Does where we hold our coaching interactions have an impact on their quality and outcomes? Rob Kemp, coach and associate lecturer, University of Derby, investigates the myriad spaces we engage in
Reflecting on my own experiences of coaching locations, I became curious: how active were my choices, and clients’ choices, of where to hold the coaching conversation – and what impact might those choices have on what the interaction feels like and does?
Being unsatisfied with my own thoughts, and my own knowledge in this area, I embarked on a search for inspiration and guidance from other coaches, practitioners and academics.
Finding nothing specifically coaching/mentoring focused, I widened the net to look at therapy and other sorts of conversations. You may well be aware of the journal, Environment and Behavior, but it was a new one on me. In journals such as this we see studies of the impact of room size on self-disclosure, and the impacts of light and décor on arousal, comfort and communications. Wyer and Calvini (2011) consider the effects of interpersonal spacing in their paper, “Don’t sit so close to me” – highlighting the impact of positioning within space.
The more I looked at these studies, the more sure I was of two things: first, that there is a lack of research and writing within our specific arena on the topic, and second, that I was not placing enough thought and planning into where I was coaching.
As often happens when we choose to place attention and focus on a particular area, we start to see examples ‘popping up’ around us. The first of these for me was a LinkedIn thread about free coaching locations in central London. Of the numerous replies, the vast majority were in public spaces. The latter commentaries on this thread highlight the problems and issues of coaching in public spaces, not least of confidentiality – but there was little consideration beyond this of what impact the space itself might have.
The ‘walk and talk’ advocates, who like coaching in open and natural spaces, may well have a point, as may the approach of CoachCoach – a custom-made and built coaching vehicle that is towed around to clients’ workplaces to provide a dedicated, intimate and private space where coaching can happen – a novel and inventive approach.
What of retreat coaching, cyber-coaching (cyber ‘space’), coaching in clients’ own workspaces, coaching in hotel foyers? What impact does each of these ‘spaces’ have? The short answer is that while we all have our own practices, customs and views, we don’t really know.
In my own practice I give a great deal of attention to many elements of coaching, and yet treat space, which I have come to believe is an important element in the interaction, with less rigour. Perhaps this is a piece that belongs in contracting, and thinking about coaching for comfort or challenge, but as yet there is little guidance from our body of knowledge.
I will continue my investigations and thinking around coaching space, with a call for your research, views and experience on the topic, using a very simple few questions:
Where do you coach?
Why do you coach there?
What impact does that space have on the interaction and outcomes of coaching?
If this is an area of specific interest for your own research, you are formally invited to fill some empty space!
Rob Kemp is co-founder of Purple Patch email: rob@purplepatchinfo.co.uk
For more on space see: ‘Where are you at?’, vol 5, issue 3, page 46
References
A L Chaikin, V J Derlega & S J Miller, “Effects of room environment on self-disclosure in a counseling analogue”, in Journal of Counseling Psychology, 23, pp479-481, 1976
B N Cohen & R C Schwartz, “Environmental factors and clients’ self disclosure in counseling”, in Psychological Reports, 81, pp931-934, 1997
R Gifford, “Light, décor, arousal, comfort and communication”, in Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8(3), pp177–189, 1988
V Okken, T van Rompay & A Pruyn, “Room to move: on spatial constraints and self-disclosure during intimate conversations”, in Environment and Behavior, 2012
N A Wyer & G Calvini, “Don’t sit so close to me: Unconsciously elicited affect automatically provokes social avoidance”, in Emotion, 11(5), pp1,230-1,234, 2011
Coaching at Work, Volume 8, Issue 3