Outsourcing Responsibility: The Coaching Pattern That Keeps Clients Stuck

In this solo episode, Kim Olver explores one of the most common—and most damaging—coaching mistakes she sees in her work with individuals, leaders, and helping professionals: clients outsourcing responsibility for their own lives while simultaneously overtaking responsibility for others.

Drawing from decades of experience as a coach, counselor, and creator of the Mental Freedom® process, Kim unpacks how this pattern shows up in coaching conversations, relationships, workplaces, and families. She explains why this dynamic feels familiar and even virtuous, yet quietly erodes empowerment, clarity, and sustainable change.

You’ll learn how outsourcing responsibility keeps people stuck in blame, frustration, and dependency, while overtaking responsibility leads to burnout, resentment, and misplaced control. Kim also shares how this pattern can subtly appear in coaching relationships—and why even well-intentioned coaches can unintentionally reinforce it.

This episode offers practical insight for coaches, leaders, and anyone interested in personal growth, responsibility, and authentic empowerment. If you want to stop carrying what isn’t yours, reclaim your own agency, and create healthier boundaries in your coaching and relationships, this conversation will give you a powerful new lens for change.

If today’s conversation resonated with you—especially the distinction between supporting others and taking responsibility for them—you may be interested in the work I do training ethical, responsibility-centered coaches.

You can learn more about the Board Certified Coach (BCC)–approved coaching programs through the Academy of Choice, where I train coaches to work from responsibility, autonomy, and internal control.

For those who want to apply these principles directly in their work with individuals, couples, or groups, Mental Freedom® Certification offers a practical, experience-based pathway grounded in Choice Theory and personal responsibility.

And if you’re listening simply as someone who wants to stop giving away your power—or carrying responsibility that isn’t yours—the Mental Freedom® Experience is a powerful place to begin that work for yourself.