Do you know what’s wrong with you? Good. Then you probably don’t need a coach. Because coaching isn’t about fixing what’s wrong, and coaches are not doctors. Coaching is inside out thinking, not outside in labelling. And if you think I’m on my soap box, you’re probably right.
What seems to be the problem?
Increasingly, would-be clients show up for leadership coaching with an alarming list of diagnoses, many of them beginning with capital letters. A Chief Executive thinks she might be suffering from Burn Out, and she’s definitely got Imposter Syndrome. Her Chairman thinks she behaves like a Victim and her direct reports call her a Micromanager. Someone in HR has told the Chief Finance Officer she’s too Task Focussed, and a Transformation Director’s 360 says she’s Conflict Avoidant. And that’s before we move into the territory of psychometric testing with its range of labels – a Head of Audit is afraid that she’s too Blue, and a national Sales Director needs to dial up the J in her Myers Briggs profile…. You get the picture!
We live in an age of self-help but also one of helplessness. We have no time to reflect but have seemingly infinite sources of information to inform our thinking. I’m reminded, by a well written piece of Anthony Montgomery’s in The Psychologist magazine, that many of the concepts that get bandied around are fragile. They have been commercialized and fed to us in bite-sized chunks. We willingly wear the labels, but actually, we should be treating them as starting points for discussion, not end points.
Different approaches to listening
As a leadership coach, I work to move with my client beyond the labels and into how they feel. Describing feelings is part of an “inside out” approach. Your description of how it feels to be you, on the inside, is produced by the one and only expert, ie you! Embracing a label or a diagnosis which you’ve read about or which someone else has used about you is the opposite. The fit is bound to be approximate at best, because the concept didn’t originate with you.
Being able to describe how it feels to be you, and to be listened to without someone judging you or contradicting you is a pretty special way to work. But many relationships, including our work ones, put the listener (the non-expert outsider) into an evaluative position. They are expected to form an opinion about what you (the expert insider) are saying. This puts enormous pressure on the act of listening, and it’s hardly unbiased! It’s then a small step for the listener to form an opinion or judgment about you. And once you have been judged in that way, you’re moving further away from a constructive relationship and clear communication.
By contrast, family and friends relationships can push the listener into a comforting (compassionate or contradictory) position. When you share painful feelings about work with family or friends, the listener may feel moved to show compassion. This confirms to you that it is all pretty dreadful and none of it your fault. Alternatively, they may tell you it’s not as bad as it seems. The jury is out as to the absolute intentions of the listener in this case, but it is beyond doubt that they are contradicting you and negating your experience.
Whether it’s driven by a need to judge or to comfort, this kind of biased listening is hardly helpful if you want to change your situation and how you feel about it.
Coaching – listening to your inside out thinking
An alternative to this is listening to learn. If coaches are expert in anything, this is our core skill. We listen to your inside out thinking so that we can learn, rather than evaluate or comfort. We take time, suspend judgement and build a relationship. In a coaching conversation I’m listening to learn, to understand, what it’s like to be you, and to get alongside you in your inside out thinking. I’m not listening in order to diagnose and fix you. I’m not listening in order to comfort you and make you feel better about your pain. I’m not listening in order to contradict you and tell you that you’ve imagined someone’s reactions, or that you’re competent at things you say you’re not good at. And neither will I say that the best thing would be for you to work til you’re 60 if you’re telling me that you’re ready to retire at 45.
Valuing your uniqueness
Invariably after a couple of coaching conversations, clients feel less as though they are wearing other people’s labels and more as if they’re experiencing a mixture of sensations, thoughts, and impacts which is unique to them. If you value your uniqueness, and would like to understand it more, get in touch for a no strings, no-diagnosis, chat about executive coaching.