In a coaching relationship, the client’s stories reflect a fraction of who they are. We must resist jumping to assumptions based on those fragments
By Lindsay Wittenberg
I recently had the sad experience of attending the cremation of a previous client who had died at the age of just 56.
As I watched the projected photos of him at various times in his life – from babyhood to life with his family, and as I looked around me at the dozens of people who had come to pay their respects, I glimpsed how rich and multifaceted is a human being’s life.
It struck me with some clarity that in a coaching relationship I hear and see only a tiny window on the client and their life and preoccupations, their fulfilments and their reflections: the fabric of that life is a densely interwoven creation with a complex web of interdependencies that, as a coach, I am a long way from perceiving in their entirety.
Set out in front of me at that cremation – from my client’s elderly mother and his wife and sons, to the lifelong and more recent friends, to the work colleagues, and no doubt to many others – was a representation of the systems he was part of.
Our clients bring just a small part of themselves. Stories that reflect a fraction of their working lives, beliefs and assumptions, coaching objectives, whose real motivation I may not fully understand, emotions and responses that come from this interweaving, relationships knitted together from the threads of this complexity.
I’m seeing, literally, the tip of the iceberg.
If I’m not careful, I could jump to assumptions and interpretations based on the fragments of evidence that emerge in the coaching encounter.
And yet in a relatively short amount of time for what can be a profound relationship, my task as executive coach is to discover and focus on what is at the heart of what the client brings – the key elements that will lead to the differences that they want.
Not only is my role to work with them on the specific situations they want to address, but I also need to be equipping them to feel resourced for their working lives more broadly, and to ensure that the coaching delivers sustainable benefit.
The responsibility and the privilege of that task are enormous.
I became powerfully aware that if I want to enable sustainable change, I need to be present profoundly, to intuit courageously and to be aware intensely.
I need to be creative, resourceful and holistic. I need to engage with the client’s identity in such a way that I can release significant insights for them, and for myself, and go far beyond the constraints of the coaching objectives to a deep understanding of who the client is, and can be, in their contexts and systems.
In other words, I need to mine a richness that I cannot fully appreciate, but that I can equip the client to be in effective contact with.
As I sat in that cremation service, I understood in a different way the scope of what my coaching clients bring – and I was humbled to realise in a different way what my role is.
I am immensely sad that the world has lost a man of humanity and talent – and I feel privileged and grateful that through his death he has offered me this learning.
- Lindsay Wittenberg is director of Lindsay Wittenberg Ltd. She is an executive coach who specialises in authentic leadership, career development and cross-cultural coaching www.lindsaywittenberg.co.uk