, so that it serves to help both individuals and work teams.

However... what are the characteristics of coaching that differentiate it from the usual work of clinical and health psychologists? To find out, we talked to Fernando Huerta Morenoa psychologist expert in clinical psychology and coaching.

Interview with Fernando Huerta: the link between coaching and psychotherapy.

Fernando Huerta Moreno is a psychologist, trainer and coach, as well as Director of the Centro de Psicoterapia, Coaching y Formación Humane, located in Madrid. In this interview he talks about the relationship between psychology applied in therapy and coaching based on his more than 20 years of experience.

How would you summarize the relationship between psychotherapy and coaching?

Psychotherapy works on the discomfort, not only on the symptoms but also on the problems that cause them, which is the most important thing if we want solutions that are maintained over time. For that we have to make a good diagnosis as it is the basis of all treatment, then apply techniques tailored to that particular issue, always guided by those that are most appropriate to the personality style of that client and his life in particular.

Obviously within a treatment we also have to work on goals that are not the disorder, since we work with people, who have many vital areas that must be adjusted appropriately and improved to achieve a good balance and satisfaction.

Coaching is more the achievement of goals in different areas, with different strategies to those we use in psychotherapy, but in many occasions it is necessary to work the psychological part also because there are anxieties, fears, emotions, peculiarities, insecurities, personality styles that prevent us from being able to do well in time and effectively the steps to achieve those goals, so that if we do not control all these points, they will dynamite and limit us to achieve these goals in an adequate way, it will take longer to obtain them, we will have a greater number of failures and the successes will be less and of a smaller magnitude as a consequence of the interferences produced.

We should also avoid making mistakes in the process, i.e., not seeing that some coaching goals that clients ask us, involves reinforcing a pathology, that the possible achievement of these goals harms the person more than it helps, so we must assess whether they are good or bad goals at the psychological level, act with caution and care, because otherwise you may be helping them to achieve something that is detrimental to their welfare.

If we get someone with dependence to recover a bad and toxic partner, or someone with orthorexia to control their eating more obsessively, we are doing them a disservice, because we are encouraging something that should be reduced or eliminated depending on the case.

Are both tools often used together?

Yes, we usually use psychotherapy and coaching tools together, because we work with people and their globality, which includes a psychic part and a vital part that are difficult to separate. Working with people's lives and minds is something very complex, which implies a lot of responsibility; we must therefore have a multidisciplinary vision and be very careful to always achieve the best for the client, without having negative secondary consequences in the short, medium and long term.

We tend to work with different databases, sometimes practically synchronously or with a systematized alternation, except in cases where the urgency of removing the primary discomfort requires focusing almost totally for a short time, only on eliminating it above any other consideration of secondary goals, no matter how good they may seem, or how complementary and desired they may be for the client.

In your professional experience, is it more complex to detect the causes of a person's discomfort, or the motivations and goals that serve to drive their own well-being?

It depends on the complexity of a pathology, of the goals and also of the knowledge that person has about himself, about psychotherapy and coaching, and of course of those that the professional has, but in general it is usually more complex, not to detect the causes of discomfort or motivations, but to teach people to obtain a good level of happiness in a stable way, that is why it is so important the maintenance in both cases.

We must achieve a double function; on the one hand to keep at bay the software viruses of any psychological problem, and on the other hand to give him/her good theoretical and practical contents, so that he/she knows how to have a happier life on average over time.

What are the main reasons why people seeking coaching services come to your office?

The main motives are to achieve things both externally and internally, that is, to obtain work, personal, social, recreational and couple goals, and also to know and achieve things such as self-knowledge, self-esteem, assertiveness, frustration tolerance, resilience, balance.

But more and more people ask us for more global things, they want to know and manage a compendium of issues of their exterior and interior, so we usually work from a broad dimension, in which the two aspects are exercised, as they are almost always linked, some things influence the others.

For example, a person with greater self-esteem and security will better achieve their goals, but also, if we teach them good knowledge to work and obtain the desired goals, when they reach them, their security and personal self-esteem will improve.

And the most common reasons for which they ask to be attended in psychotherapy?

There are many different issues, but the main ones are, in the first place, all the issues related to anxiety, stress and mood problems.

Secondly those related to vital parameters; eating problems that are increasing in their different varieties, sleep, as we sleep less and less and with worse quality, and everything related to the discomfort in personal relationships, both couple, family, friends and work, and sexual problems that it seems that people have decided to address them and not resign themselves to them.

How can coaching be used to improve the functioning of companies and organizations in general?

Companies are people who interact with each other with a specific knowledge base depending on the role they play in the company, you have to know how to manage yourself either as a boss, as a partner or as an employee without generating discomfort for different reasons, without affecting us individually or as a group, for our own good and also for the good of the company or organization.

If a person does not feel well, or a group has tensions, or an organization has horizontal or vertical interaction problems, things usually get bad for everyone and emotional, anxiety, psychosomatic or any other kind of problems arise, and also individual and global profitability decreases, with all that this can mean for people and organizations.

In companies we basically have two roles, one labor in the performance of our work, and the other relational, since we interact with others both to work and produce but also to relate personally in a non-productive way.

It is important to take care of both to monitor individual and overall levels of satisfaction and profitability, because they are important for everyone in both areas.

And how does coaching apply to goals that have to do with personal life, beyond work? Do they differ much from those used in organizational contexts?

First we evaluate which goals are good or bad for the client, as we mentioned earlier, then we see which are feasible and which are not, then those that are a priority and those that are secondary, and then those that are more profitable in the medium and long term, which is what is important.

If we go short we usually end up paying more in all concepts, they are selling us the immediate and easy obtaining of the good without costs, including things of great magnitude, but it is a falsehood. We have to be aware that efforts and reinforcements in life are always proportionate so as not to be disappointed and frustrated.

They do not differ excessively because they have a common base in many occasions, but it is clear that they are worked in both cases with different contents and also with objectives that are different in one case and in the other. It is true that when people feel good on a personal and work level, they achieve their personal and professional goals better, persevere more and are much less discouraged, leading to benefits at all levels.