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Is there any significant difference between coaching and counselling a person?

During the course of coaching a person the conversation can turn into more of a counselling session than a performance focused coaching discussion. This is often a subtle and natural change of emphasis rather than a sudden, signalled change of topic and approach. The coachee doesn’t recognise that they have switched modes and why should they anyway and it is often only on reflection afterwards that as a coach I recognise that this switch of emphasis has occurred.
So what then is the difference between coaching and counselling with a person, what should an effective coach do about it and does it matter anyway that we are providing a counselling approach one minute and a coaching approach the next?
The purists might say that yes it does matter and that as professional coaches we should draw a clear distinction between being in a coaching or counselling mode and should draw a halt to a conversation that cuts across the boundaries from one mode to the other.
My thoughts about this are these. That there are no hard and fast boundaries between the two modes - they are all part of the human process of giving a person a supportive, listening ear. It is all part of the one conversation and the trusted relationship that is established between a coach and a coachee. We cannot on the one hand invite a coachee to talk honestly and openly about themselves, their experiences, their broader lives, hopes and fears that may be affecting their work and life satisfaction and performance and then in the next breath deny them the opportunity to speak further about a subject because it isn’t directly about their work situation. Equally if someone starts to get upset or angry or even tearful because they are explaining about something that in turn brings up deep seated feelings and emotions for them from a different part of their life experience, then we cannot ask them to stop, pull themselves together and return to the logical surface level, work based discussion that they had started out with. You cannot offer this broader whole life approach and then call a halt if things start to get difficult and emotional. To be an authentic and effective coach then I need to be able to allow my coachee’s to air their true feelings about their situation, experiences, relationships and issues for them to decide what impact this has on their thinking and choices about what action, if any to take as a result.
As I have said earlier the emphasis of my work is to encourage the person to go further than to just get these strong feelings off their chest, but also to try to make sense of them and to act on them in areas where they fell they can become more effective and fulfilled.
There are occasions where I have felt unqualified to help a person with particular issues such as bereavement, relationship difficulties, dependency issues and in these situations, which are fairly easy to recognise, I have recommended that they see someone else who is better placed to help them with their specific difficulty – usually a Counsellor who is a specialist in that field.