Sam Adams: Coaching for Men

Sam Adams is a mentor to men who are looking for self-improvement. The object, of course, as with all personal work, is to gain greater insight into your personality, be more heathy and functional in the world, and – as I say – to grow into who you were always meant to be before the world got in the way. Here is his men’s coaching website, if you would like to get straight to the point.

So a personal coach can work wonders if these are your, very honourable, objectives. I have worked over the years with few personal coaches, and there are some who I am actively involved with on an ongoing basis as mentor or coach.

One of them is Sam Adams, who I have known for many years and who continues to change men’s lives, just as I do (or so I would like to believe!) The act of walking alongside a man on his journey through life is no small undertaking, and offers the opportunity to get to know a man really well, on a level which surpasses casual friendship.

So it is that I can recommend Sam as a personal coach for men who may be looking to step into the fullness of themselves. He can assist you in achieving a level of self  self realization, as the psychodynamic therapists would say, that you simply will not achieve working on your own.

Sam offers work to individual men and also works with groups. He has been called on to assist in the setting up and running of men’s circles at Boomtown festival, has 25 years’ experience in men’s personal work, and now successfully combines coaching with emotional exploration and development, alongside various techniques such as time in nature.

His business, Coaching for Men, is the latest development  of his offerings after more than 20 years of work; more recently he had a brand called Liberating Masculinity.

At first glance, “coaching for men” may appear a quite  familiar concept: improving career choices, building confidence, looking for love, and personal goal setting. Sure, and the broader sense of Sam’s work is expressed beautifully in an interview with the Association for Coaching which he gave in 2026.

During this interview, Sam observed that the basis of his philosophy was to give men “permission” to feel, to rest, to be uncertain, and to accept the fact that they don’t know everything. Quite radical, I’d say! Often therapeutic discipline focuses on action and achievement. Yet Sam knows the value – indeed, the necessity of – vulnerability, uncertainty, rest, emotional receptivity and the ability to receive support. To give men permission to sit and feel these qualities is a reflection of Sam’s philosophy:  masculinity is not a dogma but ‘a human phenomenon’.

Sam sees the virtues commonly attributed to a masculine character (such as action, focus, goal setting, strength, and the desire to fix things) as valuable, but expresses the idea that such qualities need to be balanced with those which we might traditionally think of as “more feminine”: softness, receptivity, gentleness, surrender, for example. His aim, thank heavens, is what he terms a healthy and mature masculinity, rather than a rejection of masculinity itself. 

But why should we care about that? The distinction matters because the world needs self-aware men. This is not achieved through offering coaching designed to make men “better” at being men; it is achieved through self-awareness and knowledge and other-awareness and knowledge….  followed by action which is informed by that knowledge.

So consider this scenario: a man comes for “help” because he is a people-pleaser and has difficulty saying no, or he avoids conflict. Or perhaps he has forgotten his own needs in a relationship which is causing him to suppress himself, the essence of who he is, because he is, for example, avoiding conflicts. Perhaps he is confused about what he wants, has lost his sense of purpose, or acts in ways he  can’t stop but which he knows don’t help him.

Sam’s approach to this example would be to give a man practical tools to deal with the problems in his life. But in addition, he would wish his client to consider not just why is he like that, but of what he is going to do about it. And so to this end, Sam’s programs cover subjects such as emotional awareness, boundaries, purpose, relationships, confidence and personal responsibility.

A second distinctive feature is the need for men to do this together  with other men rather than on their own. Sam’s group programmes and men’s meetings create a space where participants can open up, learn from one another and practice new ways of relating to each other.  You will see, if you read men’s testimonials, that his participants often speak about the sense of safety, openness and connection that Sam creates. Of course, this is not objective evidence of positive results, but there are many testimonials from individual men which lead us to see the power of Sam’s work. 

Nature has always been a recurring element. Sam has been involved in regenerative farming, has a natural affinity for the land and nature, and so he naturally has an outdoor focus in his work, where walking in wild places and appreciating the changing wilderness and the changing seasons is a natural part of the reflective process. In a discussion with the Association for Coaching, Sam recounted how the seasons act as a metaphor for human life, with periods of action and growth, and periods of withdrawal, reflection and regeneration.

And so Sam’s work is different from what we often call “coaching”: it is not only psychological, but also philosophical and, sometimes, spiritual. He has had a chaplaincy in Africa and is at home talking about questions of meaning, identity, and spirituality as well as about more concrete issues such as boundaries and behaviour.  If you’d like to know more, see his website: coachingformen.co.uk