In praise of uncertainty
Clients often come to coaching expecting the coach to have the answers. But coaches can use this uncertainty to explore ideas and boost decision-making
Lindsay Wittenberg
Thanks to artist, writer, speaker, consultant and coach, Steve Chapman, I’ve discovered the term ‘safe uncertainty’, coined by systemic family therapist, Barry Mason.
In his 1993 paper, Towards Positions of Safe Uncertainty, Mason suggests that uncertainty can be a path towards creativity or paralysis.
As in therapy, coaching enables the client to create change. Mason suggests: “For useful change to happen we sometimes need to become less certain of the positions we hold. When [we do] we are more likely to become receptive to other possibilities, other meanings we might put to events. If we can become more open to the possible influence of other perspectives, we open up space for other views to be stated and heard.”
Clients often come to coaching in a state of unsafe uncertainty, expecting the coach to deliver or enable safe certainty for them
(I remember the exasperated client who said to me; “I know you know what I should do: why don’t you just tell me?”). Conversely, says Mason, uncertainty orientates us towards exploring ideas and their meaning in a state of flow which opens up multiple possible interpretations.
Safe uncertainty is, he says, “not a technique but an always-evolving state of being…. [in which the coach] is alongside or slightly behind the client, using expertise to open up space to allow new meaning to emerge…. Working towards positions that entertain different possibilities…. A framework for helping people to fall out of love with the idea that solutions solve things.” He characterises solutions as “only dilemmas that are less of a dilemma than the dilemma one had”.
I’m energised by this perspective on solutions, and I’ve begun to build it into my contracting. It opens up clarity on the coaching territory, which some clients (not all!) find liberating. Equally, it can be challenging to land with organisational sponsors, who are typically driving for outcomes.
Mason’s warning about the dangers of understanding the client too quickly resonate too for me: if we understand (or think we understand) too quickly, not only do we fool ourselves into thinking we’ve ‘arrived’, and that we ‘know’, but also this position diminishes the collaborative process of enquiry that is coaching. Indeed, as I reflect on how ‘safe’ manifests, at the heart of it is that collaborative, open, non-judgmental enquiry.
According to Mason’s philosophy, rather than the coach leading the client somewhere, the coach needs to be alongside, or slightly behind them. This reminds me of a client’s feedback to me at the end of her coaching: “It was as though as we were both on a surfboard, on choppy waves, but you were never in front of me: you were always either beside me or behind me.” She’d been in a very uncomfortable, even distressing, space at times, but our relationship meant that we could be in enquiry, enabling new meaning and possibility, and a sense of peace and ease, to emerge.
It seems to me that our clients benefit from making friends with uncertainty rather than trying to resolve or avoid it. As we coaches engage more with it, and articulate it as a fertile positive in the coaching relationship, we can open up the client’s resourcefulness, insights and decision-making in these deeply uncertain times.
- Lindsay Wittenberg is director of Lindsay Wittenberg Ltd. She is an executive coach who specialises in authentic leadership, career development and cross-cultural coaching
- www.lindsaywittenberg.co.uk