With almost 60 million people in crisis, displaced from their homes, the EMCC conference in Istanbul reminded us to get in touch with our common humanity
By Liz Hall
I’m sitting on the deck of a cruise boat chugging along the river Bosphorus in Istanbul, along with fellow EMCC International conference participants. Lights of luxury riverside homes twinkle on our left. On one side of the sparkling bridge ahead lies Europe, on the other, Asia.
Somehow, being here in Istanbul, it’s harder to ignore the plight of desperate refugees. Turkey is now ‘home’ to nearly two million displaced people. In the capital alone, there are currently more Syrian refugees than in all the rest of Europe – some 366,000, according to the International Rescue Committee. Around 800km away is Bodrum’s beach where the lifeless body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed to shore last September, while Syria is just under 900km away.
Suddenly, a sharp chill cuts into the night air and, clad in slinky evening wear, many of us shiver. I think of how much harder it will be for the displaced in the camps, at the borders, as temperatures drop.
As coaches, we’re sometimes lucky enough to help clients reach and transcend the top of the triangle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Yet so many of the world’s population are struggling to meet their basic needs. Last year, the number of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) worldwide stood at almost 60 million, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And with climate change devastating more and more of Earth’s inhabitants’ homelands and widespread violence rendering so many of them unsafe, migration is set to increase yet further. This has been described as a “crisis of our times” (Viner, 2015).
Later this evening in Istanbul, fellow coaches and I discuss these topics, along with connection and inter-connectedness. Earlier that day at the EMCC International conference in the Ceylan Intercontinental Hotel (see conference report, pages 7 & 9), Tanguy Lunven had encouraged us to engage and connect more deeply, using the power of music to help us do so. And in another session, David Megginson and Vincent Traynor invited us to pay more attention to improving the congruence as coaches between who we are and who we say we are.
For me, both in my life and in my coaching practice, it’s about turning towards, rather than away from, difficulties. This is one of the core themes in my latest co-authored book (Hall, 2015). It’s not about navel-gazing, wallowing in self-indulgence or scab-picking, nor about over-stepping boundaries into therapy, naively opening Pandora’s box.
It’s about taking a holistic approach, not being afraid to work with emotions, nor to support clients in challenging times. Not being afraid to be vulnerable and get truly in touch with our common humanity. These times call for a deeper, more mindful, more compassionate approach. And compassion is about action – empathy plus action.
The term Vuca (Volatile, Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous) has become commonplace, almost a shorthand, for ‘it’s crazy out there’ (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014).
Whether indeed it is crazier out there is a matter of perception, but there is a widespread sense that it is. Incidentally, Vuca apparently means ‘wake up’ in Zulu. In these Vuca times, we need to pull together, to open our hearts, not contract in fear. We need to wake up.
References
- N G Bennett and J Lemoine, ‘What VUCA really means for you’, in Harvard Business Review, January 2014
- K Viner, www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/24/guardian-and-observer-charity-appeal-2015-refugees-katharine-viner
- L Hall, Coaching in Times of Crisis and Transformation, Kogan Page, 2015
Liz Hall is editor of Coaching at Work
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Email: liz@coaching-at-work.com
Twitter: @lizhallcoaching