LINDSAY WITTENBERG
Questioning a client’s closely held, yet damaging beliefs, involves risk-taking on both sides. But, liberation awaits
In September 2014, the Open University published a Green Paper1 on understanding risk, aimed at creating fresh thinking about how to encourage the average person to consider the financial risks they face.
It provided a reminder that while consumers are generally financially risk-averse, they tend to have a poor understanding of the nature of financial risks.
This prompted me to think about the risks that I take (and don’t take) in the course of a coaching session, the risks that I invite the coaching client to take, and what might enable us both to take risk safely. I’m aware that unless I myself take well-judged risks, I can’t expect the client to do so.
Yet, I believe that I need to take some risk if I’m to offer the coaching client the opportunity to stretch and grow – and that such risks offer me, too, the opportunity to grow and expand my coaching repertoire.
As humans, we all crave security and certainty – and risking the questioning of the beliefs and values that underpin how we run our lives can be rather unsettling.
Fundamentally, it can even disrupt our perception of who we are. But if we don’t take risks we risk staying stuck in the same place – and that could be the worst risk of all.
Some of my clients have invested themselves in the unfamiliar approaches that I might bring to coaching, and have gained a great deal from putting their trust in a technique they didn’t understand, just because they trusted me. I remember three separate very senior clients who went along with what, to them, was ‘weird stuff’ (constructing a Constellation map, engaging in a Gestalt chairs exercise and embodying a deeply rooted and difficult experience). They gained fundamental and far-reaching insights that in a single stroke liberated them from issues that had been holding them back for some time.
Others don’t seem to be able to get past the challenge or the invitation to contemplate an unfamiliar approach to a deeply embedded perception or belief, however that challenge is framed – emotionally, cognitively, intuitively or otherwise. When we explore it together, it seems that to the client the risk feels just too tough to take when they have little reassurance of its rationality.
Naturally, risk carries the possibility of failure – or, much worse – harm to the client. I’ve frequently challenged a client to question an old belief that, although it has been a major obstacle to their effectiveness and the value they provide to their organisation, has nevertheless provided a familiar safety blanket. Some clients have reported feeling sad, bereft or lost in this situation, and I’ve been troubled by the value – or possible harm – of my intervention.
It hasn’t always been easy to hold myself through my self-questioning until the client and I can do further work together and they create a fresh sense of identity and resourcefulness.
But I’m aware, too, that only if I can be a role model of risk-taking – with a good enough understanding of the risk – can I aspire to offer coaching of value.