Blog Post

Getting the couch out of coaching

performance Oct 29, 2020
Photo by Mitchell Gaiser on Unsplash

We are not sure exactly when psychology and psychotherapy started to dominate coaching, but they have been prevalent in mainstream approaches since coaching emerged as a distinct discipline. They also inform the worldview of the coaching accreditation bodies that act as “quality control” in our fledgling profession. But beyond being the butt of Woody Allen jokes, a great coach often has to unlearn some of the psychodynamic principles when learning to coach properly and resist the endless probing in search for childhood memories. The 50 minute hour, the transparent therapist, obsession with interpreting everything, the strict adherence to boundaries and excessive contracting “all feel better suited to the couch than the coach”[1]

 It is puzzling when you think that in almost every other sector, from sports to the arts, coaches are also there to correct, construct, cajole, motivate, discipline and improve their coachees. Yet the mantra of most executive coaching approaches seems to be almost exclusively non-directive, whereby the coach is simply there to create safety for the client to explore his or her internal world and help them make connections between assumptions created in that world and resultant observable behaviours. Whilst we completely agree that coaching must focus on the interior worlds of I and WE, it is not all we need. Not everybody who comes for coaching has some unresolved cognitive dissonance between their conscious and subconscious realms, their present and their past that once dealt with, will catapult them to great leadership.

 And there’s another problem with much coaching currently on offer - it is not very brain-friendly. We now understand the neurobiology of neural genesis and synaptic connection as it refers to learning new things. We know the adage that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect something new or move from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence. Yet coaches rarely stand there like the piano teacher, metaphorical ruler at the ready, to make sure the scales are being practised. Much of coaching is not actually that mysterious. Many coaches, highly skilled as they may be, are not Svengali figures, ourselves included. Success is more about putting in the hard yards, practice, repetition, boredom sometimes, effort always. The skill of an extraordinary, rather than a good, coach relies less on insightful interpretation and more on finding creative ways to make desired behaviours stick. 

So against this backdrop we find it puzzling that there appears to be little else on offer, and almost nothing that is systemic in the way it’s formulated and delivered, such that every coachee has a broadly similar set of experiences and buyers of coaching know what they’re getting. In fact a cursory glance at the 2020 competency framework used by coaching accreditation behemoth ICF shows specifically that a failure to allow the individual to choose the topic for each coaching session is an automatic fail. This is very curious. In other fields of life, there is an element to which the coach, trainer or other form of instructor is expected to say what they think the individual or team needs. Yet for the ICF it is a definite no-no. We think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But however one chooses to define what coaching is and how it differs from its developmental cousins of mentoring, training, counselling and consulting, the most curious thing of all to us is that it remains primarily an exercise that happens above the neck. Coaching conversations are just that it seems - conversations. Very little else is looked at. From an anatomical perspective that seems to limit the field of view. We are all built the same - systems of interconnected brains, organs, nervous and hormonal systems that can be harnessed to work more effectively to boost performance. 

 James Parsons

James is a Founding Partner of Defy Expectations and brings over 10 years' experience in both career and leadership coaching. He works with business leaders, entrepreneurs, founders and third sector CEOs on performance and leadership issues, and individuals on career management, as well as designing career management courses for organisations. 

Access Career Discoveries here

www.defyexpectations.co.uk

 

 

[1] Peltier, B. (2010). The psychology of executive coaching: Theory and application (2nd ed.). Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.