"Emotional coaching" is one of the most-searched terms around coaching, and also one of the most misunderstood. It's not a technique to "control" emotions or eliminate anger or anxiety. It's the work on emotionality: one of the three domains of ontological coaching, alongside language and the body.
The core idea: emotion predisposes action
Every mood opens certain actions and closes others. From fear it's hard to work up the courage to ask for a raise; from resentment it's hard to truly listen to someone you're in conflict with. Emotional coaching doesn't judge emotion as "good" or "bad": it identifies what mood you're acting from (or avoiding acting from) in a specific situation, and works from there.
It's not about controlling your emotions, it's about understanding which one you're acting from.
Emotional coaching vs. emotional intelligence
What is emotional intelligence? It's the ability to recognize, understand and manage your own emotions and those of others. The term was popularized by Daniel Goleman's 1995 book, and today it's used in both personal development and team management. It's a general skill: you can have it more or less developed, and it can be trained.
Emotional coaching uses that foundation, but it doesn't stop at the skill. It applies it to a specific breakdown or goal the person brings to the session —an upcoming conversation, a stuck decision, a strained relationship— and ends in designing action, not just self-awareness. Put briefly: emotional intelligence is the capacity; emotional coaching is the work aimed at a specific change using that capacity.
Emotional coaching vs. therapy
This deserves the same honest answer we gave in the article on what ontological coaching is: it doesn't replace psychological treatment when there's a clinical condition involved. Emotional coaching works forward, on a present breakdown and concrete actions; it doesn't do deep analysis of the past, diagnose, or treat pathologies.
They're complementary tools, not competing ones, and each answers a different need.
How it's applied in real sessions
In practice, a 1:1 coaching session focused on emotionality usually starts by identifying the mood the person is living a situation from —an upcoming conversation, a postponed decision, a strained relationship— and observing what actions that mood enables or shuts down. From there, the work is designing a concrete intervention: a conversation to have, a request to make, a boundary to set.
If the focus is specifically emotional management in a group format, there's also the Emotional Management Workshop, designed to turn emotions into practical tools for everyday stress and anxiety.
Frequently asked questions
It's the ability to recognize, understand and manage your own emotions and those of others. The term was popularized by Daniel Goleman's 1995 book. It's a general skill that can be trained, and it's the foundation emotional coaching works from.
Yes. Most processes start from everyday situations —not crises— like the stress of a packed week or a conversation you avoid out of discomfort.
Yes, applied at the organizational level it's used to understand what mood predominates in a team and how that affects the coordination of actions between people.
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