A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog for EEUK, The Craft of Coaching: Insights and Tips, reflecting on my experience of undertaking a formal coaching qualification. Having spent much of my career supporting entrepreneurs, I thought coaching was something I already knew how to do. It turned out I had quite a lot to learn! While I had been offering valuable support, I hadn’t always been coaching. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

Coaching has become part of the everyday language of enterprise and entrepreneurship education. We coach students developing business ideas, support graduate entrepreneurs and help founders navigate uncertainty. But how often do we stop to ask what we actually mean by coaching, or whether we have the skills to do it effectively?

As enterprise educators, we’re often expected to move seamlessly between teaching, mentoring, advising and coaching. These roles overlap, but they’re not interchangeable. Teaching involves sharing knowledge, mentoring draws on experience, and advising often means offering solutions. Coaching, however, is about helping people develop their own understanding, challenge assumptions and take ownership of their decisions, and I think this is where we need to challenge ourselves a little.

Since writing my original blog, I’ve been exploring entrepreneurial coaching further through research with Dr Helen Smith. Our recently published book chapter, Entrepreneurial Coaching: A Framework for Evidence-Based Practitioner Education, reinforces something that I think we sometimes overlook; effective coaching isn’t simply about asking good questions or resisting the temptation to offer advice. It involves building trust, understanding context, managing boundaries, recognising individual differences and, importantly, knowing when coaching isn’t the right intervention.

Just because we’ve spent years supporting entrepreneurs doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve developed all the skills needed to coach them effectively.

So, if coaching is increasingly central to enterprise education, shouldn’t we be thinking more seriously about how we develop those skills?

Now, I’m not suggesting every enterprise educator needs to rush out and complete a formal coaching qualification. But I do think we need to ask whether we’re giving colleagues the tools, training and opportunities to reflect on their practice that they need to do this well. After all, we wouldn’t assume that being an experienced entrepreneur automatically makes someone an effective educator, so why should we make the same assumption about coaching?

This is something we’ll will be exploring through EEUK’s Coaching for Enterprise Educators training on Monday 19 and Tuesday 20 October, where we’ll be drawing on this research to explore practical approaches that educators can use in their own contexts. But I hope the conversation doesn’t stop there.

For me, the question isn’t whether coaching has a place in enterprise education. I think we’ve moved well beyond that. It’s whether we’re doing enough to ensure those of us delivering it have the skills, confidence and support to do it well.

I’d be really interested to hear how others are approaching this. If it’s something you’re thinking about too, please consider joining the EEUK Entrepreneurial Coaching Special Interest Group. It’s an opportunity to share experiences, challenge our assumptions and help shape what good coaching practice looks like across the sector.

Because perhaps it’s time we started taking our own development as coaches as seriously as we take the development of the entrepreneurs we support.