Dr Rob Kemp applauds the many messages in this book. First up, let's inhabit the grey space between coaching and therapy consciously and ethically. It is a reality of our times and can no longer be ignored.
Greer's Coaching in the Grey Space arrives at a moment when questions of ethics, mental health, and professional boundaries feel especially urgent. Against sing population distress and overstretched services, the book addresses a reality many coaches already recognise in practice: the uncertain, contested space between coaching and therapy, where human complexity resists tidy professional categories.
The book is explicitly concerned with ethics and safe practice, and it approaches these questions with seriousness and care. Given the prevalence of trauma, the continuum of mental health, and the relatively blunt ethical codes that continue to dominate much professional coaching discourse, Greer's emphasis on nuance, judgement, and relational responsibility feels timely and necessary.
One of the book's most striking features appears at the outset. Greer's disclosure of her own experiences is brave, measured, and deeply impactful. By grounding the inquiry in her lived experience, she makes clear that the questions explored here are not abstract boundary puzzles, but matters that shape real lives and real relationships. It is rare for a professional text to engage so directly at the level of feeling so early on, and Greer's story remained present for me throughout the reading that followed.
A central achievement of the book is that it names, and takes seriously, what many coaches already experience in practice but struggle to articulate professionally. The ‘grey space’ between coaching and therapy is not treated as a failure of discipline, but as a lived reality requiring judgement, ethical maturity, and ongoing reflection. By naming this space, Greer legitimises work that is already happening, often defensively, apologetically, or in silence. Importantly, this does not advocate a permissive free-for-all. It is an invitation to think more carefully and more responsibly about what takes place there.
Crucially, the book resists the idea that ethics can be reduced to rule-following. Instead of offering neat boundaries or prescriptive prohibitions, Greer presents ethical discernment as a situated, relational activity. Ethics, here, cannot be outsourced to codes alone. It is enacted in context, under conditions of uncertainty.
The discussion of what we call referral is particularly strong. One of Greer's more provocative moves is her re-examination of the reliance on referral as the ethical default when complexity emerges. She questions the assumption that referral is always the safest or most ethical response, suggesting that in some cases it may serve professional boundaries more effectively than client needs. This is not an argument against referral, but a challenge to its uncritical use.
Greer's suggestion that the ability to take action steps, and work towards goals, is one of the determining factors in deciding whether a client is coachable or should be referred for therapy is also revealing. The distinction is useful up to a point, but it exposes the very murkiness the book seeks to explore. Is the alleviation of distress not itself a legitimate goal? And are agency and goal orientation truly absent in clients who might meet diagnostic thresholds? The difficulty of sustaining this distinction reinforces Greer's central argument: the lines are not, and perhaps cannot be, clean.
Greer also raises the wider issue of over-pathologising everyday human behaviour. One potential strength of non-psychologist coaches, as she notes, is a greater resistance to the medicalisation of difficulty. The book positions coaching as having a legitimate role before clients reach clinical thresholds. This preventative and preparatory framing feels especially relevant in systems where access to therapy is uneven and waiting lists are long. Ethically grounded coaching, Greer suggests, can support clients to stabilise, reflect, and build capacity, provided coaches are well-trained, well-supervised, and willing to interrogate their own limits. This is not an expansionist claim for coaching, but a careful argument for responsibility.
The text is well grounded in Greer's research and practitioner inquiry, and it is clear throughout that the book grows directly from her doctoral research.
Coaching in the Grey Space does not offer comfort, certainty, or easy answers. That is precisely its value. What it offers instead is an honest engagement with the realities of contemporary coaching practice, and a sustained invitation to reassess our ethical judgements beyond codes and taken-for-granted assumptions. For coaches willing to engage thoughtfully with complexity, responsibility, and their own limits, this book offers both provocation and support. It deserves a wide professional readership.