Back when I worked in finance, I had a rule.
“I will never work with friends or family.”
Because I knew what it could do to me.
When the markets went down, and if someone I loved was watching their portfolio drop, the guilt would be unbearable. (And trust me, guilt is a terrible advisor!)
I wouldn’t make my best decisions for those people…
In fact, I’d probably make my most reactive ones.
That’s why I kept friends and family at arm’s length for years because of it.
But when I moved into coaching, that’s where the whole thing got a lot more complicated…
In coaching, the ability to create a safe space is one of your biggest assets.
And with it, you develop closeness with your clients.
The guru-on-a-pedestal era (a.k.a. the unreachable expert, the untouchable brand) is dissolving.
And to that I say: Good riddance, honestly!
What’s replacing it is mentors who are in the trenches with you.
Someone who is actually reachable. Human. An actual open door.
I think that’s a wonderful shift.
But an open door still has a doorframe.
What I’ve noticed is that clients tend to land on one of two ends of a spectrum.
#1: The client who puts you on a pedestal.
They see you as the authority who is out of reach and they feel lucky to be in the room.
And because of that, they barely ask for anything.
They don’t reach out when they’re stuck or bring the messy questions.
They save up their problems and present you with a tidy summary weeks later, when the moment to actually help has passed.
#2: The client who thinks investing made you friends.
Their messages look like long voice notes with life updates.
Or things that aren’t really questions.
And they’re not doing anything wrong, exactly.
They’re just operating from a different set of assumptions about what the relationship is.
Years ago, I had a high-level client with Voxer access to me.
She started sending updates where she was verbally processing things she was moving through.
And I never knew how to respond to them, because there weren’t business questions attached to these voice notes.
Two things became clear to me in that stretch:
- Our coaching relationship became dependency: she wanted validation before she made any moves.
- It showed me exactly where the coaching needed to happen: leadership.
Her ability to move from thought to decision without needing someone to sign off on it first.
So here’s how I hold this now:
Be explicit about what the support is for.
Some boundaries I’ve set were:
- I don’t respond evenings or weekends so I can recharge with family time,
- Keep your voice messages under two minutes. Process the rest elsewhere and I can support your business question.
Clear expectations are a kindness.
Ambiguity is what makes people anxious (never knowing if they’re asking too much, whether they’ve overstepped, whether you’re annoyed)
Structure removes all of that, and it’s what makes the open door genuinely usable.
I’m not saying not to be close to your clients.
But to be careful about letting a client become a genuine close friend while you’re still coaching them.
Because of what it could cost them.
The moment you move into the friend bucket, your leadership dissolves.
You lose the ability to say the hard thing, because now there’s a friendship to protect.
They lose the ability to hear it, because they’re no longer receiving it as coaching.
They’re receiving it as an opinion from a pal.
And the work gets less effective for both of you at exactly the moment they need it most.
You stop being the person who can get them to the finish line.
You become the person who’s nice to talk to.
So the balance I aim for is this: Be intentional.
The warmth is what makes people brave enough to be honest with you.
The boundaries are what make you useful to them once they are.
