My approach to coaching
My approach is collaborative, client-led, fundamentally non-judgmental and confidential. I create a safe space for sharing, in which I listen and offer questions, insights, and guiding frameworks. The client brings in their identities, stories, challenges and self-reflection.
Actively listening to the client, holding them in an unconditional positive regard, and asking questions bringing them to a place of deeper but also critical introspection will enable a change that is personal to them and not about fulfilling society’s or anyone else’s expectations.
It is when the client knows that full, uninterrupted attention is promised to her that it can produce new thinking – particularly critical thinking.
I support individuals in identifying their own solutions, rather than telling them what to do.
It is my client that sets the agenda and depending on it, we may engage down a more pragmatic route – for instance to identify and work on the steps ahead to achieve their career change, based on their strengths and values. Or we may go down a more introspective route – for example to deconstruct limited beliefs and untrue assumptions they might hold about themselves or others, and how to challenge the narrative that these may serve.
My understanding of power, privilege, historical and social legacies further informs how I coach – read more below.
Political vision
I believe that when problems in the coaching room are reduced to the personal (in)ability to deal with situations, there is a risk to invisibilize what individuals may be faced with, like racial or sexual discrimination for example.
Ignoring the social, political and historical contexts can perpetuate an oppression. While recognizing and challenging them can serve to emancipate.
Coaching tools, practice and literature have mostly been developed in the West, in privileged spheres, and often with a corporate, individualistic mindset. I try to unpack what a politically-informed and critical perspective can bring to rethink and improve coaching.
Aware of power and privilege, I work to understand and acknowledge my client’s particular reality in the larger context. This includes looking at oppressive structures – and narratives – that are in place, whether ingrained in society, in others, or in ourselves.
This critical perspective also means that I continue to self-reflect and discuss how my role and identity can affect the coaching relationship with my client.
I believe that a political vision to coaching can contribute to social change. Read about my initiative Accessible Coaching for Social Justice.
How is my approach different from...
... regular coaching?
Transformational Coaching draws on psychology and the humanities to create a more sustainable impact. It can help emancipate us from unwanted patterns of behavior, thought or emotion, rather than focusing only on the realization of a concrete objective.
... (psycho)therapy?
Transformational Coaching does not pathologize people. It is forward looking. The working relationship is horizontal and collaborative – there is no expert/non-expert dynamic.
Coaching can also accompany or follow psychotherapy, in order to explore more practical ways to deal with what has come up during a client’s therapy work.
... counselling?
I do not seek to counsel people on what they should do. I may of course use my knowledge and experience to inform my conversations with clients. I may ask for permission to offer advice, but this is not what forms our coaching relationship.
I believe that people need ownership over their decisions for them to work for them. This can be blocked if solutions are only the result of taking someone’s advice. It can also lead to conforming. I prefer prioritizing an approach for the client to find their own way forward.
I am however happy to include counselling to a limited extent, in situations where my professional experience and knowledge has a direct relevance to what is being faced, and when it is wished for by the client.
Methodologies and resources
In my coaching I may use classic coaching tools, such as the Star Model, the Grow Model, and the Spacer Model. However, I don’t focus on them.
Based on my training to certify as a Transformational coach, but also Existential coach and Group coach, I will tailor my use of the concepts below depending on my client’s personality, wishes, and the challenges brought to the table.
Providing my client continuous, unfatigued attention, without constant interruption, will allow her to unpack her thinking for herself and come to new realizations.
As Simone Weil said, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”.
Presence is the ability to sit in silence, with full attention for the other. It is making all efforts to not rush to questions and instead leave the client develop independent thinking. It is inspired by the work of thinkers like Nancy Kline (“Time to Think”) on the power of effective listening and the promise not to interrupt.
Kline wrote: “Change where your attention is and you change where another person’s mind is. Attention generates thinking.”
Read more on “Time to Think” by Nancy Kline.
Transactional analysis is a form of social psychology. It was developed in the 1950s by Eric Berne and is about interpersonal behaviors and patterns, or how we relate to and interact with one another.
I may work with:
- Facilitating an understanding of the child-like, parent-like, or adult-like “ego state” (a set of feelings accompanied by behaviors) that we, and the people we interact with, may be reproducing in particular relationships
- The concept of life positions: positive, superior, inferior and equal negative
- The Karpman drama triangle: the dysfunctional dynamic fuelled by conflict between people taking up the roles of persecutor, victim, or rescuer
- The “life scripts” shaped in the first years of our lives that define the “commands,” “drivers,” “programs,” “injunctions” and “permissions” that influence the way we are
- Games analysis, exploring when we unconsciously repeat transactions and rules with others, negatively impacting us, and at times keeping us in an unhealthy comfort zone
Read more: Dr. Eric Berne “Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy”
For a digestible overview, see here.
Existential coaching explores our personal understanding of our human condition. It touches on the big questions in life that have to do with freedom, death, absurdity, responsibility, meaning, authenticity and values. It is grounded in philosophy, informed by thinkers like Fanon, De Beauvoir, Sartre and others.
Coaching from an existential perspective means focusing less on tools and more on sheer introspection. We explore responsibility for our choices and the complexities of our crises in order to empower ourselves to own up to our constant personal evolution.
We reflect on our lived experiences without trying to interpret them, and uncover the absurd, dominant, or complex narratives that we may or may not identify with.
This approach to coaching is transformational in that it enables clients to revisit how they know themselves and new ways of being in this world.
Read more on this approach from existential coach Sasha van Deurzen-Smith.
I am guided and particularly inspired by the “person-centered” therapy approach originally practiced by American psychologist Carl Rogers in the 1950s, and which is based on holding the client in unconditional positive regard, showing empathy and working on an equal footing.
Read more here.
This work is partly inspired by Gestalt Therapy and Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).
Specific techniques include “future pacing,” which is a walking exercise where the client visualizes a time in the future when an objective has been achieved, and walks back in time all the way to the present moment, naming the various steps taken and emotions felt. Read more here.
“Chair work” (or “perceptual positioning”) where the client seeks to experience someone else’s perspective, or even allows for his “inner selves” to talk to one another, for instance their emotional self with their rational self. It paves the way for different narratives to surface, helps understanding and compassion. Read more here.
“Constellation work” comes from family therapy and is done using and moving objects impersonating people, characters, emotions or challenges.
Purely imaginational metaphor work is also a powerful, liberating tool to visualize the impact of a challenge, where it sits, what needs to happen, and what are concrete ways out for the client. Metaphor work can benefit from so-called “clean language” – a technique used not to pollute the client’s introspection and involving minimal contributions from the coach side.
Derived from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the coaching alternative seeks to improve emotional regulations and coping strategies. It implies understanding the extent to which how we think and feel impacts our interpretations of events, our behaviors and their outcomes.
In this context, we can work on ‘negative automatic thoughts’, which are the immediate feelings, emotions or images that come as a response to a trigger, and which may fuel anxiety, stress, or low self-esteem.
We may touch on limiting beliefs, which are opinions we hold as true, either about ourselves, others, or our worldview.
Read more here.