My high school basketball coach knew how to apply pressure, but he often poisoned it with shame. You couldn’t please him for more than a minute and then your whole value was put back on the block. You were either worthy, or you were not, and he was leaning hard in one direction. One thing he got right though was the need for pressure to transform.

Our clients are not lacking pressure today. But when we are not careful, we tend to feel like our job is to reduce the pressure instead of harnessing it. We need to untangle the threads of pressure and shame. Pressure must remain. Shame must be left behind.

When I think of development, or as we call it in Christian circles, discipleship, the word that keeps coming to mind is formation. 

Formation = Pressure + Time + Reflection

Pressure and time alone do not guarantee formation. They may only make a person harder. Reflection is what helps pressure become growth instead of resentment. 

Formation is deeper than instruction and more durable than compliance. It is the shaping of a person’s whole being: their skill, responsibility, agency, emotional maturity, intellectual clarity, and spiritual responsiveness.

And one of the surprising truths about formation is this: people usually need more pressure than we think.

Formation is more than getting the desired behavior.

God is not merely after external compliance. Rather he wants people who are able to utilize their full agency for the good of the Kingdom and not just for themselves. This requires a culture of formation, development of the soul, a focus on the person over the goal. The goal remains, but it is not the center of the conversation.

Paul gives us one of the clearest pictures of this kind of formation:

I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. – Ephesians 4:2-3 (The Message)

Compliance can be produced from the outside. Formation has to grow from the inside. The coach is here, not to relieve the pressure, but to steady the growth.

Pressure is necessary because comfort rarely forms us.

I wish this was not true, but it most certainly is. Paul begins his plea with the pressure that is upon him – while I am locked up. You need more maturity when injustice lands on your door. The problem may be two-fold:

One, growth requires discomfort, and nobody longs to be uncomfortable. 

Two, no one realizes their true potential. We need a push to believe we could do more.

We are at a moment in history where more is required of us. We must become bigger people who are undeniably full of light. Today, we do not have the option of staying small and carrying a small light.

If I’m honest, my life has been too easy so far. I’m sure that is not true about many of you, but the pressures of this day may be exactly what I need in order to become who God has meant for me to be.

Pressure becomes destructive when it carries judgment.

This may be the hardest part. Jesus warned us in his Sermon on the Mount:

Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. – Matthew 7:1-2 (The Message)

Shame may produce short-term results, but it damages agency and responsibility. 

The pressure must be channeled into what’s needed and what’s possible. This is the urgency that must be increased. The pressure that must be decreased is the question of a person’s worth. A coach can increase urgency without increasing shame. A coach can tell the truth without putting the client’s worth on trial. 

Formative pressure must be aimed at maturity.

Maturity has become a difficult word. To call someone immature often sounds like contempt, as if we are reducing the person to their worst moment. But avoiding the language of maturity does not help anyone grow. The better way is to recover maturity without shame. We can call people to become bigger without making them feel smaller. 

God didn’t set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we’re awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we’re alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you’ll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind. I know you’re already doing this; just keep on doing it. – 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (The Message)

The goal is not performance; the goal is a more whole, capable, faithful person. We cannot lose the goal because it creates the pressure, but we do need to move the needle back toward development and further away from performance.

Coach the Person, Not the Problem

Pressure over time is not automatically formative. Pressure over time can also make people hard, cynical, guarded, or afraid. Reflection is what helps a person ask, “What is this pressure revealing? What is being invited from me? What needs to grow? What needs to be released?” Coaching matters because it gives people a place to do that reflection without drowning in shame. 

Do not relieve your client (or your employee, your disciple, or your child) from all of the pressure they feel. Come alongside and help them to untangle the pressure from the shame. Let the pressure reveal the growth that is needed. Let it sort out what is truly important. 

After your trust in God, your strongest coaching conviction needs to be in the ability of your client to grow and meet the challenges of their day. Rather than relieve the pressure, as if that was your gift, you as the coach can best serve your client by giving them the room to respond.

Take a quick self-assessment:

Where are you avoiding pressure that could form you?

Where are you applying pressure that may be carrying judgment?

Where does someone you coach need more challenge, not more shame?

What kind of maturity is the pressure actually aimed at?

Do not waste the pressure. Untangle it from shame, aim it toward maturity, and let it become part of the formation God is doing.