Peter Hawkins and Eve Turner, Routledge, ISBN 978 11383 2249 3
5 out of 5
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Some books shake our world view. For me, this is one. It asks, is coaching “just feeding western individualistic narcissism and self-absorption, which may be part of the root causes of many 21st century human problems?” Wow!
The book is clear we need to avoid imposing our agenda on the client. It offers great tips on questions we can pose to systemically raise client awareness and responsibility. It encourages the coach and coachee to constantly discover afresh the work that needs to be done in service of the wider systemic world.
To truly work as systemic coaches, the book argues, we need also systemic supervision. It shows how supervision can help us notice the social, cultural and ecological contexts of the work, including in how we contract. Hawkins’ famous 7 eyed model is expanded to look more closely at what is happening in that often overlooked 7th eye, the wider system.
There are chapters on systemic team and group coaching and on systemic ethics. We are challenged to reflect on whether our definition of ethics in coaching has been too narrow. Is the coaching promoting tribalism, organisational exploitation and human-centricity? Big questions if we want ‘ethical maturity’.
The authors show us how adopting a truly systemic approach increases our non-judgmentalism and wide-angled empathy. They describe how this is about truly embodying a systemic way of perceiving, thinking, being and relating, and how, at its heart, coaching is a spiritual practice.