8 Tips on How to Use Mindful Confrontation in Coaching

I’d like to open this article by asking you a question: What has your experience been in using confrontation in your coaching?

By asking this, I hope to direct your attention and awareness to your use of confrontation in your coaching.

This is an example of what I call a mindful approach to confrontation.

Confrontation often has a negative connotation, but it doesn’t have to be a negative experience. If used mindfully, it can be a great coaching tool.

In this article, I will discuss what confrontation is in the context of professional coaching and provide eight tips on how to use mindful confrontation in your coaching sessions as a powerful tool to help your clients achieve their desired outcomes.

What Is Confrontation in Coaching?

As a coach, you may confront (point out, approach, challenge) a client on a belief, thought, behavior, or action that you observe or notice might contradict the client’s goal and possibly get in the way of their desired outcome.

Mindful confrontation is about bringing awareness into why, what, when, and how you use and deliver confrontation so it can be used safely and effectively to support your client.

Like any tool, confrontation can cause damage if not used safely and for the appropriate purpose. In the context of professional coaching, it is NOT:

• An aggression or attack. 

• An accusation or criticism. 

• Any form of hostility or competition.

Why Use Confrontation in Coaching?

To illustrate the purpose and function of confrontation in coaching, let’s look at the ICF Core Competencies. Although confrontation can be inferred in multiple competencies, it is a huge component of Core Competency #7: Evoke Awareness: 

7.2 Challenges the client to evoke awareness or insight. 

7.4 Asks questions that help the client explore beyond current thinking. 

7.8 Helps the client identify factors that influence current and future patterns of behavior, thinking, or emotion.

8 Ways to Cultivate Mindful Confrontation

You cannot force your client to receive and respond to confrontation a certain way, but you CAN work on delivering your questions mindfully to help your client benefit from this tool.

1. Build Rapport to Create a Safe and Trusting Environment.

You will likely not be using confrontation in your first session. Confrontation may feel uncomfortable, but your client (and you!) needs to feel safe. Use your judgment and bring awareness to the following:

• Non-judgemental language: Try starting sentences with “I am noticing,” “I am sensing,” or “I’m curious about.”
• Non-verbal communication and body language such as eye contact, body posture, and gestures. 
• Your tone (Talk low and slowly). 
• Your surroundings and environment (i.e. physical space, background). 
• The client’s culture (cultivate cultural competency in your practice).

2. Check Your Intentions.

As with any tool, you want to ensure you know why you are using confrontation. ask yourself:

• How is this serving the client?
• Why am I using this and why NOW?

Have a purpose for using confrontation and stick to the client’s agenda, not your agenda for the client.

3. Help Prepare Your Client for the Confrontation.

This increases their sense of personal agency and helps them feel respected, safe, and in control of the situation. You can do this by:

• Including it in the coaching agreement: When designing and updating your coaching agreement, define confrontation with your client and if they agree to be confronted and/or if it is a preferred strategy.
• Asking permission: You don’t have to ask, “Can I confront you on something?” (the word “confront” can elicit an immediate negative and defensive reaction). Instead, you might say, “I’m curious about something that I am noticing. Are you open to receiving this right now?”

4. Be Creative With Your Questions.

Here are three of my favorites:

• If you were to confront yourself about this, what might that feel or look like?
• Is there anything that you feel I should be confronting you about that I am not?
• If confrontation were to come into our session (personifying it), what might it look like, say, observe, or notice?

5. Know When To Let Go.

Give the client space to receive and process the confrontation and let it do its work. However, you also need to know when it is not working and may be time for a new approach or conversation.

It is okay to try it, and if you feel it is not supporting the client where they are now, let it go. To determine this, it helps to:

• Be present and use active, empathic listening to pick up on cues and the client’s current emotional state.
• Check-in and follow up with the client about how they felt the session went.

6. Demonstrate Compassion.

Deliver confrontation from a place of common humanity, empathy, understanding, kindness, and warmth, and with the desire to help your client.

7. Practice Trauma-Informed Care.

Explore this approach, which assumes that an individual is more likely to have experienced trauma than not, and being mindful of this can cultivate a safe and supportive environment for clients. You can read more about trauma-informed approaches here.

8. Reflect and Learn From Your Use of Confrontation.

Engage in reflections through journaling, listening to recordings, and mentor coaching.

Whether confrontation is a new tool for you or something you want to learn and develop further, I hope these eight tips will add to your coaching toolbox so you can use confrontation in a way that supports your clients and your own professional coaching journey!

I’ll end with how I started — a question — what areas, perhaps not listed here, do YOU feel you could be more mindful of when using confrontation with your clients?