By Keith B. Cupp
Coaches are supposed to be the mirror.
We reflect back what a client cannot see in themselves. Their patterns. Their potential. The gap between what they say they want and what they're actually doing.
It's one of the most useful things we offer.
But a mirror only reflects what it can see. And every coach carries their own blind spots into every room they enter.
That should concern us more than it usually does.
The Mirror Has a Smudge
Here is what makes this dangerous rather than merely humbling.
A distorted mirror still looks like a mirror. It still reflects something. The client still sees an image and assumes it's true.
They have no way of knowing which parts of what they're seeing are them, and which parts are a smudge on the glass that's been there so long the coach has stopped noticing it.
If a coach has never made peace with their own need to be needed, they may mistake healthy independence for disengagement—or quietly encourage dependency.
If a coach has never confronted their own conflict avoidance, they'll coach a client toward harmony that isn't actually available to that client's situation.
The coach doesn't do this on purpose. That's the whole problem. A blind spot, by definition, doesn't announce itself.
What a Coach Alone Can See
My colleague and friend David Irvine once coached a corporate executive—a lawyer, rational to the core, who ran his team the way he ran a case: methodically, unemotionally, always in control.
When the executive's father died, he handled the funeral the same way. Executor of the will, logistics managed, grief nowhere in sight. His wife could see something was wrong. She couldn't reach him.
Six months later, his dog was hit by a car and died in front of their house. He was devastated.
His wife was struck by the depth of his grief, especially after watching him remain so composed following his father’s death. But what she was witnessing wasn’t grief for one loss instead of another.
His dog’s death opened the door. Grief for his dog and grief for his father that had been waiting six months to be felt arrived together—and underneath both, something older still: grief from childhood he had never allowed himself to feel.
His wife had sensed something was wrong for months. But sometimes the people closest to us are too close to help us see clearly.
His dog's death didn't replace his grief for his father. It opened the door to it. Grief for his dog, and grief for his father that had been waiting six months to be felt, arrived together—and underneath both, something older still: a grief from childhood he had never let himself feel either.
His wife had sensed something was wrong for months. But sometimes the people closest to us are too close to help us see clearly.
That is what a mirror is for. Not just correcting what a client already suspects about themselves. Sometimes catching what even the people closest to them have sensed but couldn't reach.
What Clients Already Know
Clients often sense a coach's blind spot before the coach does.
They feel the questions that never quite go where the real issue is. The topics the coach seems to steer around. The advice that always seems to land in the same place, regardless of what the client actually brought into the room.
They rarely say anything. The coaching relationship carries its own power dynamics, and clients are not always comfortable naming what they see in the coach.
So the smudge stays on the glass. And the client adjusts to a reflection that isn't entirely true.
The Discipline of Having a Mirror
The way out isn't another self-awareness exercise. You cannot out-reflect a blind spot by yourself, for the same reason you cannot see your own face without something to reflect it back to you.
You need your own mirror. A coach. A supervisor. A peer group willing to ask you the question you'd rather they didn't.
David, after decades of teaching this work to others, still meets with his own coach. Not because something is wrong. Because something is always slightly obscured, and he'd rather know than not.
The coaches who keep growing treat this as ongoing development, not a one-time credential.
An Invitation
You cannot mirror what you refuse to see.
Not because you lack skill. Not because you lack care for your clients.
Because there are parts of yourself only visible from outside your own reflection—and it takes someone else, willing to hold up a mirror to you, before you can offer a clean one to anyone else.
So here is the question worth sitting with:
If you coach others, who coaches you?
Reach out to Gravitas to find a coach or trusted peer who can help you see what you can't see alone—and be willing to hear the answer.