This week’s series was never about being “right” on the internet.
It was about telling the truth about what gets rewarded in coaching culture, and what that reward system can quietly do to human beings.
Because coaching is not neutral.
Even when it tries to be.
When coaching refuses to name power, it protects the status quo.
When coaching prioritizes palatability, it trains compliance instead of truth.
When coaching worships urgency, it treats the body like a machine and calls burnout a mindset problem.
This is how white supremacy culture moves through “helping” spaces. Not only through obvious harm, but through norms that look professional, responsible, and mature.
The thread we walked
1) Neutrality protects the status quo
Neutral coaching often sounds like objectivity, mindset, personal responsibility, “just focus on what you can control.”
Those can be useful tools. But when they erase context, they become blame in better lighting.
If we coach as if every playing field is level, the client becomes the problem by default.
2) Tone policing protects comfort
Tone policing is when the content of what is being said gets ignored in favor of critiquing delivery.
Calm down.
Say it nicer.
Be more constructive.
High vibe only.
Sometimes communication skills matter. Sometimes safety matters. But tone policing is not about skill. It is about control.
It asks people to make their truth digestible instead of honest.
3) Urgency worships speed and calls collapse a character flaw
Urgency culture treats speed like virtue.
Busy becomes proof.
Exhaustion becomes devotion.
The panic pace becomes normal.
And the body pays the bill.
This is not simply “a productivity issue.” It is a value system that rewards performance over presence and punishes the human pace of being alive.
A different vow
My vow is simple:
Truth over performance.
Safety over comfort.
Integrity over panic.
That does not mean we ignore personal agency. It means we stop using agency as a weapon.
It means we tell the truth about what is real, and then we build from there without self-abandonment.
Reflection questions to close the series
For clients
- Where have I been told to “be positive” or “stay neutral” when what I needed was truth?
- What feeling do I keep trying to tidy up so I can be taken seriously?
- Where am I living at the panic pace, and what is it costing my body?
- What part of my reality have I been blaming myself for instead of naming what is actually happening?
- If I stopped performing “healed,” what would I say plainly, in one sentence?
For coaches
- Where do I default to neutrality or “objectivity” in ways that erase power, access, risk, or context?
- When a client is angry, intense, or emotional, do I get curious, or do I try to smooth it out?
- Where might I be confusing accountability with punishment, or regulation with compliance?
- How does urgency show up in my coaching, my marketing, or my training culture, and what does it reward?
- What would change in my work if I chose truth over performance, safety over comfort, and integrity over panic?
If you want to go deeper with this work as a coach, that’s what we train inside The Coaching Guild: skill, ethics, power literacy, and nervous system respect, without bypassing reality.
And if you’re a client, let these questions be a tuning fork. Good support helps you tell the truth and stay connected to yourself. It does not require you to get smaller to be worthy of care.
