Who are we becoming Online?
As coaches, we encounter ourselves and our clients within the Online Lifeworld. Exploring the lived experience of the coach in this realm has been my curiosity, from personal experience to a master’s dissertation, and now extends further. You can also consider this as a leader, teacher, supervisor, or in any other profession where online interaction occurs. Here, ‘Online’ refers to intentional synchronous video-enhanced communication between two individuals or within a group.
What is the meaning of the Online space in your everyday life?
This space is no longer just a side path in our careers — it has become the main route for many of us. Over the past decade, coaching has moved from physical rooms and shared spaces into screens, pixels, and digital presence. Although technology has developed rapidly, our understanding of what it means to us has not kept up. This is where phenomenology — the study of lived experience — opens new horizons.
In my recent research, Coach’s Lived Experience and Self-Awareness in the Online Coaching Context (Pirttiaho, 2025), I explored how coaches experience the Online environment. What was their experience like, in their bodies, in time, in space, in relationships, and in relation to Online things and technology? What emerged was a rich, layered picture of how Online coaching shapes us — and what it is like to live through an Online experience.
Why this curiosity about the Online experience?
We often assess Online coaching (or Online leading or teaching) based on tools, platforms, skills, efficiency, and accessibility. But beneath the surface, there is something more human:
- How does the screen change our presence and connection?
- What occurs to our perception of time and space?
- Do we understand what we gain and what we lose when our work shifts online?
- How does technology shape our identity and role as coaches?
Every coach carries a unique Online Lifeworld, shaped by personal experiences, habits, attitudes, comfort zones, stress factors, meaning-making, and online self-awareness skills. Recognising these aspects is not merely interesting — it is an ethical responsibility. The impact extends to both coaches and their clients.
Four ways coaches experience the Online
In my phenomenological exploration, through interviews and hermeneutic interpretation, four experiential themes or archetypes, if you will, emerged. These are not fixed categories but lenses — ways of being online that can evolve over time and merge. Do you recognise yourself in these?
1. The Online Native — Embodied & Free
For some coaches, the Online space feels natural, fluid, and even liberating. Technology becomes an extension of the body. Time and place lose their significance. There is ease, intimacy, and flow. Almost as if there is no other truly connecting place besides Online.
2. The Online Secure — Controlled & Connected
Others approach Online coaching with a careful structure. They ensure safety, clarity, and technical reliability. Technology acts as a tool for stability and professionalism, as well as an enabler for external connectivity.
3. The Online Restricted — Longing for the “Real”
Some coaches believe that Online work is always a substitute for something more genuine. The screen creates separation, and the online environment feels exhausting. Embodiment seems limited. Presence is more difficult to access.
4. The Online Transforming — Identity in Transition
For some, Online spaces become a mirror, a place of reinvention, a bridge between roles, professions, or stages of life. Technology becomes part of personal transformation, as if before Online, “I was something else”, and the Online shapes who I am now.
Behind the interpretations
As I listened to coaches describe their experiences, these four distinct patterns emerged — almost like characters entering the same digital room in their own unique way.
The Online Native arrives effortlessly, as if the screen is an extension of their body.
The Online Secure enters carefully, checking the connection, lighting, and boundaries.
The Online Restricted steps in with a quiet longing for the “real” room they miss.
The Online Transforming uses the Online space as a mirror — a place to grow into a new identity.
None of these ways is better than another. They simply illustrate how differently we navigate the same digital world. I am suggesting that each way of being Online holds deeper significance — and each influences how we present ourselves to others and our clients.
Life Existentials as a framework for understanding Online Coaching
Drawing on Van Manen’s (2014) Life Existentials and Ihde’s (2023) Phenomenology of Technology, the research explored five dimensions of Online experience in the Online Lifeworld. Examples of the experienced elements:
- Lived Space — the digital room, the screen, the background/situation
- Lived Body — Online self-image, gestures and postures, energy-levels
- Lived Time — like an intimate bubble, lived efficiency, felt draining
- Lived Relations — connection, distance, presence and quality of the conversation
- Lived Things — tools and equipment, material environment, relation to technology
These dimensions reveal how deeply technology shapes our being and doing as Online coaches, not just practically but existentially. Lifeworld (Husserl, 1936) here refers to the digital era’s World and how we directly experience it.
Online self-awareness: a new ethical perspective
Interpreting lived experiences suggests that Online coaching may enhance visual self-awareness. The focus is on the face, our upper-body posture, and our technically enhanced micro-expressions. However, deeper bodily awareness (of self and others) often diminishes. Coaches may overlook sensing (their own and the client’s) bodies, breath, grounding, or subtle internal cues they would typically notice in a physical space. This shift to Online matters; it influences presence, listening, relational depth, self-regulation, well-being, use of power, and ethical practice. Understanding our Online self-awareness is crucial for sustainable, humane coaching in digital environments. Self-awareness also encompasses many other aspects, which are not discussed here.
Are there practical ways to deepen your Online presence?
Here are a few simple experiments to try.
Sense your body: Arrive intentionally, as you would in a physical room. Feel your feet, your breath, your posture. Try a standing session. Invite your client to join in sensing hers.
Work with technology, not against it: Occasionally turn off self-view. Use fewer screens. Check your camera angle — it influences perception (everyone) more than we realise. Try focusing solely on the voice or only on nonverbal cues.
Expand the online space: move around during sessions. Try “walking online.” Create designated transition periods before and after meetings.
Reflect on your Online identity: Notice how you are different Online compared to face-to-face? What feels more natural — and why? What does your Online presence reveal about you?
These small adjustments can enhance the quality of your Online coaching. It doesn’t need to be perfect; simply becoming more aware is sufficient. These experiments aren’t about technique. They’re about reclaiming humanity within a digital environment.
Towards a more human Online coaching future
Online coaching is not just a technical shift — it is a transformation of how we relate, perceive, and make meaning. Understanding the coach’s lived experience opens new horizons for: coach training, supervision, professional development, wellbeing, ethics and efficiency.
Who are you becoming in this moving Online Lifeworld?
When my work transitioned mostly Online over a decade ago, I initially believed the biggest change would be technical — new platforms, tools, habits, ring lights, cameras, and Wi-Fi. I was mistaken. The real transformation was human. It was about how I felt online, how I presented myself, and who I was becoming in this digital space. Gaining insight into my relationship with technology and how it influenced my Online self-awareness marked a significant step forward in how to develop myself sustainably in this profession.
Online coaching amplifies certain aspects of our awareness while diminishing others. We constantly see our own face — a peculiar modern form of self-observation. We hear voices through a microphone but lose the subtle cues of breath, posture, and physical presence shared in person. Time seems compressed. Presence becomes technological. Technology becomes a partner — or an obstacle. All of this subtly influences our coaching.
The signs are that we are not merely “coaching, but on Zoom or Teams.” It forms its own Online Lifeworld — one that shapes us as much as we shape it. Notice how your identity shifts when the screen becomes your mirror. When we understand how technology influences our presence, energy, and relationships, we can better support our clients and look after ourselves more wisely.
Feel free to contact me about my research and materials. I am happy to share insights and collaborate on developing a new understanding of online coaching (and other online-based professions).
Tuuli Kirsikka Pirttiaho, CEO and Head Coach in Thewind Coaching Company, MSc. Coaching for Behavioural Change, PCC Professional Certified Coach ICF, CPCC Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, PCEC Professional Certified Executive Coach Henley, Stress and PQ Positive Intelligence Coach, Focusing Practitioner.