Are boundary definitions preventing coach therapists from offering their clients the best possible interventions? Kate McGuire reports
Why do we do what we do as coaches and therapists? What is the best way of doing our work to achieve our purpose? What enables us and what gets in the way? At the AICTP conference (Association of Integrative Coach-Therapist Professionals) on 9 February 2019, speaker Kate Manley described how, as a therapist, she had sometimes felt constrained from making certain interventions...
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Kate, you raise such important issues here. Like you I am dually qualified in therapy and coaching. I mainly work as a supervisor now and many ask to work with me as they know I have a therapy background and wish to explore their client’s concerns more deeply, to work developmentally as well as with performance issues. In my experience the levels of self awareness, of relational capacity and emotional wellbeing all play their part in enabling deep work to happen. We have in supervision a place where reflective practice in a safe and supportive relationship can enable coaches who wish to work in this way, opportunity to do so. I must admit to saying often, I feel a rant coming on! My rant is about looking at what is going to work when my supervisee and her client are together as they come into a co-created dialogue, and not shall we call this therapy or shall we call this counselling or therapy. Do we need permission to do what is needed in the moment? Do we need an authority to define the boundaries for us? Perhaps there will evolve a new name for folk who work across current boundaries that acknowledge the richness this can bring to people’s lives. I think Julia Vaughan Smith’s work is profoundly important in this kind of discussion. She reminds as that we owe it to ourselves and our clients to know about trauma, how to recognise it and how to work with it. We don’t necessarily have to be therapists to do this, but to recognise when a client may need a therapist and this capacity can be developed in supervision. This means being willing to explore our experiences, to know we are all in the same boat, ‘wounded healers’ all of us, why else are we drawn to this work I wonder? End of rant!
Fiona, I so agree with you. What helps people, and how we make sure we are qualified to deliver it, that’s what matters. Labels and formal “permission” are not what our clients (mostly) care about. I’d love it if a new name evolved because nothing I’ve seen so far really does it for me. Keep ranting – we need to keep the conversation open on this.