Politicians come from all walks of life and get little training for their complex, often combative, decision-making roles. Elke Esders explains how systemic coaching can bring much-needed clarity to their work.
“What are you coaching?” It’s what most people in politics ask me when I tell them I’m a coach, possibly mistaking it for some form of training.
Coaching has yet to really reach the political arena. There are several reasons: lack of knowledge, constant time pressure in a job that can take over your life and lack of institutional support in encouraging and financing it.
In my dual capacity as political adviser at the European Parliament and a trained coach, however, I have managed to coach politicians, do extensive interviews and then write a book on coaching for politicians (Nachhaltig denken und handeln – Coaching für Politiker, Göttingen, 2011).
In this article, I hope to open up an exchange with you, the reader, on the future role of coaching for politicians.
How to coach politicians
Like many in a position of leadership, politicians can feel quite solitary in their decision-making. They have to be good managers in order to lead their staff. They have to be good negotiators, too. Both require people skills, but not all politicians automatically bring that to office. Coaching can help.
So what characteristics must coaches take into account?
One of the most distinctive aspects of a political career is that politicians come from all walks of life and are not specifically trained for their jobs. Therefore, the more complex their new work, the longer it takes them to understand the system and how best to function in that environment.
Many Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) say it takes at least six months to settle in – that’s 10 per cent of their mandate. Yet, they are expected to contribute to the political process from the start.
Unseen strengths
Michele [not his real name] became an MEP in the middle of the legislative term. Six months later he was frustrated. He felt he had not got going yet and that he still didn’t know how the system worked. He was also stuck on the Social Affairs Committee, a position for which he, an environmentalist, had no professional expertise.
During coaching, we looked at changes that Michele could see right now. He realised how much he actually understood about parliamentary work and that he was playing a more active role than he was conscious of. In his frustration he hadn’t noticed.
Coaching helped make him aware of his strengths. He decided which tasks he should tackle himself and which he should delegate over the coming months. He started reflecting on how to combine his environmental expertise with the issues dealt with by his committee.
Michele said our first coaching session was a breakthrough. He wasn’t ‘stuck’ any more. There was still much to do, but he now knew how to proceed in his learning and in developing his job.
Coping strategies
Despite the complexities and challenges of their role, politicians may only have it for a short period of time. They have to consider what they might do if not re-elected.
Coaching helped Barbara [not her real name] develop a ‘Plan B’. With her strong people skills and political experience she decided to look for speaking engagements at schools and universities. She was re-elected, however, and instead used Plan B working with visitor groups at the European Parliament.
Not everybody who becomes a politician is used to the limelight, and the often hostile working environment takes some getting used to. Coaching can help develop coping strategies and resilience, especially for individual politicians.
However, if the objective is to optimise political results, the coaching will have to sharpen awareness of the typical culture and function of the political system, so politicians can decide if it supports their aspirations.
A polarised view
Let’s take a look at this.
The most striking phenomenon is political language; it is a language of war. In fact, an entire branch of research and study has been devoted to it, called politolinguistics.
You face political opponents and have constant fights for or against policies. Very often the focus is on what is no longer wanted, for example, racism, rather than on what politicians like to see in its place – in other words, the quality of future societies.
By focusing on the problem, politicians and the media run the risk not only of overlooking solutions, but also of increasing, rather than eliminating, the phenomenon.
Language and culture form our mindsets. Many politicians face distrust, fear, attack and disappointment, even in their own political group. Such fights may sell newspapers, but if politicians play that game, it may go against their political objectives – without them being aware of it.
Such a culture nurtures polarities – the good guys versus the bad. Linear thinking is predominant. Once the good guys reign, everything will be better.
Similar polarities exist in relation to the population, too. For example, the German ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl used to refer to “the people out there in the country”.
However, polarity and competition, useful as they might be, still run counter to global development, which is a constant process of growing together and becoming ever more connected.
If the objective is to optimise results in terms of societies and the planet, such a perspective will have to be adjusted towards a more global one.
Alternative perspectives
My book details how to use the systemic perspective in policy making. Rather than centring on individual actors and actions, the systemic approach looks at what lies between. Relationships become the focus. For example, relationship coaching approaches, as taught by CCR Global, take account of contexts: http://centerforrightrelationship.com/.
In the coaching we also look at the relationship between opposing political objectives.
Politicians face dilemmas when deciding how to vote, for example, weighing economic growth against environmental protection.
In coaching we would explore the purpose of seemingly contradictory objectives – and then the purpose behind each purpose. This might eventually reveal similar aims behind both (in this example, a balanced society with mainly happy people living in a prosperous and healthy environment). One might then be able to come up with alternative ideas on how to get there.
Exploring the relationships between contradictory aims helps move our thinking to a higher level, and can lead us to question traditional thinking, perhaps coming up with new ideas or seeing good in the seemingly bad – and then working with it.
In addition to the systemic view, I suggest using a network perspective, by which the decision-maker includes himself into his policy making.
Network thinking trains us to put ourselves into other people’s shoes and to use our empathy. A classic example of how this could have helped is in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Politicians in both East and West Germany (as it was at that time) entirely underestimated and misjudged the strength and scale of the citizens’ movement in East Germany – and were thus taken by surprise by the historic outcome – a reunified Germany.
When politicians sharpen their awareness of what is really happening in society, they can link their own objectives to existing trends and move them on from there.
Reflection time
Coaching and the use of the reflection processes explained earlier can help make politics pro-active. Whether at an individual or policy making stage, regular time-out for reflection is essential.
Coaching is a great way to create reflection time. By coaching groups of politicians, we are giving them the chance to reshape the political culture in the way they want it to be.
Elke Esders is a partner at RobinsonHenry
www.robinsonhenry.com
Volume 7, issue 6