A client has been through coaching several times, and taken on board and actioned feedback successfully. So why do the old problems keep resurfacing?
The issue
Sunil has been coached a few times in his career and he keeps coming back to the same challenges. He’s struggling with competing agendas with his peers, there’s nonalignment between them and their key performance indicators, he hasn’t had a promotion for some years and he wonders if there will ever be one. He’s working seriously long hours and is feeling stressed yet again. His moods and stress levels are affecting his family and his wife is threatening to leave him if he doesn’t get himself sorted out this time.
Sunil is a thinker. He enjoys working through his problems using analysis, decision-making and action. He listens well to his coaches and believes he has put into practice all the tools and techniques he has been given. So why do his challenges keep surfacing?
He has recently been given feedback on some of his behaviours in the workplace and while none are very serious, employees around him have voiced that they have challenges with him.
Sunil wants to change but he’s at a loss as to why what he has learned and put into action has not provided him with the desired results. Has he truly embodied the changes? Perhaps it’s time for a different approach in the coaching. Maybe it’s time for a deeper dive?
Veronica Munro is an international executive coach
The interventions
Shirley Attenborough, Master leadership coach, coach supervisor, author
After contracting and having Sunil explain where he is now, I’d ask him in one or two sentences to positively state the outcome he’s looking for. Would he be willing to try something different? While maintaining the confidentiality of previous clients I’d offer examples of how others had worked to identify past situations that were impacting their present thoughts and behaviours without them consciously knowing it. I’d start with:
1. A breathing exercise so Sunil could relax and become present – to put aside what he was doing before our session and whatever he has planned afterwards.
2. A visualisation to enable him to feel deeper into his body and find where he’s holding onto ‘his stuff’. How would he describe it? I’d then ask some of the following to go deeper:
- What does your body know?
- What is it trying to tell you?
- Can you remember a time when you had this feeling before?
- What was happening then?
- What are you holding on to, that belongs back there?
- What are you trying to defend or protect?
- Is this feeling / situation still valid or useful?
- What do you want / need to let go of?
- Feel deep into yourself. What have you learned that you didn’t know before?
- How can you use this to inform your present?
- How would you like to feel and think now about your current situation?
I’d then invite him to gently open his eyes and make notes before we explore further any new insights.
Lindsey Wheeler, Director, Awakening Creativity
Using a metaphor can be an effective way to help Sunil explore underlying beliefs and values. It’s a great approach for bypassing the conscious mind and tapping into unconscious drivers influencing his behaviour. Asking powerful questions can help him gain insights into his beliefs, values and early life experiences, identify limiting beliefs or behaviours and find more supportive ways to approach issues.
The ChrisLin Method (a therapeutic technique working with the client’s imagery and a questioning technique that centres wholly on the creative piece) facilitates this process with questions that help Sunil gain a deeper understanding of his image and what it represents.
Questions could include: ‘What is the purpose of this part’, ‘How old does the image feel when it’s not good enough?’, ‘If this image had a weight how heavy would it be?’, ‘What does the image gain from keeping things the same?’, ‘What needs to happen to give the image more choice’, ‘If the image had a voice, what would it say?’
Having surfaced his unconscious drivers, Sunil can assess whether these are still serving him well and make choices about what he does differently to help him show up more authentically, with stronger boundaries and more self-esteem in the future.
To conclude I’d ask him: ‘Is there anything you need to do to the image to represent the change that has happened?’
Encouraging him to make a change to the image to represent the learnings or shifts he has made will help him embed the new perspective and behaviours into his subconscious mind and build sustainable behavioural change.
Overall, this is a powerful approach to coaching and personal development that can help people access and overcome, in a deeper way, limiting beliefs and behaviours and realise their full potential.