In March 2025, I had the privilege of delivering a webinar for the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) Neurodiversity Special Interest Group, exploring a topic that I believe sits at the heart of inclusive coaching practice: how ableism quietly shapes coaching, and what we can do about it.

Coaching is often described as a profession that empowers people to reach their potential. Yet coaching does not exist in isolation from society. Like every helping profession, it is influenced by the cultural values, assumptions, and biases that surround it.

One of those influences is ableism.

Ableism is more than overt discrimination. It is a system of beliefs, practices, and structures that privilege certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, and working while marginalising others. It shapes workplaces, education, healthcare, leadership, and our understanding of what success looks like. It also influences coaching, often in subtle ways that even experienced practitioners may not recognise.

During the webinar, we explored three interconnected forms of ableism.

Structural ableism is embedded within organisational systems, policies, and environments.

Interpersonal ableism appears through everyday assumptions, language, and interactions.

Internalised ableism develops when individuals absorb societal messages that tell them they are somehow deficient, leading to shame, self-doubt, and reluctance to ask for support.

For coaches, recognising these dynamics is essential because our practice can unintentionally reinforce them.

Many traditional coaching models are built upon assumptions of consistent productivity, linear progress, individual responsibility, and the belief that success comes primarily through changing the individual. While these approaches can be valuable, they may also overlook the realities of fluctuating energy, executive functioning differences, sensory needs, chronic health conditions, and inaccessible environments.

When this happens, coaching can inadvertently communicate that the client is the problem rather than questioning whether the system itself requires adaptation.

Throughout the session, we examined practical examples of how ableism can appear within coaching conversations.

For example, encouraging an autistic client to communicate in a more “professional” or “warmer” way may seem helpful on the surface. Yet if this advice reinforces masking over authenticity, coaching risks validating neurotypical communication styles as the standard by which all others are judged.

Similarly, traditional goal-setting approaches often assume predictable progress and consistent executive functioning. For many neurodifferent clients, progress is rarely linear. Flexible, process-focused approaches can be far more effective than rigid outcome-driven frameworks.

These examples prompted rich discussion about the assumptions many of us have inherited as coaches—not because we intended harm, but because these assumptions are deeply embedded within society itself.

Rather than leaving participants with theory alone, the webinar focused on practical changes coaches can begin making immediately.

We explored how to create anti-ableist coaching spaces through accessible communication, flexibility around energy and executive functioning, recognising the impact of masking, considering intersectionality, and balancing challenge with appropriate accommodation. We also discussed the importance of reflective supervision, reflexive journalling, and continuing professional development as ways of recognising our own unconscious assumptions and continually developing our practice.

Perhaps the most important message from the session was that anti-ableist coaching is not about lowering expectations or avoiding challenge. It is about ensuring that challenge is meaningful, equitable, and grounded in each client’s reality rather than society’s assumptions.

Ultimately, coaching has the potential to become much more than a process of helping people adapt to environments that exclude them. It can become a practice that empowers individuals while also encouraging organisations, leaders, and society to rethink the norms that create exclusion in the first place.

Breaking barriers begins with recognising them.

I am incredibly grateful to the EMCC Neurodiversity Special Interest Group for the opportunity to facilitate this discussion and to everyone who attended and contributed such thoughtful reflections. The willingness of coaches to critically examine their own practice gives me great hope for the future of coaching psychology and the coaching profession more broadly.

Real inclusion is not achieved by helping people become more like everyone else. It begins when we create coaching spaces where diverse ways of thinking, feeling, communicating, and being are recognised as valuable expressions of our shared humanity.

In April 2025, I had the privilege of presenting my research at the 83rd International Council of Psychologists Conference at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam. The conference theme centred on human rights, dignity, social inclusion, and justice, providing a powerful context in which to discuss the role coaching psychology can play in challenging institutional ableism.

My poster presentation, “Breaking Barriers: Addressing Institutional Ableism Through Coaching Psychology for Autistic Women,” drew upon my Master’s research exploring autistic women’s experiences of workplace coaching. While workplace coaching is increasingly recognised as an important intervention for supporting autistic employees, very little research has explored how autistic women themselves experience this process.

My research sought to address that gap.

Through a phenomenological approach, participants shared rich accounts of navigating workplaces that were often shaped by neurotypical assumptions about communication, professionalism, productivity, and success. Their experiences highlighted not only the personal challenges they faced but also the structural barriers embedded within organisational cultures.

Three overarching themes emerged from the research:

• The lived experience of autism in the workplace.
• The need for genuinely autism-inclusive organisational cultures.
• The importance of recognising intersectionality when understanding people’s experiences.

Collectively, these findings pointed towards a broader conclusion: many of the challenges experienced by autistic women do not arise from autism itself, but from institutional ableism embedded within systems, policies, and cultural expectations.

This has important implications for coaching psychology.

Rather than viewing coaching solely as a means of helping individuals adapt to their environment, coaching can also provide a space to question the assumptions that shape those environments. It can help individuals develop self-understanding and confidence while simultaneously encouraging organisations to reflect on their own practices, cultures, and definitions of success.

Coaching psychology therefore has the potential to become more than an individual intervention. It can become a catalyst for organisational learning, cultural change, and social justice.

Presenting this work within an international conference dedicated to human rights brought a new perspective to my own thinking. Across three days, psychologists from around the world shared research and lived experiences addressing climate change, war, genocide, migration, gender-based violence, forced marriage, systemic oppression, and social exclusion.

Although these topics differed significantly from my own research, a common thread connected them all: the recognition that psychology cannot remain isolated from the social and political contexts in which people live. Whether addressing discrimination, conflict, exclusion, or inequality, psychology has a responsibility not only to understand suffering but also to contribute to reducing it.

Several keynote speakers left a lasting impression. Professor Saths Cooper’s reminder that how we treat the most marginalised members of society says more about us than it does about them resonated deeply with the themes emerging from my own research. Equally powerful were Professor Halleh Ghorashi’s reflections on epistemic justice, identity, and the importance of ensuring that those whose voices have historically been overlooked are recognised as legitimate producers of knowledge.

Those conversations reinforced my growing belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play within wider movements for equity and inclusion. Coaching is not simply about helping people perform better within existing systems. It can also help expose the assumptions those systems are built upon and support the creation of environments in which diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are genuinely valued.

Presenting this research internationally was a privilege, but it also strengthened my conviction that coaching psychology has the potential to become a discipline that actively contributes to social change. By listening carefully to lived experience, questioning deficit-based narratives, and challenging institutional ableism, coaching psychology can help create workplaces and communities where neuro differences are recognised not as exceptions to accommodate, but as valuable expressions of human diversity.

I remain incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to the research, attended the poster discussion, and engaged in thoughtful conversations throughout the conference. The experience reinforced my commitment to developing coaching psychology as a discipline that places dignity, justice, and inclusion at the centre of practice.

What if coaching psychology became more than a profession focused on helping individuals achieve personal goals? What if it also became a catalyst for challenging the systems that shape those goals in the first place?

These were the questions at the heart of my presentation, “Coaching Psychology as Social Activism: Redefining Inclusion Beyond Neurotypical Ableism,” delivered at the 2025 British Psychological Society Division of Coaching Psychology Conference.

Coaching psychology has traditionally focused on supporting individual growth, performance, wellbeing, and achievement. While these aims remain important, they often sit within broader societal narratives that privilege independence, productivity, resilience, and continual self-improvement. These values, heavily influenced by neoliberal thinking, can unintentionally reinforce the idea that success depends solely upon an individual’s ability to adapt, regardless of the barriers created by the environments in which they live and work.

For many people with neuro differences, these barriers are not incidental—they are systemic.

Ableism continues to shape our workplaces, education systems, healthcare services, and wider society. It influences how intelligence, competence, professionalism, communication, and success are defined. It also affects how individuals come to understand themselves, often leading to internalised ableism, where societal messages of deficit become woven into identity and self-worth.

If coaching psychology seeks to empower individuals, then it must also be willing to examine the assumptions upon which its own practices are built.

Drawing upon my Master’s research exploring autistic women’s experiences of workplace coaching, I argued that coaching psychology has the opportunity to move beyond helping people adapt to existing systems. Instead, it can become a discipline that actively questions those systems, challenges deficit-based narratives, and contributes to creating environments where diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are genuinely recognised as valuable.

This requires a shift in perspective.

Rather than asking, “How can we help this individual succeed within the current system?”, we might also ask:

• What assumptions are shaping our understanding of success?
• Whose needs were these systems designed to serve?
• What strengths remain invisible because they fall outside neurotypical expectations?
• How can coaching contribute to changing organisations and institutions, rather than simply changing the individual?

The presentation explored how coaching psychology can draw upon ideas from disability justice, social psychology, critical psychology, and systems thinking to broaden its understanding of inclusion. Inclusion should not mean helping people become more acceptable to existing structures. It should mean creating structures that value human diversity from the outset.

I also discussed practical ways coaches can begin embedding this perspective within their own practice. Reflexive supervision, critical reflection, adapted coaching models, and systemic case formulation all offer opportunities to recognise how power, identity, culture, and organisational contexts shape the coaching relationship. These approaches move coaching away from reactive accommodation towards proactive inclusion.

Ultimately, I believe coaching psychology has the potential to become a powerful form of social activism. Not activism through protest alone, but through the everyday conversations that shape how people understand themselves, how organisations define success, and how society responds to difference.

If coaching continues to focus solely on helping individuals fit into environments that exclude them, we risk reinforcing the very inequalities we seek to reduce. But if we embrace coaching as a vehicle for social justice, we can begin dismantling internalised ableism, influencing organisational culture, informing policy, and advocating for more equitable systems.

The future of coaching psychology lies not simply in developing individuals, but in transforming the contexts in which they live, learn, and work.

Because inclusion is not about accommodating people as exceptions. It is about recognising neuro differences as an ordinary, valuable, and essential part of human diversity.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who attended the session and contributed to such thoughtful discussion. The enthusiasm and critical reflection shared during the presentation reinforced my belief that our profession is ready to have these conversations. I hope this marks the beginning of many more discussions about how coaching psychology can contribute not only to personal development, but to creating a more equitable and inclusive society for everyone.

I was honoured to receive the Best Roundtable Presentation Award at the 2025 Division of Coaching Psychology Conference for a session exploring a question that sits at the heart of my work:

What happens when coaching unintentionally reproduces the very barriers it seeks to help people overcome?

Coaching is often presented as a neutral process. We talk about goals, performance, resilience, productivity, growth, and success as though these concepts are universal and value-free. Yet every coaching conversation takes place within a broader social, cultural, and political context. The assumptions we hold about what constitutes a “good life,” meaningful progress, or successful functioning are rarely neutral. They are shaped by dominant societal narratives.

One of those narratives is ableism.

Ableism refers to the privileging of certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, learning, working, and existing, while positioning other ways as deficient, problematic, or in need of correction. While overt forms of ableism are often recognised, more subtle forms can become embedded within professional practices, including coaching.

During the roundtable, participants explored a case example and engaged in reflexive discussion about how ableist assumptions can quietly shape coaching goals, interventions, and outcomes. Together, we considered questions such as:

• Who decides what “success” looks like?
• When does adaptation become pressure to conform?
• Are we helping clients flourish, or helping them fit into systems that were never designed for them?
• What assumptions sit beneath concepts such as productivity, motivation, communication, professionalism, and resilience?

These questions become particularly important when working with autistic individuals, people with ADHD, and other neurodifferent clients. Traditional coaching approaches often emphasise linear goal progression, behavioural modification, productivity enhancement, and performance optimisation. While these approaches can be helpful, they may also inadvertently reinforce the message that the client must change in order to be accepted.

Many neurodifferent individuals have spent years receiving explicit and implicit messages that they are “too much,” “not enough,” “too sensitive,” “too intense,” “too disorganised,” or simply wrong. Coaching that focuses solely on adaptation without questioning the systems that create these pressures risks reinforcing internalised ableism and further disconnecting individuals from their authentic ways of being.

The discussion also explored the potential for coaching psychology to become more than an individual change methodology. Coaching psychology has the capacity to act as a vehicle for social change by helping people critically examine the narratives that shape their identities, challenging deficit-based assumptions, and creating spaces where difference is not merely tolerated but genuinely valued.

This requires a shift from asking:

“How can this person function more effectively within the system?”

towards also asking:

“What aspects of the system need to change?”

Such an approach aligns with broader movements within psychology that recognise the importance of context, power, identity, and social justice. It invites coaches to move beyond individualistic explanations and to consider the wider structures that influence wellbeing, opportunity, and belonging.

The conversations that emerged during the session were thoughtful, courageous, and deeply encouraging. Participants shared reflections from their own practice, challenged assumptions, and explored what anti-ableist coaching might look like in action.

Receiving the award was a genuine honour, but the most meaningful aspect of the session was the collective willingness to engage with these complex questions. The discussion reinforced my belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play in creating a more inclusive future—one that recognises human diversity not as a problem to be solved, but as a valuable part of what it means to be human.

Thank you to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped create such a rich and reflective conversation. The work of challenging ableism is ongoing, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue together.

In 2025 I was awarded Best Roundtable Presentation by the British Psychological Society’s Division of Coaching Psychology.

The award was given for a roundtable discussion exploring how coaching psychology can be used to challenge systemic ableism and promote greater inclusion.

Receiving this recognition means a great deal to me because it reflects a topic that sits at the heart of my work. Throughout my career, I have been passionate about understanding how individuals are shaped by the systems, cultures, and environments around them, and how coaching psychology can contribute not only to personal growth but also to wider social change.

Much of my work has focused on neuro differences, inclusion, social justice, and creating spaces where people can thrive without feeling pressured to conform to norms that were never designed with them in mind. To see these conversations gaining traction within the profession is both encouraging and hopeful.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone who participated in the discussion, shared their perspectives, and helped create such a rich and thoughtful conversation. This award is a reminder of the power of collective dialogue and the importance of continuing to challenge assumptions, question inequities, and imagine more inclusive futures.

Thank you to the British Psychological Society Division of Coaching Psychology for this recognition. I look forward to continuing these conversations and contributing to a profession that is increasingly engaging with the wider social and systemic issues that affect people’s lives.