COACHING AT WORK COACHING AND MENTORING AT WORK: BEYOND FRONTIERS CONFERENCE, LONDON, 23 NOVEMBER
Where, if at all, are the boundaries between coaching and therapy/counselling? Is there a third way? These were some of the questions raised at the Beyond Frontiers debate. Liz Hall chaired the event
The line between coaching and therapy/counselling is getting fuzzier. A ‘third way’ of coaching has emerged that draws on psychological approaches, but there is no one way – each coach has their own approach.
These were some of the conclusions reached at the Coaching at Work: Beyond Frontiers debate at Coaching at Work’s conference in London on 23 November.
JLS: “I’d embrace the view of CH1. We need to be informed about therapeutic approaches. In coaching psychology, we talk about a three-legged stool: practice skill, therapy knowledge, business empathy and savvy.”
JR: “The boundary is shady, it always will be.”
LA: “If the client thinks they’re coming for coaching, they should get coaching.”
CH: “Who you are is how you will coach. Be very clear about what you bring. It’s an empowering process so it’s not about what you do to people.”
AS: “[People say] there is no place for emotions in the coaching world…the coaching profession needs to get on its knees and apologise to the counselling profession.”
SP: “Supervisors should be aware of the mental health issues that will arise even if the coach isn’t. Up to 20 per cent may have mental health issues and we are meeting them in organisations.”
JR: “WHAT coaching and WHAT therapy? This is an impossible question because the people who are at the psychoanalytical end would do very different work…”
SP: “What is the client presenting? Even though I am qualified to deal with panic attacks I refer them [a coachee] to a specialist as the coaching contract doesn’t cover this. Whereas a counselling relationship can develop into a coaching contract.”
The floor: “For me the two words are honesty and mindfulness…if we are mindful of what we are doing and what the client is doing, feeling and behaving, we will pick up the intuition of where it should be going, and if someone is unhelpful then we should be honest and say so.”
LA: “Sometimes we don’t always know what is going on, which is why supervision has been so widely accepted and supports the internal voice. The boundary rests with us and often, with the client.”
JLS: “As the CTI’s Laura Whitworth, says, one of our core beliefs is that the client is creative, resourceful and whole, and if at any time I can’t get behind that belief then I cannot coach them.”
LA: “If we trust clients, we should trust them to know whether we are contributing. Clients are nothing like as fragile as people think.”
JR: “Those from a therapeutic stance do see a very different population than we see and some are unable – damaged, impoverished, ill – so we need to create clarity for our clients.”
CH: Is it fit for purpose? Does it fit what the client needs? Get more flexible…This is the challenge for the profession.”
AS: “The thinking that got us here is not sufficient to get us out of here.”
Offline comments
JR: “Clearly there is a third way and any experienced and successful coach will already be walking it. It is truly impossible not to take emotion and private life and work life into consideration when doing coaching…Maybe the quest for the third way is just another version of trying to define boundaries – a hopeless and unnecessary task in my view.”
AS: “I’m not sure there is a third way, as such. I think the debate showed that…we will continue to bring different perspectives to our work, without there ever being a ‘right’ or even a ‘final’ answer to this conundrum. Having said that, I do feel like we are coming closer together.”
The panel also talked about the next big thing in coaching (see pages 12-15).
1 www.coaching-at-work.com/2011/08/26/a-hazy-notion/
The panellists
- Chair: Liz Hall
- Linda Aspey (LA)
- Caroline Horner (CH)
- Jennifer Liston-Smith (JLS)
- Stephen Palmer (SP)
- Jenny Rogers (JR)
- Aboodi Shabi (AS)
Coaching at Work, Volume 7, Issue 1