Originally Posted on The Coaching Tools Company as Beyond Sessions 3: Why Structure Doesn’t Limit Coaching — It Frees It
| This article was originally published by The Guiding Matrix and is republished on The Coaching Tools Company website with their kind permission. The article was written by Dr Steve Jeffs, and all rights remain with the original author. |
When I work with a coach who’s hesitant about structure, what they’re usually protecting is something specific.
They’re protecting the freedom to respond to what emerges. The ability to sense a shift in the room and follow it. The permission to slow down, speed up, or change direction based on what the client actually needs in that moment — not what a plan says should happen.
This matters. Presence and responsiveness are foundational to coaching. Without them, coaching becomes delivery of content rather than facilitation of transformation.
So the concern is legitimate: If I design the journey in advance, won’t I be locked into a plan that can’t respond to what’s real?
The belief underneath this concern is worth naming clearly: Structure limits responsiveness. Intuition requires freedom from structure.
This belief feels protective. And for a time, it is. But over time, it becomes the very thing that makes sustainable coaching impossible.
This is the tension many coaches experience once they’ve moved past believing sessions alone create transformation.
What Actually Exhausts
When you’re working without structure — when the engagement itself is being improvised week to week — something specific begins to happen.
You start carrying the entire engagement in your head.
Not just the content of the sessions. Not just what was said last time. But the full arc: where the client is, where they’re going, what’s been covered, what hasn’t, what needs to happen next, and how all of it connects.
Every decision about pacing, sequencing, and transition has to be held mentally—the cognitive load that defines this developmental stage. The coaching itself may be excellent. The sessions may feel generative and alive. But the effort required to hold it all together — to create coherence without a map — is unsustainable.
This is the hidden cost of structure-avoidance. It’s not that the coaching fails. It’s that you become responsible for doing the work that structure is designed to do: holding the journey, maintaining continuity, and creating a sense of progression over time.
Without structure, intuition doesn’t just operate freely. It operates under load. And over time, that load becomes the primary experience of the work.
The Misunderstanding About Freedom
Here’s where the resistance to structure begins to shift.
Structure is not the opposite of intuition. Structure is the condition that allows intuition to function without exhaustion.
When the journey is designed and held — when there are clear phases, agreements, and a shared sense of what’s happening and why — you’re freed to be fully present inside each moment. You’re not simultaneously trying to figure out where the engagement is going, whether the client is on track, or what should happen next week.
The journey holds the work. You can be present with the person.
This is what structure as leadership actually means. It doesn’t mean following a script. It means creating a professional structure strong enough that you don’t have to hold everything yourself.
Presence doesn’t require the absence of structure. Presence requires the support of structure.
What Structure Actually Is
Professional coaching structure holds three things:
Sequence — the phases of an engagement, each with clear intent
Agreements — what we’re doing, why, and how we’ll know when we’re complete
Completion — how the work lands and integrates
Within that structure, every session remains responsive, intuitive, and alive. The structure doesn’t script the coaching — it holds the journey so you don’t have to.
If structure were a script, the concern would be valid. But that’s not what professional structure is. It defines the phases of an engagement and the intent of each phase — not the content of every conversation.
It answers questions like: What is this phase of the work designed to achieve? What does the client need to be resourced with before we move forward? How do we know when one phase is complete and the next begins?
It does not answer: What should I say in this moment? What should we talk about today? How should I respond to what just happened?
Those questions remain in the domain of coaching skill, presence, and intuition. Structure doesn’t replace them. It creates the conditions where they can operate cleanly.
When Structure Becomes Visible
There’s a pattern worth noticing.
When you’re working with structure, clients often don’t consciously notice it. What they notice is that the engagement feels coherent. That sessions build on one another. That there’s a sense of momentum and direction without pressure or rigidity.
They experience the journey as intentional — not because it’s controlled, but because it’s held.
When you’re working without structure, that’s when the absence becomes felt. Not always immediately, but eventually. Clients begin to wonder where they are, whether they’re making progress, or what’s supposed to happen next. The lack of clarity creates subtle anxiety. And sensing that anxiety, you try to compensate with reassurance or performance — which only increases the load.
Structure becomes visible in its absence, not its presence. When it’s there, it feels like safety and coherence. When it’s not, it feels like uncertainty and effort.
Who This Is For
This distinction matters for coaches already coaching well but feeling the weight of holding everything themselves — curious about structure but worried it will mechanise their work. If you believe structure and intuition are fundamentally incompatible, or want a script to follow, this isn’t the right frame.
Where This Leads
If structure is what makes presence sustainable, then sequence is what makes structure real. And sequence begins with not rushing discovery.
Beyond Sessions is where coaches learn that structure and intuition work in partnership, not opposition. If this distinction resonates, it’s worth exploring further.
This is part 3 of a 6 blog series helping coaches to elevate their professional impact.
Written by Dr Steve Jeffs & Erwin de Grave
