Why Most People Wait Too Long to Get a Coach

2 days ago

4 min read

Nobody hires a guide at Camp 4.

On Everest, you choose your team long before you reach the death zone, because by the time you need help most, it is far too late to go looking for it.

Life works the same way, but most of us don’t treat it like that. We wait. We tell ourselves we’ll ask for support once things get serious enough. And by then, we’ve often been carrying the weight for years.

So why do most people wait too long to get a coach? Because coaching feels like something you save for a crisis, so capable people keep postponing it until something breaks. I’m Tima Deryan, an executive and leadership coach, and in my experience the opposite is true. Coaching works best before the crisis, while you are capable but stuck, and the earlier you start, the easier the gap is to close.

Why do people wait so long to get a coach?

Most people don’t decide against coaching. They just keep postponing it.

“I’ll look into it once things calm down.” “I should be able to figure this out myself.” “Maybe next quarter.” I hear some version of this all the time, and I understand it. Coaching can feel like something you turn to once you’ve hit a wall, not something you reach for while you’re still standing.

In five years and more than 500 hours of coaching, I’ve noticed something. The people who wait the longest aren’t the ones with smaller problems. They’re the ones who have adapted so well to what keeps them stuck that it stops looking like a problem and starts looking like personality. Like “just how I am.”

It isn’t. It’s just unexamined.

And it has a cost. The promotion you didn’t go for. The meeting where you had the answer and kept it to yourself. The years spent working harder instead of clearer. None of it feels like an emergency, which is exactly why it’s so easy to keep waiting.

When is the right time to get a coach?

My first coaching session didn’t happen because I thought I needed one. I was 27, I had decided to leave my job in finance to train as a coach, and I wanted to know what being coached felt like before I committed.

I had just achieved the biggest dream of my life, standing on the summit of Everest. What nobody tells you is the emptiness that can follow. I was going through major life changes, and honestly, I was lost.

In 45 minutes, I reached a level of awareness that surprised me. I didn’t learn anything new. But saying it all out loud, answering precise questions and being pushed to be specific felt like every file in my head had been put back in the right folder. For the first time in months, I had clarity.

Looking back, it came at exactly the right time. I just didn’t know I needed it until I was in it. That is usually how it works.

What does a good coach actually do?

Before my summit push, I was very sick, and I was told it would be wiser to call the expedition off. I went to my expedition leader hoping he would tell me I could do it.

He didn’t. He said, “You are exactly where you are supposed to be right now.”

Then he laid out my two options. Call it off, or rest, see if I felt better, and try. He never gave me the answer. He helped me get clear enough to make the decision myself. I rested, and on May 22, 2019, I stood on the summit.

I still use his words with my clients, because that is what good coaching does. It doesn’t decide for you. It brings you to the place where the right decision becomes visible.

Does coaching actually work?

Yes. In a global client study commissioned by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) in 2009, 80% of people who worked with a coach reported increased self confidence, and more than 70% reported better work performance, relationships and communication. Not because a coach handed them answers, but because a coach helped them see what was already there.

What does leadership coaching look like in practice?

When Rasha came to me for executive coaching, she had just stepped into a senior director role. On paper, she had earned it. Inside, she didn’t believe it. Working in a male dominated environment, she felt a constant need to prove herself and fight to be heard, and she kept holding herself back.

Over three months, we didn’t try to change who she was. We worked on the story she was telling herself, and session by session, she rewired it. She started showing up with confidence, trusting herself, and no longer feeling intimidated in the rooms that mattered.

Coaching doesn’t give you a new personality. It gives you a clearer view of the one you already have.

A few questions worth sitting with

Where have you adapted so well to a problem that it no longer looks like one?
What would change if you stopped waiting for things to get hard enough to justify asking for support?
A year from now, what would it cost you to still be standing exactly where you are today?