We know from our earlier research with 130 executive coaches that coaches often experience critical moments in their work. By critical moment we mean a sudden shift or interruption to a coaching conversation one that feels significant and urgent, exciting or disturbing. It seems that coaches frequently find these critical moments to be turning points in their work with clients; either they are generative or they lead to a deterioration in the coaching relationship. We are, however, aware that little research has been done in the field of coaching that explores the experience of coaching from the client’s point of view and no research that investigates critical moments in the coaching relationship from the client’s perspective. So we embarked on a fourth research study to investigate whether coaching clients were aware of critical moments and, if they were, what their experience of these moments was.
The coach’s perspective
Our previous research with coaches has shown that critical moments are usually:
- unexpected and unforeseen by the coach;
- associated with heightened emotions for the client and the coach;
- tension-provoking in the relationship between coach and client;
- frequently associated with feelings of anxiety and doubt about how to respond in the moment
Coaches often reported that their clients were experiencing insight and learning during or after these moments, although sometimes they led to the breakdown of the relationship and even the termination of the coaching.When comparing moments that resulted in learning and insight with moments that resulted in the breakdown of the coaching relationship, we observed that the key difference seemed to be the presence or absence of shared reflection at the point of tension. When coach and client were both able to refl ect on what was happening in the moment or had just happened, learning and insight were often the result. When either the coach or the client allowed their anxiety to result in, for example, aggression or withdrawal, a breakdown in the relationship often resulted.
From a theoretical perspective the research demonstrates the importance of the dynamics of the co-created relationship between coach and client. This research also highlighted the importance of what is called “reflexivity” in coaching: the ability to experience and reflect on one’s inner world at points of heightened emotion.
The client’s view
Would coaching clients report the same experience? To find out, we used two different enquiries to get first-hand accounts of clients’ experience of critical moments in the coaching relationship. The first stage was a short survey asking participants whether they had experienced a critical moment as a coaching client and, if they had, to write us a short description of it. The survey was sent to a sample of approximately 10,000 managers who were members of the Ashridge Alumni and around 150 graduates of Ashridge’s Coaching for Organisation Consultants programme. The second stage of enquiry consisted of interviews with selected individuals who had described a critical moment and with some who had indicated that they had not experienced a critical moment at all. We then coded each critical moment to identify themes and significant participant comments. The whole team took part in the coding to make sure there was enough consistency. There were 40 codes, and raters were encouraged to use as many of them as they could per critical moment.
Findings:
A critical moment for the researchers
The first surprise was that in total we received only 67 completed responses. What’s more, 20 (a third of respondents) indicated that they had not experienced a critical moment in their coaching. The issue of critical moments was clearly not as significant for coaching clients as it was for the coaches. We were intrigued. We decided to include in our phone interviews some participants who had not experienced a critical moment.
Slowly growing insight in an atmosphere of support
Each of these individuals reported positive experiences of coaching. They all felt that their coaching had been useful in helping them to tackle issues and problems in their work roles. They did not experience an abrupt or sudden moment of insight or learning. Instead, they each reported that they experienced a gradual process of insight and realisation about their issue during the coaching process. They each felt that, on reflection, they had learnt something about themselves as a result of the coaching experience. One person described it in the following way: “No, I have never felt exhilarated by anything that happened in a coaching session. It was more a sense of support. I certainly haven’t crossed any critical barriers in such sessions.”
Self-awareness and insight emerge from critical moments
Across the 59 reported critical moments, respondents were most likely to report that the critical moment contained an instance when they became more aware of themselves, their pattern of behaviour or the consequences of their behaviour in their organisations. Many participants referred to a “realisation” or “revelation” (16 of the 40 codes, taking an amazing 43 per cent of our coding). As with the experience of coaches, these moments often emerged suddenly or abruptly in the process.
There were two major areas of personal realisation:
Personal realisations about issues (18 per cent of assigned codes). This includes new knowledge, understanding or insight into a situation, understanding of others’ situations or ideas about strategies. For example: “It was related to my confronting a challenging issue and being concerned about my ability to deal with it, and also the sense of liberation I felt to be able to navigate my way to a resolution. It was very charged and quite emotional as I had to face up to an issue that in the past I had chosen to avoid, but the process of expressing it verbally helped enormously, coupled with the positive and supportive environment created by my coach.” “In solving a problem that was causing some doubt in my ability, I had a breakthrough in understanding that my approach to this situation was based on previous experience and that an alternative was out there that could stretch me as an individual to achieve greater long-term results. This gave me the confidence to tackle other issues without a preset agenda.”
Personal realisations into and about self (20 per cent of assigned codes). This includes recognising unhelpful patterns of relating, personal hang-ups and impact on others:“Something that had been holding me back suddenly seemed such an easy thing to overcome.” “Following a discussion on my response to an individual that I was having extreme difficulties in managing, it became clear to me that my response was one that I had been repeating throughout my career. Changing that one response has changed my entire management style over time. The results have been tangible”. These realisations or insights were often accompanied by strong emotions, including “painful awareness”, “elation”, “liberation” and “relief”. They were usually about the clients themselves, which seems to support our earlier inference that the area of focus (personal or external) of the client may influence the likelihood of a critical moment emerging.
Few references to the coach or their actions
We were again surprised that few of the respondents who described positive critical moments referred to anything the coach had done at around this time. This is in marked contrast to the research with coaches, where participants nearly always described their own actions and interventions before, during and after the critical moment. We can only speculate about the reason for this. Realisation, insight and awareness come from within the person. The client may not therefore recognise or feel that the coach played a direct role in this process.
Furthermore, we believe that the emergence of this heightened understanding happens only when there is a strong coaching relationship (as research into psychotherapy and coaching outcomes indicates), in which case the client may find it difficult to identify specific interventions or behaviours of the coach leading up to or during the critical moment. Interestingly, in the case of negative critical moments, all felt that the coach’s unhelpful or insensitive actions, such as would damage the trust in the relationship, had led to the negative outcome.
Participants use metaphors to describe critical moments
We became intrigued by the way participants used metaphors to describe their experience of critical moments. Frequently, they used images or ideas from one area of life, or conceptual domain, to help them to describe their emerging experience.
The conceptual domains that were used most frequently were:
- Revelation (eg, “light bulb moments”)
- Visual (eg, “how other people view me”)
- Journey (eg, “the sort of avenues that were open to me”)
- Physical space (eg, “point in time”)
- Agency (eg, “in charge of your own destiny”)
We were reminded of Aristotle’s distinction between two fundamentally different forms of change. He argued that change could consist of:
- Movement from A to B or quantitative/qualitative additions, sometimes called “progress” or “a journey”
- A change in nature or substance, sometimes called “a transformation”
In reviewing the clusters of metaphors, we observed that they varied on these two dimensions and on the dimensions of support and challenge, with the overwhelming majority of metaphors hinting at the second form of change and at challenging change – that is, at learning through realisation/revelation, or the acquisition of new insight. Although many clients do experience moments that they would describe as critical, many do not. In other ways, this research supports the findings from our earlier research with coaches: critical moments seem to afford points of realisation, insight and heightened awareness for the client.
We would argue that the absence of references to the coach’s role is linked to the presence of a quality relationship (or working alliance) between coach and client, rather than specific techniques or actions on the part of the coach.
References
See our publications:
- A Day, E De Haan, E Blass, C Sills and C Bertie, Critical Moments in the Coaching Relationship: Does Supervision Help? (in press)
- E De Haan, “Magic moments”, Coaching at Work, vol 1, issue 7, pages 49-52.
- E De Haan, “Point of impact”, Coaching at Work, vol 2, issue 3, pages 40-42.
- E De Haan, “‘I doubt therefore I coach’ – critical moments in coaching practice”, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (in press – spring 2008)
- E De Haan, “‘I struggle and emerge’ – critical moments of experienced coaches”, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research (in press – spring 2008)
See G Lakoff, “The contemporary theory of metaphor”, in A Ortony (ed), Metaphor and Thought (2nd ed), Cambridge University Press, 1993, pages 202-251
Aristotle spoke of “accidental” versus “substantial” change. See Physics, Book III
Key findings
A total of 67 past and present clients of executive coaching wrote to Ashridge about the critical moments they experienced. Eight were interviewed by the Centre for Coaching. Analysis of these clients’ critical moments indicates that:
- Critical moments are less common for clients than for their coaches
- When critical moments occur they are generally positive and part of the internal process of the client, unless they were provoked by concrete actions by coaches that the clients regarded as unhelpful or insensitive
- Critical moments are often linked to sudden realisations and insight, both by explicit reference and by the metaphors used
We conclude from these results that clients often relate their positive outcomes to an increase in insight and realisation, which is not a trivial conclusion as many approaches in executive coaching are geared towards other outcomes (such as problem-solving, strengthening of existing solutions, remedial help or active support).
Volume 2, Issue 6