As we enter the New Year and embrace new beginnings, Jane Brendgen delves into reflexivity, the core skill on her journey to APECS Masters accreditation
At the time of writing this column, it is January 2025, a time of year when many of us as coaches, and our clients, reflect on what feels most important for the year ahead.
We create resolutions, intentions or goals which align with our values, desires for change and our dreams.
My thoughts turn to the Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision (APECS) Master Executive coach accreditation process that I’m currently engaging with.
I began this dialogic inquiry-based journey in November last year where I met with my two assessing dialogue partners for our first 90-minute conversation. Our second, in February, is when the outcome of the process is decided (reader, she was successful!)
In preparation for this meeting, I’m currently working on a 3000-word reflective piece which needs to demonstrate my coaching philosophy and who I am as a coach.
This process is offering me an opportunity to expand my meaning-making, extend my capacities and capabilities, uncover biases, personal and professional limitations, and identify growing edges and what’s needed to support the continuing evolution of my instrument of self.
Reflexivity
The core skill required for this level of accreditation is reflexivity, which is considered implicit to the continual process of personal and professional development. As coaches, we know the value and importance of our reflective practice in supervision where we engage with after-the-event inquiry.
In contrast, reflexivity occurs in the moment and requires a depth of real-time awareness of emerging intrapersonal processes such as perceptions, emotional reactions, somatic responses, thoughts, judgements, biases and impulses. It also requires sensitivity and discernment regarding interpersonal processes related to what’s happening in the relational field.
For me, questions that reflect the complexity of this include: What’s the impact of my interiority on the quality of psychological safety of the relational space? What’s emerging in me in relation to this client? What’s known in my body when I attune to the client? Am I more or less emotionally and consciously available to my client? What might be supporting or inhibiting contact between us? How is the client responding to what it is I’m saying? What am I learning about myself and about my client as I listen deeply?
Self-witnessing
Another level of self-awareness is self-witnessing, which is the capacity to witness upcoming events without being compelled to act in certain ways.
Here, mental and emotional processes are perceived as events happening in the bodymind where the instrument of self has considerable freedom to make decisions about how to relate to these events (Jordan, 2018). In adult development terms this is implying that a significant degree of self-related processes have become object, ie, known to awareness.
Two examples
Two coaching sessions come to mind, one which illustrates the learning potential of reflectivity and the other of reflexivity. I’m using pseudonyms to safeguard the identity of my clients.
- Taylor – Taylor is one of my adult development coaching clients. I’m aware that his nervous system is relationally wired in a fear-based avoidant attachment style and I see this playing out in the space between us. More recently I noticed that the coaching seemed to be plateauing and I was feeling the stuckness in the system. I took this to my supervisor.
The question I was holding was related to possible unseen attachment entanglements between us. My childhood environment configured mine as anxious and, in my personal life my ex-partner was avoidant. I described my experience of coaching Taylor and mentioned that I was unable to feel him. My coaching is becoming increasingly somatic and, through attuning to my clients I’m able to feel their emotions and the energetic shifts in their nervous systems. My supervisor saw that I was actively ‘trying to help’ Taylor and that this was likely to be keeping myself and my client stuck in an unconscious reactive relational dance.
This pattern is familiar to me and it has changed significantly over the years through deep personal inquiry and therapeutic work. And yet, in this context I was unable to see that this part of me had claimed a sizeable piece of awareness and was enacting old relational habits associated with trying to connect. I also realised that I was actually feeling him, as relational distance to himself and to me.
This was revelatory! The next time I met with Taylor I consciously chose what Nicholas Janni calls a backward circle, in contrast to a forward circle. When we move forwards our energy is directed upwards and outwards. In contrast, the backward circle is shifting our attention downwards, into our base and our feet where an embodied grounding happens. It also involves a radical surrendering to what’s arising in the moment through holding a ‘don’t-know mind’ perspective and trusting the intelligence in the field.
I brought an expanded awareness and energy into the relational system of Jane–Taylor. It was remarkable to see how quickly this shifted the stuckness and enabled him to think with greater clarity and depth and take more responsibility for himself.
- Jenny – During a coaching session with Jenny, a team leader, she mentioned the challenges associated with managing both upwards and downwards and how she approached a situation that was recently stressful for her. Unseen shadow parts were seemingly playing out in this context and I offered a reflection for her consideration.
The conversation continued to unfold for a few more seconds before I suddenly noticed a painful tightness in my chest and the inner voice of wisdom that I’ve come to trust said “we need to pause here and go back a few steps”. I paused the unfolding dialogue and mentioned the tightness I was experiencing. I suggested we backtrack to that moment when I mentioned shadow.
I gently opened the inquiry into what was happening between us. She shared her response to my use of the word shadow which was the first time she’d heard it used in a developmental context. She felt safe enough to say she thought I’d said that she was shady and took this to mean I was saying she was disingenuous and manipulative.
Ouch! My body was on fire with difficult sensations associated with the turbulence in the relational field. I was fortunately able to remain grounded in a self-witnessing position and made choices free of the interference of self-referential thoughts.
We stayed with what Jenny had made the word mean and how she was feeling as a consequence. I shared that I’d messed up in the offering of the reflection and apologised for my unskilfulness. This reparation enabled us to move more deeply into our live relational experience which exemplified a pattern that she recognised was playing out with her direct reports and was contributing to the leadership challenges she was experiencing. Serendipitously, this gave her the opportunity to experiment with a more authentic way of communicating in a real-time scenario with me. It was poignant, powerful and strengthened our working alliance.
Reflexivity takes our understanding of the nature of our practice as coaches to a much deeper level. It’s the territory of mutual transformation where we become more skilled at actively regulating elements of our experience and making conscious choices in the moment, for the benefit of ourselves and our clients.
References
- l Nicholas Janni, speaking on Coaches Rising podcast episode 216 – Coaching from Attunement.
- l Jordan, T. (2018) Late Stages of Adult Development: One linear sequence or several parallel branches? Integral Review, 14 (1).
- Jane Brendgen is founder of Compassionate Cultures. She is an executive coach specialising in authentic leadership, adult development and therapeutic coaching. She is a mindfulness supervisor. – and now an APECS Master Executive Coach!