#466 When Coaching Becomes an Excuse: Conflict Incompetence, Leadership Responsibility and the Rise of Pseudo-Psychology - article by Niels Brabandt
When Coaching Becomes an Excuse: Conflict Incompetence, Leadership Responsibility and the Rise of Pseudo-Psychology
By Niels Brabandt
In boardrooms and leadership meetings across Europe, a new sentence is increasingly heard when performance issues are addressed: “This does not feel good to me. My coach says I do not have to engage in things that do not feel right.” What sounds like emotional awareness is, in reality, often the symptom of a deeper organisational risk. It is the collision of conflict incompetence with pseudo-coaching, and it threatens one of the foundations of professional leadership: the ability to deal with criticism, responsibility and reality.
The case described in the latest episode of The Leadership Podcast by Niels Brabandt is not hypothetical. It is a real situation from a large international organisation in London, witnessed first-hand and later confirmed through multiple court rulings.
A manager, thoroughly prepared, calm and factual, conducts a critique discussion with an employee whose repeated errors in a financial reporting system have measurable consequences for clients, pricing and delivery schedules. The discussion is structured, evidence-based and explicitly developmental. Yet, midway through the conversation, the employee stands up, states that criticism “does not feel good”, refers to advice from a personal coach and leaves the room. The same happens in a second scheduled meeting.
This is not resilience. It is not boundary setting. It is conflict incompetence, reinforced by unqualified coaching advice that replaces professional accountability with emotional self-absolution.
For business decision makers, the implications are profound. Organisations are not therapeutic environments. They are systems of coordinated performance, governed by legal duties, contractual obligations and shared responsibility. Feedback and critique are not acts of aggression. They are instruments of quality assurance and learning. Without them, errors persist, standards erode and trust in leadership collapses.
The legal system makes this distinction with clarity. Subjective discomfort is not an employment law category. There is no right to withdraw from a performance discussion simply because it is unpleasant. Courts in the UK, as in most advanced jurisdictions, have consistently affirmed the duty of employees to engage in feedback and critique processes when they are conducted lawfully, respectfully and on the basis of evidence. In the London case, the employee challenged both the obligation to participate in critique discussions and the subsequent demotion. Both claims failed in all instances.
What transforms such situations from difficult to dangerous is the role of pseudo-coaching. A rapidly expanding market of self-appointed coaches, often without academic training, professional accreditation or ethical regulation, offers simple, emotionally appealing slogans: You owe nothing. Protect your energy. Walk away from anything that feels uncomfortable. These messages may generate short-term emotional relief. In organisational reality, they generate long-term career damage, legal defeat and professional isolation.
Proper coaching is a scientifically grounded, academically informed discipline. It is built on psychology, organisational theory and evidence-based practice. It does not tell people to avoid responsibility. It helps them understand it. It does not encourage flight from conflict. It develops the competence to navigate it. Anything else is not coaching. It is motivational entertainment, and when misapplied in corporate contexts, it becomes actively harmful.
A further confusion arises around the concept of the safe space. In modern organisations, safe spaces are essential for protection against discrimination, harassment and abuse. They are not spaces free of performance feedback. Psychological safety means that people can speak and be spoken to without fear of humiliation, not that they are shielded from evaluation. Therapeutic safe spaces exist in clinical contexts, led by licensed psychotherapists with more than a decade of academic and professional training. A workplace critique meeting is not therapy, and a line manager is not a clinician.
For senior leaders, the strategic lesson is clear. Conflict competence must be treated as a core leadership capability, not as an optional soft skill. Managers must be trained to conduct critique conversations with structure, evidence and legal awareness. At the same time, organisations must draw firm boundaries against the misuse of pseudo-coaching as a justification for withdrawal, denial and refusal to engage.
Equally important is the message to employees. External coaching does not replace organisational accountability. A coach may support reflection, but the responsibility for professional conduct remains with the individual. No certificate, slogan or inspirational quote alters that fact.
The story from London ends predictably. After demotion and legal defeat, the employee leaves the organisation and enters a role of significantly lower responsibility and career standing. The promise of unconditional affirmation offered by pseudo-coaching proves incompatible with the realities of complex, performance-driven systems.
For decision makers, the warning is timely. The combination of conflict avoidance and unqualified coaching advice can undermine leadership authority, distort legal understanding and weaken organisational culture. The antidote is not hardness, but clarity. Critique is not hostility. Responsibility is not oppression. And leadership is not about making every interaction feel comfortable, but about making the organisation capable, resilient and truthful.
As Niels Brabandt consistently emphasises in his work on leadership, coaching and organisational psychology, sustainable performance depends on one fundamental principle: the courage to face reality, even when it does not feel good.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
There are moments where you have to give criticism to people, where you have to criticize people if you like it or not. And sometimes the reaction when you have these kinds of talks doesn't go as planned. And we're going to talk about a situation which is a bit more than a year ago happened in London. I am a firsthand eyewitness of that situation, and I can tell you it is a situation where you wonder, how can this happen? And it happened exactly as I will tell you now. We, of course, had to wait for what the final result of that is going to be.
Niels Brabandt
So what happened was, let's assume you lead a team, and your team is based in a situation where you have to book certain things into a software. So certain resources need to be booked in a certain way into a system, because based on that, you have financial reports. Based on that, you have project planning. Based on that, you have pricing. Based on that, you have deadlines communicated towards the client. Anything is based on that system. And you have someone who came from a different department. They wanted to develop further, also to make a bit more money. And they got into this department, and in the beginning, they made mistakes, which is normal because it's quite a complicated task. And then you onboard them more and more, but the errors keep continuing. And even after a while, when the person is there for a year and a half, still too many errors happen compared to anyone else on the team.
Niels Brabandt
So you sit down, and you have a moment of criticism, a critique talk. And you and I am, again, I'm eyewitnessing this. The leader was extremely well prepared, was extremely calm, saying, "Hey, this is not about getting you out of the department or firing you. This is only about making things better so less errors happen in the future." And of course, that's pretty good, I think. So what happened then was that the other side listened in the beginning, and the leader, very well prepared, said, "Okay, this happened at that time." So very clearly describe what happened and what were the consequences, why the leader thought this is going to happen, and of course, ask questions. How do you see it? The other side immediately denied it, but not giving any kind of reasoning for denying, just saying, "No, I don't see it that way." When the leader asked why, "I just don't see it that way. I just don't agree with you." So not giving any kind of substantial answer.
Niels Brabandt
And suddenly, when it went a bit back and forth in the middle of a phrase, when the leader was just trying to give another option of how to make things better, the person said, and I quote word by word, the person said, "Look, um, this doesn't feel good to me what we do here. And I have a coach now, and the coach told me I don't have to do things that I don't like and that are not good for me. So I'm not doing this anymore." Got up and left. Didn't leave the organization, got back to their desk and continued working. And while you wonder what just happened, and of course, the leader then tried to make another appointment for a new talk, and they had the talk, same thing in the middle of the talk, quite the second time, even earlier, saying, "No, it doesn't feelright for me, and I don't have to do things that don't feelright for me," and just left.
Niels Brabandt
So while you wonder, how is this possible? How can people act that way? Polly, that's what most people reacted when I talked about the story. This scenario is a case of, first, of course, conflict incompetence, but also of pseudo-coaching. And unfortunately, when you're listening to this as a leader, I can tell you there will be more and more situations like this, which you have to face, where people have some sort of coaches. They get told something, and then they think they can act on something. So the question is, how do you deal with these situations? When you have a moment of critique, you are well prepared, you are calm, you're structured, you do everythingright, but the other side simply says, "Look, I have this coach, and my coach tells me I don't have to do anything that doesn't feel good for me." And of course, when you say, well, any coach that says that is probably not very well qualified, we talk about that one later. We talk about that one later.
Niels Brabandt
So when it comes to conflict incompetence, let's analyze the situation first. So the situation was there was criticism, and it's perfectly fine to deliver criticism as long as it's structured, well-founded, and of course, the burden of proof is with you. However, there were tons of examples, including severe consequences, sometimes consequences which could just be prevented by other team members or by the leader, but they always had to catch—they always caught up. They always had to catch up with the other person's work and their errors. So now, of course, you wonder, how can you make things better? And the question is now, when you deliver good criticism, but you just get denial, so the person simply says, "No, I'm not taking this." How do you act from here? Because what happened was it was just cut off, and by the way, twice. So you did anything that is within your means, but you just get cut off. So what to do then?
Niels Brabandt
So let's look at the facts first. The fact is, and that is number one, critique is part of the job. And by the way, when you say, "Oh, my leader likes to critique a lot," always wonder, is the burden of proof satisfied? So when you say, when someone tells you, "Hey, you need to produce 10 pieces of that, and per day you only produce 8," that is unambiguously clear evidence. And then you can talk about why, but the evidence is there. When someone simply tells you, "Yeah, I think you're not that motivated anymore," and when you ask why, and they say, "I don't know, it's just my perception," that's not okay. That's not okay. The burden of proof always is with the person making the claim.
Niels Brabandt
So when your leader claims you don't work very well, they have to satisfy—they have to satisfy the need for a burden of proof that needs to be delivered always from the leadership side. However, not every critique is a personal attack on you. There's a very clear difference between critique and attack. You cannot frame and label anything where someone criticizes you as a personal attack just because you don't like it. Let's face it, no one likes criticism. Anyone likes to hear you're the best person in the world. However, feedback and critique and the conflict arising from it always, or in most cases, leads to significant changes to make things better.
Niels Brabandt
So the critique here is you really have to see when someone criticizes you and they give you substantial evidence, you either have better evidence that speaks in your favor, or you have to accept that maybe you are in the wrong this—and then you're in the wrong this time, and you have to make things better. No leader has theright to attack you when they say, "Oh, you're just lazy. All the people like you. Someone coming from your part of town usually wouldn't be hired here. You only are here because someone who knows someone brought you in here. People of your level of education shouldn't be part of the team anyway." These are just personal attacks. That's, of course, not okay, but that's not what happened here.
Niels Brabandt
If someone cuts off a pseudo-critique talk because someone just wants to vent and rant at you, perfectly fine to cut that off. But critique is part of the job. And also, and that's a very important part, when someone says, "Ah, sorry, that doesn't feel good for me, and I don't do things that do not feel good to me." Here are the news, news flash. When something doesn't feelright to you, when something doesn't feel good to you, that is not a legal category. When you say, "Oh, I really don't like to be critiqued or criticized at work," then maybe the working role is not for you. And by the way, that doesn't entitle you to any kind of financial gains from someone else.
Niels Brabandt
When you say, "I don't like to work," get along with your life however you want to be, or do. But as soon as someone says, "That doesn't feel good to me," that is not an immediate reason to leave you out of the room or to make you leave the room or to have your own space or whatever else. Legal categories also include that you have to give people a chance to criticize you and make things better. It is part of the job to accept feedback and to work on the critique you probably receive. Feedback talks are usually the first place, and critique talks are the more escalated way when things already went too bad for a way too long time.
Niels Brabandt
There is no legal category that protects you and says you don't have to accept anything that doesn't feel good to you. And by the way, I do not generalize here and say, "Oh, it's always these oversensitive people." No, that's not the message here, not at all. Sometimes criticism doesn't feel great because you put a lot of work in there, your heart is in this piece of work, and someone says, "It's really not very good." That is never great. And I can tell you from my own experience, I mean, I got two master's degrees, and sometimes my supervisor said, "Look, I know this was lots of effort, and you spend a week on this, but it's just not very good. You should rewrite it from scratch." That's never a great moment, but I did, and that's probably one of the reasons why I got a first and one of my master's degrees here.
Niels Brabandt
So it's very important here that from the legal point of view, employers and organizations are entitled to talk with you, and you are entitled to receive substantial feedback with reasoning and not just an opinion. But simply saying, "I'm out of this," that's not possible. What usually happens is, why this happens, especially at the moment, is pseudo-coaching. And pseudo-coaching is when a non-qualified coach gives you any kind of one-liner that you like to hear. And I can tell you out there, you will find a ton of pseudo-coaches. The vast majority of coaches hold no qualifications, and I'm very straightforward here with that. A professionally qualified coach holds academic qualification.
Niels Brabandt
When someone says, "Oh, yeah, I took this coaching class with this other coach, and they gave me a certificate." Certificates are also okay when they come from credible sources, for example, universities, something with academic backing, proper scientific substantiation, coaching certifications given away by dubious other coaches, because let's face it, the vast majority of coaches become coached to then coach other coaches who then will coach other coaches to become coaches and so on and so forth. It's a huge bubble of nonsense out there. I didn't spend two years at university to become a scientifically, academically qualified coach to see that this reputation of this job gets damaged by people who have no clue but use the title anyway.
Niels Brabandt
So pseudo-coaching always means it's not academically accredited. And by the way, I know that there are coaching associations out there, many of them, many different ones. And the vast majority of coaching associations are wildly, wildly non-qualified to give you any kind of certificate. Most coaching qualifications, which by coincidence are led privately by people, only were created to give a feeling of community, and then they sell their services to you. So you rise through the ranks of coaching associations to then sell to others within the coaching association. It's an incestuous cycle of nonsense out there. It's a bouquet of embarrassment. So this pseudo-coaching is on the rise.
Niels Brabandt
So when the person said, "I have a coach," and we ask, "Is it okay when we ask for who is the coach?" And they gave us the coach's LinkedIn profile. Surprise, surprise, holds no coaching qualification whatsoever, has a big mouth and a big ego, no career in the job market, no career in any other sense, and surprise, surprise, not much education in any kind of way. And these people like to tell you things that you like to hear because that's how they make money. Basically, they sell a good feeling to you, feel-good coaching, completely unsubstantiated, unscientific, straightforward nonsense.
Niels Brabandt
So we said, "This coach is not qualified, but it's your chance." However, the most important phrase in that context is, "Coaches might help you, but the accountability for acting within the organization is always with you." You cannot blame the coach for something that went wrong. When a coach gives you any kind of idea, concept, toolbox, or any kind of nonsensical motivational inspirational one-liner, as it happened in this case, and you use that and it has negative consequences for you, that's your problem and no one else's problem.
Niels Brabandt
So pseudo-coaching is when someone has no substantiation, nothing to their name that qualifies them as coaching, as a coach, but they claim they can tell you what you should and should not do. Stay away from them. Stay away from these people. And when someone says, "Oh, my coach taught me," it doesn't feel great to me. By the way, other people can do that as well.
Niels Brabandt
Let's just say you approach your leader and say, "I want to have a salary raise," and they say, "Oh, more salary really doesn't feel good for me and not for the organization as well, and we don't do things that don't feel good to us,right?" So no, we don't do that. Thank you, no, thank you, and goodbye. And that's, of course, also not okay, and you wouldn't accept that anyway.
Niels Brabandt
So pseudo-coaching is a huge, huge issue because pseudo-coaching mixes up, deliberately mixes up certain aspects. When we talk about how to implement now, how to deal with that, how do you implement any kind of activity when you have to deal with that pseudo-coaching? Step number one always is distinguish clearly between feedback and critique on the one side, which is common. Anywhere in the working world, you receive feedback, and when you don't get any better, it's going to be a critique talk sooner or later.
Niels Brabandt
However, often people say, "Oh, you can't say that because we're a safe space here," you say. So safe spaces are important. I'm part of the LGBTQIA+ community, as you know. However, safe spaces does not mean that criticism is not allowed. Criticism, of course, especially when it's substantiated, is perfectly fine. People are allowed to give you feedback and critique within a safe space. If you claim any different, you have no idea what a safe space is.
Niels Brabandt
And when someone, as it sometimes happens, claims, "Oh, but there are therapeutic safe spaces where no criticism is allowed." Yes, when some people have certain mental illnesses or something mentally is not going too well for them, there can be a therapeutical safe space where you say no criticism. However, and here's the point, these therapeutical safe spaces are led by licensed counselors and therapists. Just to give you a background on how to become one, usually 10 semesters of psychological study. Usually, they take 12 to 14. After that, it takes seven years to become a registered and licensed counselor or psychotherapist. So you have roughly 12 to 14 years, if not more, of experience and academic highest level qualification. Then you are allowed to do that. So any kind of across-the-street walking coach telling, "I do a therapeutical safe space," no, you don't. You're not even allowed to do that. But I know that we have a lot of unlicensed counseling and unlicensed therapists out there calling themselves coaches. And that, of course, is not acceptable.
Niels Brabandt
So very important here, when you experience that, you need to be very clear with the reaction. And after having two attempts with that person and the person cut off both of them and then was unwilling to do a third one, which you don't even have to offer, then the reaction was unambiguously clear. It was told to the person that first they receive a written warning. Second, they are moved back to the old department where they worked before, which is a clear demotion, including a lower salary. And it, of course, ended as you now expect.
Niels Brabandt
The person went to court against two things. First, of course, they said, "You cannot tell me I have to endure a feedback and critique talk with you. That's forced and that's not legal." And the second thing is they said, "It's an illegal demotion and it's financial damage." By the way, with these two cases, they went through all instances and drumroll, lost on all counts. They were nowhere near winning during the whole process, but they still kept going.
Niels Brabandt
And that is where you see where sometimes coaches almost go not even from pseudo-coaching into esoteric coaching, but also into some sort of obscure sect or cult. Because, of course, immediately after they lost two cases, and of course, that cost a lot of money, especially in the UK, the coach then told the coachee, "Oh, yeah, you know, these are all these people who are all there. They are all connected. It's all the negativity. The negativity people always stick together. You know, they are all connected. It's always the establishment." And then immediately claiming that the court is not legitimate to make a call.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, try to tell a court or a judge, "Sorry, doesn't feel good to me, and I don't do that." I'm sure that the court will be less than impressed. And by the way, just try it on lower levels. Just imagine when Met Police in London stops you and you say, "Ah, you want to do traffic control? Sorry, doesn't feel good to me. I don't do controls. Thank you, goodbye." And just look what happens. Just look what happens. And they will very clearly tell you who is going in charge, who is in charge for the controls here and for the checkups. So it's extremely important to be clear on the reaction.
Niels Brabandt
That does not mean that you always have to fire people. But by the way, after they were demoted, the person left the organization, obviously very convinced about their talent, and about a couple of months later, started a new job, which, even in the politest words possible, is a massive step backwards. I don't know if they were financially able to get the same salary, which I doubt, but career-wise, a massive step back. So when a coach tells you you're great and you're clearly not, maybe you work on your skills and not just listen to pseudo-coaching.
Niels Brabandt
So feedback versus critique, perfectly fine. Safe space needed, a therapeutical safe space. That's not what you do unless you are a fully qualified, licensed, and registered either counselor or psychotherapist. The reaction needs to be unambiguously clear because otherwise, other people will claim the same. Any kind of criticism, they will block and say, "It's not good for me, so I don't do it." So you need to be clear on the reaction.
Niels Brabandt
Very important is you need to prepare your leaders for this because pseudo-coaching is around more and more and more online as well as offline. So people fall victim to it left,right, and center. Be prepared for these moments because otherwise, they will haunt you very, very quickly. It's extremely important now that you qualify yourself, and as soon as you do everything, as we just discussed, things will turn out way better. And I wish you all the best doing so and putting that into your real-world practice.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Hey, I really need to discuss something with you," feel free to contact me anytime. First, of course, when you now watch me on YouTube, feel free to like the video, subscribe to my channel, comment, leave a comment under the video. Very, very happy to comment and chat with you. Also leave a review here on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Five stars would be nice. Thank you very much for doing that. And recommend this podcast and video cast anywhere, friends, colleagues, in your company, organization, football club, wherever.
Niels Brabandt
So share it on social media. Anything is much appreciated. Of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or go to my website, nb-networks.biz, so you do what I do, so you see what I do for a living. And when you now say, "Hey, I have something, but I can't discuss it in public because it's just too private," feel free to send me an email, nb@nb-networks.com, and then we can discuss it from there. Thank you very much for the very good discussions we had during the last couple of weeks. Very much appreciated.
Niels Brabandt
If you want to join our live sessions, we always have live sessions every single month where we can discuss absolutely anything and have lots of news during these live sessions. expert.nb-networks.com. When you go there and put your email address in there, no worries, you only receive one email every Wednesday morning. It's 100% content ad-free guarantee. And there you get full access to all the podcasts, to all the articles, all the video casts. And we announce date time and the access link for the next live session only announced via the leadership letter. So I look forward to seeing you there. And of course, you can, of course, connect with me on LinkedIn, do the proper connect, not the follow thing, connect with me properly.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you can follow me on Instagram. You can like me on Facebook and, of course, subscribe to the YouTube channel. It always pays off to put a little bell in there so you get a bit of a tiny bit of notification when a new video goes online, which we have usually once per week. Thank you very much for doing so as well. And of course, when you contact me, I answer every single message within 24 hours or less. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you there as well. When you have something very specific, you need a trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, or you have a project or interim management demand, looking forward to discussing that.
Niels Brabandt
If you just want to have a nice chat and just discuss things, let's do that as well. I'm open for absolutely anything. Thank you very much for contacting me, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you. At the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only, oh, by the way, I almost forgot. The most important thing I always say at the end, apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive changes that you obviously want to see in your organization. So at the end of this podcast, as well as the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.