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.