Coaching with courage and vulnerability can not only lead to client change, it can boost coaches’ learning too, says Janet Laffin, senior lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University.
There has been renewed interest in the relational qualities sponsors look for in a coach, following the publication of the 2013 Ridler Report1, which highlighted qualities, including personal chemistry and the ability to work with clients’ ingrained psychological patterns of behaviour.
John Blakey, joint author of Challenging Coaching, says that trust, vulnerability and courage are essential coach qualities that can play a major role in client change. He, like many others, admires the work of social researcher Brené Brown because she reframes vulnerability as a strength to be actively pursued and developed, and an opportunity to re-humanise our workplaces, families, schools and community institutions.
Karyn Prentice of Coaching Supervision Academy says that typically coaches overlook instances of their own courage in favour of what might not have gone as well as they would have liked. She admires their willingness to make themselves vulnerable, as this is a measure of their courage. As Prentice, citing Brown, (2012) says, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
The coach’s willingness to talk about their ‘stuck bits’ (Prentice, 2014) is an act of courage that involves the coach bringing as much of who they are as what they do to coaching. Through our work with clients, we see aspects of ourselves that are not in view, but also ulterior motives that can be the opposite of those we claim. For example, we respect our client’s autonomy and actively pursue their development, but we enjoy their dependency on us, and our feelings of power in keeping them dependent (Critchley 2011).
Bill Critchley (2011) of Ashridge Business School says his clients hold up a mirror to his shadow side and unconscious personal influences that can affect his work with them. He argues that, as coaches and consultants, we have an ethical responsibility to learn about how parallel process can affect our work. This requires emotional maturity, courage and vulnerability.
He gives the following example:
A tall and authoritarian chief executive triggers an uncomfortable response in a coach, which reminds him of his disapproving father. Initially, the coach tries to impress, but then notices his own discomfort and draws on his feelings of vulnerability to challenge his client’s behaviour and, in parallel, his impact on his work context:
“A pattern of responding to my client may evolve, which is similar in form to a pattern of relating that he is involved in during his daily work context. This is what I’m calling ‘ parallel process’. So if, in the example above, I have the courage to say to my client that while I know I am pretty competent at what I do, I am nevertheless noticing my desire to impress him rather than tell him what I think he really needs to hear, he might reveal that he has been wondering why members of his management team rarely challenge him. Bingo! We’re on to something important.”
The coach needs to develop openness to learning from the client (Casement 1985) and the ability to respond positively to self-doubt that can arise as a result of parallel process. Supervision can help the coach explore “the complexities of the systems their clients operate in and may reveal, in parallel process, similar stories around guardedness and vulnerability” (Prentice 2014).
References
1. Ridler Report 2013 ‘Trends in the use of executive coaching’, last accessed August 2013, www. ridlerandco.com
J Blakey, ‘Daring greatly: Brené Brown on truth, vulnerability and courage’, London, Penguin, 2012; Challenging Coaching LinkedIn Group (2/8/13), last accessed 24/3/14 bit.ly/1pwxGDF
K Prentice, ‘Measuring creativity, innovation and change’, last accessed 24/3/14 bit.ly/1oJaPEL
B Critchley, ‘The use of “shadow” consulting and “parallel process”’, in Becoming a Learning Consultancy, November 2011 bit.ly/1wLjI2U
Personnel Review, 37(5), 2008
P Casement, On Learning From the Patient, London, Brunner-Routledge, 1985
Coaching at Work, Volume 9, Issue 4