The Burditt Lectures announced the winning entries at its first awards ceremony at London’s BFI Southbank. Liz Hall reviews the two standout submissions
Humility, soul-searching, deep care for the client and profound learning for both client and coach were there in spades in the two winning submissions at the first Burditt Lectures.
At a ceremony to launch the awards at the BFI in London’s Southbank, Jenny Campbell was awarded first prize and Miranda Rock second prize. Peter Burditt, whose brainchild the awards were, donated the money, and the event was hosted by the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC).
“We were looking for good coaching practice and examples of transformations or interventions which had had a long-lasting effect on the client, had in some way acted as a growth stimulant and change catalyst for the coach, and which challenged prevailing orthodoxy and extended theoretical perspectives,” said Burditt, one of the three judges.
Entrants were invited to write 5,000 words on the “single coaching intervention – style, belief, approach, reinforcement, acknowledgement and so on – that has yielded the biggest, most sustainable, positive shift or change in a client’s behaviour or state of well-being”.
The judges
- Peter Burditt, senior executive coach and founder, Strategic Development Consultants
- Anne Archer, coach and faculty member, Academy of Executive Coaching
- Liz Hall, coach and editor of Coaching at Work
Choosing the winners
The judges were looking for evidence of:
- Authenticity
- Documentation of impact and effect of intervention on client and coach
- Learning emanating from the chosen ‘case study’ for the coach [where their comfort zones were challenged]
- Learning for the profession
- Lasting change for them or the client
- Reflection, structure, model, spontaneity of intervention
- The coach having put into practice and built on a theoretical foundation, expanding the ‘model or approach’
- Description of the ‘experience’ that coach and client ‘enjoyed’
The winners
1st prize (£3,000)
Jenny Campbell, director, lifetimeswork, Scotland
Campbell wrote the submission with her client, the chair of a charitable, faith-based organisation, to help her “learn about the subsequent long-term effect” (of the transformation) on her client.
The breakthrough was sparked by Campbell’s choice to share her impression of the client after the first session in which she felt “patronised”.
She experienced the “most profound moment in her coaching career” during the second session. She had an insight that her client was quick at processing information, then persuading others this was so, becoming impatient and condescending when it did not work.
Sharing this word ‘condescended’ sparked off a change in the client’s demeanour. “He said this was against his core values. This was his first real question of himself in this whole conversation,” wrote Campbell.
The client wrote: “It is rare in life for there to be an alloyed exchange…sometimes only that spiritual connection, painful as it often is, will answer. Perhaps this is the only way that what I see as the depth work around matters of ego, self-image, humility and openness can proceed.”
The client learned: “It is important to listen carefully to other people”; “humility is a very under-rated virtue in professional life”; “deeper learning is often, perhaps always, accompanied by pain, honesty and risk-taking on the part of the coach can give something profound and lasting to the client, beginning with opening the gate for the client to also be honest and take a risk”, and – a learning loved by the judges – “the connection between coach and client need not be perfect…for it to be extremely valuable”.
Campbell learned: “That my own sense of transformation on behalf of my client depended on my willingness to transform myself.”
The judges liked her…
- Questioning on: “How can excellence in coaching be achieved without evaluation of the long-term impact?” and “How do we cater for the ethical dilemma of short-term coaching contracts not offering sufficient support for transformation?”
- Handling of ethical issues
- Demonstration of “care for him as my client” without creating dependency
- Demonstration of a deep desire to help while maintaining the boundaries
- Conclusion “that transformation can happen in the room and within a short- term relationship”
- Humility
- Beginner’s mind
“She helped dissolve the energy of her client without trying to solve his problems…For me, the true test of a coach is one of her final statements: ‘My own sense of transformation on behalf of my client depended on my willingness to transform myself,’” said Burditt.
2nd prize (£1,500)
Miranda Rock, head of coaching, the Learning Company
Rock explored the importance of identifying with the client the impact of the past on the present, to build awareness and choice.
Rock’s submission, which discussed deep work with lots of psychological underpinnings, was brought to life at the awards by an actor, David Longstaff, playing her Russian client, Igor, director of an international manufacturing company. She had chosen pens, a can and a ring as props, placing the ring in the centre of the table to represent the client and inviting him to place pens to represent others in relation to him, when he was a child. She then took away the ring and gave him a can to represent him as an adult, asking him to place it in relation to colleagues. He saw he attacked others in defence as he had in childhood.
The judges liked her….
- Documentation of the issue of counselling verses coaching
- Sensitivity to the issue around working at a deeper level
- Use of the psychodynamic
- Provision of excellent data/descriptions of the various psychological models
- “Realness”
- Alertness for signs of “defences” in herself and her client
- Use of supervision to explore anxieties
- Raising through her submission of issues around directive versus non-directive, such as saying, “I would like to give you (her client) some feedback”
- Evidence of awareness around the systemic and parallel processes
- Sourcing and bibliography
- Humility and openness to learn
Read the winning essays at: www.aoec.com/open/resources-burditt-lectures.aspx
Coaching at Work, Volume 7, Issue 1