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RESEARCH MATTERS: NAVIGATING COMPASSION FATIGUE AS A COACH

by | Apr 30, 2023 | Articles, Research matters

Coaching is often offered as a wellbeing intervention to those experiencing stress or heading for burnout, but what about the coach?
Marian Rosefield and Julia Papworth report

 

Coaches may be increasingly required to work alongside highly stressed individuals who are struggling to cope with role demand. With the lens focused on client outcomes, coaching as a wellbeing intervention may be offered as a preventative approach to those experiencing stress or heading for burnout, but what about the coach?

Following on from the Coaching At Work article (2021) written by Tony Geraghty and Adrian Myers entitled, Can coaches work ethically and helpfully with clients presenting with ‘burnout’? this article addresses the potential negative effects experienced by coaching practitioners as a direct result of their role. While the results of coaching may prove favourable for the client, the coach’s capacity for working repeatedly with human complexity, including stress and burnout, requires sustained relational presence, managing energetic demand, self-regulation, plus conscious self-management of working with transference and parallel process – the coach becomes a resource for others.

With role demand in mind, Schermuly and Graßmann (2019) demonstrated the negative effects coaching practitioners experience as a direct result of their role – 90% of sessions had negative effects on coaches, resulting in increased stress and impaired sleep. The Job Demands-Resources Model literature suggests that if a coach is unable to meet these demands, or increase their resources, they’re less effective in supporting their clients and will suffer themselves (Demerouti et al, 2001).

Bachkirova (2016) identifies the coach as an ‘instrument’ and highlights the need for awareness and self-care through three lenses: understanding the instrument, looking after the instrument and checking the instrument for quality and sensitivity.
Additionally, coaches may be unaware, even unwilling, or unable to acknowledge role stress, due to self-deception (Bachkirova, 2015) or toxic positivity requiring them to be their best selves (Gross & Levenson, 1997). The coach may be left with uncomfortable feelings such as shame and isolation, leading to denial, not seeking help and resulting in Burnout (Brown, 2015).

 

Burnout
The literature concerning burnout in helping professionals points to complex causal factors, including psychological, social, environmental and organisational (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002) ones. Additional consideration of personality, strengths, coping styles and perfectionism play a part in the condition.

Burnout is characterised by the World Health Organisation (2019) as “depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy”.
Further definitions include fatigue, detachment, cynicism, and ineffectiveness/lack of accomplishment (Maslach & Leiter, 2016).

The American Psychological Association recognises burnout as physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance, and negative attitudes toward oneself and others. Demerouti et al (2021) suggests the result of unmanaged chronic stress leads to serious outcomes for individuals, and organisations.

 

Research
The first author of this article, supervised by the second author, carried out a study to explore coaches personal experience with ‘compassion fatigue’ and burnout. A qualitative investigation with 13 diverse professional coaches sought to understand their retrospective experience of role-induced burnout and/or ‘compassion fatigue’. Four main themes emerged from the research: the ideal/valued self as coach, navigating compassion fatigue or burnout, retrospective recognition, and recovery and integrated self as coach.

With regard to the concept that the role of coach and self were inseparable, constructed as the first theme ‘Ideal/valued self as coach’, all coaches expressed that coaching was more than a role, viewing it as a calling and part of their identity, identifying putting others’ needs ahead of their own by being the go-to person. But increasing demands and expectations, from self, clients and life, allied with decreasing resources, leads to ‘navigating compassion fatigue or burnout’.

Participants acknowledge their lack of awareness and shock as they describe unknowingly missing the red flags about their loss of confidence, perspective and judgement. Increasingly, they acknowledge the challenge of remaining present with their clients, leading to a sense of losing themselves and their sense of role.

A shift occurs here in the third theme; ‘Retrospective recognition’, bringing into awareness and recognising symptoms of burnout, and the need to connect with others for support. This led to significant lifestyle changes, resulting in authentic personal and professional growth.

Armed with a greater sense of interoception (sensing internal signals from your body), self-regulation and awareness, the final theme of ‘Recovery and integrated self as coach’ emerged. This required significant attention to creating a nourishing environment through self-compassion to rebuild self-confidence and remain committed to their coaching practice.

It was interesting to note that most coaches attended regular supervision and this reiterates Bachkirova’s (2016) call to build awareness and normalisation around these topics, to build conversations about risk, prevention and recovery into CPD, with coach care becoming an integral part of professional practice.

The research article will be published in International Journal for Coaching and Mentoring Special Edition (June 2023)

 

References

  • T Bachkirova, ‘Self-Deception in Coaches: An Issue in Principle and a Challenge for Supervision’, in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 8(1): 4-19, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2014.998692
  • T Bachkirova, ‘The Self of the Coach: Conceptualization, Issues and Opportunities for Practitioner Development’, in Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 68(2), 2016. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000055
  • E Demerouti, A B Bakker, F Nachreiner, and W B Schaufeli, ‘The Job Demands-Resources Model of Burnout’, in The Journal of Applied Psychology 86(3), 499-512, 2001.
  • D Gray, ‘Journeys towards the Professionalisation of Coaching: Dilemmas, Dialogues and Decisions along the Global Pathway’, in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory Research and Practice, 4(1), 4-19, 2011.
    https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2010.550896
  • C Maslach and M Leiter, ‘Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement’, in The Journal of Applied Psychology 93, 498-512, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.3.498
  • C Maslach and M Leiter, ‘Understanding the Burnout Experience: Recent Research and Its Implications for Psychiatry’, in World Psychiatry, 15, 103-11, 2016.https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311
  • C C Schermuly and C Graßmann, ‘A Literature Review on Negative Effects of Coaching – What We Know and What We Need to Know’, in Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 12(1), 39-66, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2018.1528621

 

About the authors