Taking coaching conversations outdoors has so many benefits. Alexandra Burn reports
Do you love spending time outdoors? Have you asked yourself why? And how you might harness any benefits for your coaching practice?
Coaches who take clients outside can regale you with many stories and much anecdotal evidence about the benefits their clients experience from outdoor coaching sessions, and the impact it has on their way of thinking and ability to problem solve.
Yet most coach training and qualifications are conducted indoors and the skills of outdoor coaching aren’t yet recognised as specific competencies by the accrediting bodies. And while there’s a lot of research into the benefits of spending time outdoors, there’s still very little into the benefits of coaching outdoors.
My research
Given this lack of research in this arena, I chose to research the benefits of taking coaching conversations outdoors as part of an MSc in Coaching and Behavioural change (soon to be published in the International Coaching Psychology Review). I interviewed nine clients whose outdoor coaching history ranged from two to more than 100 sessions, asking them questions about their experiences of being coached outdoors. Questions included: why did they choose outdoor coaching rather than indoor; what aspects of outdoor coaching did they enjoy; how did it make them feel; was there any aspect of being coached outdoors they didn’t enjoy? I also asked them to describe a memorable coaching session and why it was so memorable.
Thematic analysis (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis) was used to identify the many themes that emerged from the wealth of data produced by the interviews. I collated them into six clustered themes which were common to all participants. These were: being side-by-side, movement and pace, outdoors versus indoors, thinking differently, openness and expanse, and senses, emotions and feelings.
Let’s look at these in turn.
Being side-by-side
“There was no eye-to-eye contact… so I could overcome those uncomfortable bits… if it was being sat in a room and he’d been looking at me directly I’d have felt a little more under pressure”
(coaching client participant)
Participants said that being alongside their coach felt liberating because it felt less judgmental, compared to sitting opposite a coach. They felt less scrutinised because there was no eye contact. This gave them the confidence to talk about more challenging things as they felt more comfortable.
It was also easier to experience silence and not feel like they had to say something or answer a question because their coach was looking at them. It enabled them to experience the expanse and openness of the natural environment before them (without a table or a coach in front of them), think more openly and articulate what they wanted to say.
They also spoke about falling into sync easily with their coach, as if they were walking with a friend, being on a literal, as well as metaphorical, journey together. These benefits were also experienced when standing and sitting.
Movement and pace
“The pace reflected the exploration within the conversation. Internally digesting and making sense of things”
(coaching client participant)
Participants described how the pace directly mimicked or reflected how they were feeling and enabled them to express their emotions. The changeability of pace, being able to stop and start, also positively affected their ability to reflect. This mechanism seemed to provide the brain time to think, and made pauses in conversation more natural. Being outdoors enabled more freedom of movement, of the whole body, as a way to release emotions and aid the thinking processes.
Outdoors vs indoors
“If I’m outdoors, where the horizon is like limitless, for me…a sense of freedom of designing my own future… feelings of awe… it opens things up so much more”
(coaching client participant)
Participants explained how being outdoors enabled them to get away from their everyday indoor life, and to breathe fresh air. They described the indoors quite negatively, for example, using words and phrases such as: confined, cooped up, constrained, trapped, suffering, not being able to see beyond the four walls.
On the other hand, they described being outdoors more positively, using words and phrases such as: free, freedom, comfortable, calm, relaxed, energised, peaceful, exhilarating. They also described the horizon as being limitless and finding benefit in how things are always moving and changing, but nature itself is reassuringly constant.
Several also described how being outdoors enabled them to deal better with difficult emotions as they felt they could move away from them, rather than the emotions being stuck with them within the confines of a room.
Thinking and being differently
“… fresh air coaching is more beneficial… you see different things, you hear different things and you feel different things”
(coaching client participant)
Participants also described how being outdoors was critical in enabling them to do things differently: think differently, process information differently, experience different emotions, gain different perspective. To see, hear and feel different things by invigorating the mind, body and soul. They said this led to them being able to concentrate and focus better, and zoom in and out from macro to micro level thinking.
The environment helped them to make better sense of how they felt and what they were experiencing. Some described the change of perspective they experienced. For example, being at the top of a hill and able to see the views helping them to feel more confident and able to create change. Having more variety of things around them to focus on consciously also gave their brain time to think and work subconsciously.
Openness and expanse
“There’s an expansiveness to it as well… there’s a shift in the conversations… having the expansiveness, being able to see the view… linking to the expansiveness, the air, the view stretched out below. There’s more of a timelessness”
(coaching client participant)
Participants reflected on the fact that being coached outdoors provided a sense of openness and space, positively impacting the way they made sense of the challenges they are facing or the topics they are discussing. This openness and expanse enabled them to describe and externalise their thoughts and feelings, which they said made it easier to then internalise and reflect. Some described coaching outdoors as beneficial even when in relatively enclosed outdoor environments, such as woodland, sharing that they still felt a sense of openness. They said they felt freedom, release and relief.
Senses, emotions and feelings
“And when you close your eyes and listen, thoughts come. And sometimes the thoughts that come are the answers that you’re looking for”
(coaching client participant)
Participants linked the feelings and emotions they experienced to one or more of their senses. These experiences enabled the participants to recall specific and vivid memories of particular sights, sounds, smells or touches on their skin. These connections between senses and emotions made it easier for participants to subsequently relive the coaching session and the benefits gained, often a long time after the coaching session.
Participants explained how using their senses, and the feelings they evoked, created a mindful connection between them and the natural environment around them, which enabling them to be more present and non-judgemental. Again, this helped with sense-making by impacting how they processed thoughts. They felt more grounded and anchored, calmer and thus better able to reflect.
Attention Restoration Theory (ART)
The six key themes of this research appear to share a commonality with Attention Restoration Theory (ART, eg, Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; 1995), which may help to explain the benefits clients experience when taking their coaching conversations outdoors.
A key aspect of ART is the concept of soft fascination (aspects of the environment that capture attention effortlessly), which enables the mind to recover from cognitive fatigue and restore cognitive processing capabilities such as directed attention. The findings of this research appear to support the use of soft fascination by clients in outdoor environments. Nature provides many types of soft fascination and plenty of opportunities to recover from mental fatigue, so clients can then use their restored executive functioning to the fullest to solve coaching challenges.
Another aspect of ART that may help to describe why clients experience benefits in outdoor coaching is compatibility – individuals must want to be exposed to, and appreciate, the environment in the way that is most compatible for them. In other words, they shouldn’t climb mountains if they aren’t physically capable, nor walk by water if they have a fear of it, or go into forests in a storm. But if they love green spaces then take them to green spaces, and if they love animals take them near farms, and so on.
Participants equated feelings of being free, grounded, calm and reflective when outdoors to their sense of yearning for a connection with nature.
The findings of the research also provide evidence of the ART concept of being away (providing an escape from habitual activities), with participants explicitly describing how they chose outdoor coaching because it got them away from their desk, and from their indoor life. The benefits of being away were felt regardless of the distance they travelled to get away. This links closely with the Kaplans’ view that it was the disconnecting from daily life that was important, not necessarily the distance.
Indoor coaching would be less likely to provide the benefits associated with being away because indoor coaching locations are often too similar to or even the same as the locations in which clients spend much of their time, for example, their place of work.
Being away enabled participants to experience different types of environments, which arguably also prompted different ways of thinking, processing information and coming up with new ways of doing things.
The extent facet of ART, is the scope to feel immersed in the environment.
Extent, or expanse, is probably best explained in terms of Systems Theory which came about after ART. It’s the understanding and feeling that being in nature gives us of being part of the wider world and connected through multiple systems. We are not alone; a singular being. Rather, we are all connected, through nature and the natural world. Understanding the extent of our connection with and to nature, can help lift our attention, expand our focus and restore our directed attention and brain capacity.
Participants described benefitting from the openness they experienced when they were coached outdoors, enabling them to make sense of the challenges they were facing by giving them the space to think and reflect.
Extent also helps to explain why participants reported feeling more connected and grounded in the outdoors. They described feeling part of something bigger, being anchored and connected with the natural environment.
Step outdoors
There are many opportunities to research the elements of outdoor coaching that as coaches we know are beneficial, through our experience and feedback from our clients. As yet, though, they aren’t empirically evidenced. I highly recommend either conducting some research of your own or taking part in someone else’s research. And to give outdoor coaching a try. As one research participant said: “The biggest benefit is the fact that it (the outdoors) is actually an unchanging lesson. That’s always there for you… I guess it’s a companion; it’s a sanctuary”
- If you’d like to find out more about the benefits of outdoor coaching why not listen to or watch our Coaching Outdoors Podcast: www.coaching-outdoors.com
References
- A Burn and J Passmore, ‘Outdoor coaching: The role of Attention Restoration Theory as a framework for explaining the experience and benefit of eco-psychology coaching’, in International Coaching Psychology Review, in press.
- R Kaplan and S Kaplan, The Experience of Nature: a psychological perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989
- S Kaplan, ‘The restorative benefits of nature: towards an integrative framework’, in Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 169-182, 1995