To mark Climate Coaching Action Day on 4 March, this issue we focus on a climate coaching related issue
The issue
A coach is working with a senior client who is making the transition from the private sector into government to lead part of the government response on the climate agenda. The client is also going to be playing a role in the team contributing to the lead up to the COP26 global conference in Glasgow in November. The client wants to work on making an effective transition into this very different culture, and to maximise their impact quickly, as 2021 is such a key year to achieve change.
The coach becomes aware from their initial conversation that the coaching client is way ahead of them in terms of climate awareness. The coach is aware that climate change is a problem but sees it as not something they can personally affect and not very relevant to their coaching practice. They do not see that their coaching practice needs to change in the light of the climate and ecological crisis, rather, they see they should carry on doing what they’ve always done with their clients as it has been incredibly successful to date.
As the coaching proceeds, the coach realises she is struggling. She has some awareness gaps around the policy area, and the international nature of the context, but more importantly, she is realising that she has not really processed her thoughts and feelings around what is happening to the world. She is emotionally very impacted by the information the client is sharing. Her coaching is affected and she is finding it difficult to focus.
The interventions
Zoe Cohen
Master coach, coach supervisor, and carbon literate coach
This is a really interesting scenario, and I believe situations like this will become increasingly common as businesses and other organisations start the much-needed transition, and the reality of where we are starts to dawn on more and more leaders.
Like the coach in this scenario, there is a risk that coaches, and other OD/leadership practitioners, will find themselves really challenged. This brings up a range of questions as well as growth opportunities for our profession.
How aware are coaches of their thoughts and feelings about the interconnected crisis in our living systems and biosphere? To what extent are we doing the necessary work with ourselves on this and the commonly attendant emotions of guilt, denial, fear, sense of disempowerment, and so on?
How ready are coach supervisors to work with these issues (and their own)? And how likely are coaches to bring related issues to supervision, if indeed they have a supervisor?
Just as the pandemic has given us the unavoidable sense of being in the same sea (albeit in different boats) as our clients, and the challenges (and opportunities) of being impacted by the same kind of rollercoaster of emotions; the wider climate and ecological emergency (of which Covid is a symptom) does this ten-fold.
The pandemic will eventually come to an end, whereas climate heating and its consequences will take decades to stabilise even if we stop all emissions tomorrow (and the oceanic impacts much longer) – while the 200 daily species extinctions of the Anthropocene are forever.
This is the rest of our lives. And, like the coach in our scenario, we all have a great deal to learn to be truly in service to our clients, communities, the human family, to those yet unborn and to life on earth.
Alison Whybrow
Chartered psychologist and coach supervisor
Our climate and living environment is not something ‘out there’. It’s not separate to us, it’s everything: the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink. We can’t choose whether it’s in our coaching practice, we can’t choose whether it’s on the agenda – it’s there already.
Going through our own awakening will come, we have all already started that journey – consciously or not.
Conscious connection to our unravelling systems and the depth of ‘what is’ brings grief. The emotional impact experienced is not surprising and yet it can overwhelm. Grief is what I am sensing in this scenario. How you meet that grief may be a street fight or acceptance.
This journey from eco-curious to eco-engaged is ongoing, and developmental, and the work needs to be done outside your coaching practice.
Working with this coach, I might invite her to participate in a mindfulness exercise shared by Macy and Johnstone (2012). Rather than trying to hold this grief, I would invite the coach to step into the flow of grief, allowing the grief to fill her up, flow through and back out into the wider universe, to the creativity of the earth itself. Earth has been performing a beautiful, agile experiment around creating the conditions conducive to life for 3.8 billion years.
It’s best not to try to hold on to and own the grief. Instead, invite the coach to step into a wider sense of self, into a deep ‘interbeing’ with humans and other sentient beings, offering a new way of being and acting. Doing this work in community is incredibly helpful.
Knowing she is on her own journey of awakening and sense making with others, may allow this coach to find a way to continue to sit with and partner her client, unsticking, refocusing and becoming the coach her client needs.
- J Macy and C Johnstone, Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy, New World Library, 2012