FINDING YOUR OWN COACHING STYLE

 FINDING YOUR OWN COACHING STYLE

As a coach it is valuable to read widely to understand the breadth and depth of psychology, philosophy and humanity. This seems to be to be an essential pre-requisite  to understanding and supporting people, and meeting elements 3,4,5,and 6 of the necessary and sufficient conditions of  change, explored below.

For constructive change to occur, it is necessary that these conditions exist and continue over a period of time: (1) Two persons are in psychological contact. (2) The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious. (3) The second person, whom we shall term the coach, is congruent or integrated in the relationship. (4) The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client. (5) The coach experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference and endeavors to communicate this experience to the client. (6) The communication to the client of the coach's empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.

I have recently completed Person-Centred Counselling Psychology: An Introduction by Ewan Gillon and really recommend it. It has made me reflect on my own coaching style, values and beliefs as I progress beyond my ICF training into the real world of coaching and the many different views, philosophies as well as needs and expectations of the profession and our clients.

I found it really useful to compare and contrast the following, and consider which elements I am drawn to in my own style.

HUMANISTIC / PERSON-CENTERED COACHING

Key thinkers: Otto Rank, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Viktor Frankl and Rollo May.
The goal of Person-centered coaching is to provide clients with an opportunity to develop a sense of self where they can realize how their attitudes, feelings and behavior are being negatively affected.

My inclination is towards the Carl Rogers' person-centered approach in the belief the people are not ill or broken and so they do not need diagnosis or direction. My experience as a coach is that they generally need the safety and space to explore their own thoughts and feelings. The judgement and advice of a coach is not helpful to people who may already feel judged, obligated, subjugated, directed, confused by family, friends, work, community or culture. No wonder people turn to mindfulness as an opportunity to remove oneself from the world and reflect.

However passively expecting people to 'work stuff out for themselves' by simply listening does not seem helpful. It is akin to watching a drowning person try and work out how to save themselves, without feeling the need to intervene. I think it is incumbent on the coach to offer tools, models, perspectives for the client to pick and explore what works best for them. For example taking a MBTI or Ocean-Big5 personality assessment may be enlightening for a client without being directive by the coach. As another example: thinking about relative priorities in the Life-Wheel (home, work, family, friends, health, career, spirit) can be thought provoking and informative without being prescriptive.

I am therefore inclined toward the experiential / existential approach which seeks to explore areas which the client indicates are important than to simply let the flow of conversation distract us from the rocks and depths that may be on the surface or hidden below. This intervention may be outside the norm of person-centered coaching and take queues from Psychodynamic coaching or Behavioural coaching without becoming a process of discussion, diagnoses, prognosis and prescription which is associated with making broken people fixed, ill people well or some judgement of normal.

PSYCHODYNAMIC COACHING

Key thinkers: Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Alfred Adler, Anna Freud, and Erik Erikson.
The psychodynamic approach includes all the theories in psychology that see human functioning based upon the interaction of drives and forces within the person, particularly unconscious, and between the different structures of the personality.

I think it is wrong for the person-centered approach to ignore the subconscious.  It seems to me ridiculous to have a conversation entirely at a superficial surface level. Clearly the direction, content and dept of any conversation must be guided by the client. This is not a doctor-patient or teacher-pupil relationship, but one of equals in a positive relationship exploring thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours of the person and their world.

The psychodynamic approach does have merit where it seeks to understand how past and present experience impacts current and future perception and growth. This however should be pursued as exploration of what is right for the client, rather than what is wrong according to the coach.

This may include consideration of dreams and their meanings (according to the client) or observation of defensiveness (Denial, Repression, Projection, Displacement, Regression, Sublimation, Rationalization, Reaction Formation, Identification with the Aggressor). This is about exploring perceptions, issues and options of the client not judgement or direction of the coach.

BEHAVIOURAL COACHING

Key thinkers: Albert Bandura, Steven C. Hayes, Ivan Pavlov, B. F. Skinner, John B. Watson, Montrose Wolf, Joseph Wolpe
This approach seeks to identify and help change potentially self-destructive or unhealthy behaviors. It functions on the idea that all behaviors are learned and that unhealthy behaviors can be changed.

Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” He is talking, far more eloquently than I ever could, about the value of repetition. However, clients are not lab-rats to be taken out of context and examined (reference to B. F. Skinner) or dogs who salivate when the bell rings for dinner (reference to Ivan Pavlov). So our approach to habit, routine, behaviour needs to be person-centered, but it woud be wrong to ignore the impact of culture, environment and circumstance on our reactions, behaviours and habits.

In reality any routine or habit proposed or prescribed by a coach to a client cannot be anything more than a suggestion. Whether or not this is accepted and practiced is entirely for the client. To that extent I see no harm in a coach suggesting options for the client to consider; it is part of being both a relationship and a resource for the client. This however has to be a conscious suggestion rather than an unconscious or sub-conscious one (reference Milton Hyland Erickson) unless the client has specifically agreed hypnotherapy.

EXISTENTIAL COACHING

Key thinkers: Sartre, Kierkegaard, De Beauvoir and Fanon.
Existential coaching emerged from existential therapy, which focuses on the human condition as a whole. The approach is informed by existential thinkers and is the only form of psychotherapy based in philosophy. Existential work looks at what it means to be an individual, how we can use our inner wisdom to resolve issues, and how we can view our struggles as inherently human rather than as dysfunction or defect.

This seems to me to be closely aligned to my comments above about experiential / existential variation on person-centered coaching. During the period of covid and lockdown 2020/21 many people have been reflective and philosophical and this can be valuable in the appraisal of self, goals and purpose. The key issue for me is that coaching should be practical and supportive to the client and go beyond the examination of 'here and now' which is important, but follow the clients pursuit of 'where next'.

CONTACT

If anyone is interested in this topic email me tim@adaptconsultingcompany.com I am happy to share ideas and guides on coaching and change for people, teams, projects and organisations.

Tim Rogers
MBA (Management Consultancy) & Change Practitioner
ICF Trained Coach IoD Business Mentor
https://www.adaptconsultingcompany.com/coaching-and-mentoring/


REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

https://mick-cooper.squarespace.com/new-blog/2019/4/2/carl-rogerss-core-conditions-are-they-necessary-and-sufficient

Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045357

https://www.simplypsychology.org/client-centred-therapy.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychodynamics

https://www.rivier.edu/academics/blog-posts/an-introduction-to-behavioral-psychology/

https://www.simplypsychology.org/behaviorism.html

https://psychology.jrank.org/pages/229/Existential-Psychology.html

MY READING LIST AS A COACH

https://adaptcoaching.blogspot.com/p/books.html