Why Practising Coaching on Friends and Family Doesn't Work
Coaching people you know feels like the obvious way to build hours. The dynamics are wrong, the feedback is missing, and the hours barely count.
It's the first idea every new coach has, usually suggested by the friends themselves: "practise on me!"
It rarely survives contact. Coaches tell us, over and over, some version of the same thing: I don't want to practise on people I know. The instinct is right, and it's worth spelling out why, because the reasons point at what good practice actually requires.
The relationship gets in the way
Coaching works partly because the coach has no stake in the client's life. Your friend doesn't get that from you. You know their history, their partner, their long-running complaints. You have opinions about what they should do, formed over years, and they know you have them.
That changes both sides of the conversation. They edit what they tell you, because some things you don't say to a friend. You soften what you ask, because you have a friendship to protect. The result resembles a supportive chat more than a coaching session, and supportive chats were already available before you trained.
There's no honest feedback
A practice session is supposed to make you better, which requires knowing what didn't work. Your mum is not going to tell you your questions were leading. Your colleague doesn't know what a leading question is. Friends and family can tell you whether they enjoyed talking to you, which is not the thing you're trying to learn.
Contrast that with practising with another coach: someone who noticed your interruptions because they've been trained to notice their own, and who will actually say so, because you'll do the same for them at the end of their turn.
The awkwardness is telling you something
Many coaches describe feeling reluctant, even embarrassed, about coaching people from their own life. That feeling isn't a confidence problem to push through. It's an accurate reading of a malformed situation: you're asking someone to occupy a role (vulnerable client) that collides with the role they already have in your life.
The fix isn't to feel braver. It's to practise with someone whose only relationship to you is the practice itself. Coaches consistently say practising with strangers feels safer, not scarier: there's no shared history in the room and nothing to protect.
The hours barely count anyway
If you're on the ICF credential path, there's a bookkeeping problem too. Coaching friends for free is pro bono coaching, and the ICF caps pro bono at 25 of the 100 hours needed for the ACC. The other 75 must be paid, and the ICF's definition of paid includes reciprocal peer coaching (barter, in their terms) but not favours for your cousin.
So the maths and the dynamics agree: the practice that counts is the practice that works, and it's with peers.
Where to find them
Robin is a free practice-partner platform for coaches: a private directory of coaches from different programmes and countries who all need practice too, with messaging, scheduling, video calls, and an hours logbook in one place. No personal details are shared unless you choose to share them, and everyone there has already said yes to the only question that's awkward to ask.
Join Robin free and practise with people who signed up for it.