The Covid-19 crisis has arguably put the spotlight on how we coach in times of crisis even more so than the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. This time, wealth offers little protection – most people are being impacted and are likely to be for some time in a variety of ways.
What does it mean to coach in times of crisis, individual and/or collectively? This article is not intended to be definitive but to offer some potentially helpful pointers and perspectives. It draws partly on research material (some published, some not published until now) for a book I edited and co-authored on coaching in times of crisis (Hall, 2015), not realising that the book would have such a long shelf life!
Know thyself
A cornerstone of good coaching is of course building self-awareness – our own and our client’s. But in times of crisis and uncertainty, we can be blinder than usual to our patterns because we’re in survival mode and
our typical tendencies can become more pronounced, as I am sure many of us have noticed in ourselves and in others.
Getting more in tune with our drivers and tendencies not only helps us step more fully into being human in these challenging times, it offers us more choice in terms of how we show up, as coaches, and as clients.
Bachkirova (2020) identifies the following possible tendencies in terms of people’s strategies in crises, to:
- Obey authority, thereby putting the main responsibility in someone else’s hands
- Panic and act impulsively – trying to do at least something, eg, stockpiling
- Engage in blatant self-deception in order to avoid anxiety, eg, ‘this won’t happen to me’ or ‘it will go away soon’
- Constantly check the situation through various media, as if this information can help to prepare/save you
- Do something productive that allows us to stay sane and to promote a sense of control in a situation when control is scarce.
The pull to help, to feel needed, can be very strong in times of crisis, understandably, but it may not always be helpful.
Make it work
Explore how you – and your clients – show up in times of crisis. Which of the above tendencies ring true? And if you’re feeling a stronger-than-usual desire to help, challenge yourself: is this about what you or the client/s need? Can you offer support without over-extending? What about self-care?
Fatal flaws
- Failing to check out what your drivers are
- Failing to check support is actually what’s needed, and what kind
- Not setting enough time aside to recharge, reflect and perhaps for compassion development and mindful meditation too.
Understanding and exploring crisis
Another good starting point is to understand what we mean by crisis. Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the noun crisis as: “a time of intense difficulty or danger”; “a time when a difficult or important decision must be made” and “the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death”.
Themes that emerged from my research among coaches (Hall, 2015, p7), and my own reflections/experience, of what we mean by crisis included the following, all of which resonate in these times:
- A breaking down of what was before
- Feeling not good enough/being wrongly equipped/insufficiently resourceful/insufficiently knowledge/ill-informed to respond
- Sense of stuck-ness
- Uncertainty and sense of being lost
- Clash between exterior/interior world
- Element of surprise
- Things not going to plan and not going to sort themselves out
- Dependent on context
The current crisis is unusual because there can be a strong sense of interconnectedness, of being in this together. However, we shouldn’t make assumptions about what crisis means for others.
Make it work
Be curious about the client’s interpretation of the wider crisis, and how it’s impacting them. What’s their story? Does it serve them?
Not being afraid to ask ‘stupid’ questions, and being very flexible are particularly important in the crisis and transition context, according to existential therapist and coach Professor Ernesto Spinelli (unpublished interview with Hall, 2015).
“It’s first of all really important to identify what means it is a crisis for the person experiencing it because if you don’t get an accurate sense of what is making it a crisis, you can go off on all sorts of tangents. So it’s important to identify it, asking really ‘stupid’ questions. So for example if the person says, I’ve lost my job and I’m in crisis, asking stupid but necessary questions like, ‘What makes it a crisis for you?’”
Keep an open mind, and be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Psychiatrist and coach Dr Anton Obholzer (unpublished interview with Hall, 2015) says, “You need to go in as [psychoanalyst Wilfred] Bion says, free of memory and desire, with as much of an open state of mind is possible.”
He gives the example of someone who works as intensive care nurse under lots of pressure: “[Intensive care units] are very painful places to work because everyone is supposed to be happy but there are premature babies, things keep or stop beeping and you can get into a hell of the state, that’s the industry. … It’s a difficult thing to go in and sit down and deal with whatever the client [from that profession] brings without immediately having preconceptions. But if you sit there and think, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here’, [that’s better than] thinking you know what’s going on. [If the latter] you’re probably deluding yourself… The great coach has to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.”
Don’t feel you need to offer an answer:
“Coaching is not about coming up with an answer but a widening of the choices that are open because people can be astute but get tunnel vision… An astute colleague of mine says you play within your competencies but the moment you think you have the answers, stop, you’re in a cul-de-sac and the more people you tell the answers to, the more people join you in a cul-de-sac, rather than learning to learn,” says Obholzer (unpublished interview).
Surfacing the real issues
In times of crisis, it’s often not clear what is really going on. There can be multiple factors and scenarios playing out at once, as we know only too well in terms of the current Covid-19 crisis. Clients may not know themselves what the nub of the problem is, or may choose not to reveal themselves.
Surfacing the real issues requires profound curiosity and flexibility, paying acute attention to all sorts of signals, including the ‘subtitles,’ and what the client isn’t telling you, watching out for the canaries and the scapegoats, being flexible and curious including about when and why having a crisis serves clients, and about your own assumptions. Let’s look at these in turn.
Pay attention to the signals
Make it work
Read the ‘subtitles’. Obholzer [interview] says, “My way of looking at things is to listen to what the reality of the client brings is, treat it with respect but also look at what else is going on. It’s a bit like going to see a movie but also reading the subtitles. So the other question is, ‘what is the client not telling you about?’ If the coach doesn’t acknowledge there are subtitles, they’ll never read them; if they do, what do they do?…(watch out for) slips of the tongue and so on.”
He gives the example of “someone comes to see me, looks around the room and says, ‘my battery is completely flat, do you have one that works?’ If you look at this symbolically, you could say that this is the person saying I’m flat and need support… First of all we have to acknowledge that there probably is another bit and then the question is how to find it.”
Fatal flaw
- Not paying attention to what’s not being said
Watch out for the canaries and scapegoats
Between 1911 and 1986, canaries were used in UK coal pits to detect harmful gases underground. Obholzer advises coaches to watch out in coaching for the equivalent of pit canaries – individuals representing problems in the wider system. He explains that the canary is the member of team who has the greatest valency: Bion’s valency theory (eg, Bion, 2013) included the idea that someone becomes a scapegoat for a group so its members can direct aggression to that person, for example, thus shielding themselves from truth about what’s going on in the group. The individual, like the canary, shows up what’s really going on.
We’ve seen plenty of examples of people seeking to cast others as scapegoats in the current crisis. We can also view this in terms of the Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief – people in denial, people experiencing anxiety and anger, laying the blame at the feet of others because they don’t want or can’t yet face the reality of a crisis.
In the group and organisational context, how an individual acts under pressure, says Obholzer, “depends on two things: innate make-up and the way they are in a group. Say, when things are problematic, ‘Joe Smith’ has the tendency to fall into fight/flight etc and let’s assume the chief exec announces the company is going to operate with so and so and Joe Smith throws his hands up in horror and says, ‘this is going to be terrible and we’re going to have to reapply for our jobs and this is a disaster’. And everyone looks up at the ceiling and says, ‘that’s Joe again, we’re not like him’ and the CEO goes to HR and says, ‘I’ve had enough of Joe, he is a pain in the arse, he needs some developmental coaching, or what will it cost to fire him?’ The alternative would be to say [to Joe], ‘you’re a pain in the arse, [but] thank you for drawing our attention to the fact that everyone has doubts about this’.”
As coaches, he says, “If we only think about personality…you will shun someone and miss the point.” He recommends in such situations, we “talk to as high up a person as you can and say you’ve been working with people and these issues shine through which might be relevant to the organisation, so you’re helping the person not become a pit canary…you could have six coaches working in different branches so the coaches re-enact the splitness… organisations play many ‘tricks’.”
Explore when and why crisis might serve people, and be prepared to be surprised
Make it work
People have lots of reasons for presenting something as a crisis or the timing of this.
Obholzer says, “There is the matter of being able to choose when you have a crisis. Freud had a friend who was a physician in Baden-Baden spa town, Georg Groddeck, who would ask all his patients, “why have you let this illness get to you now?” …if we look at crises, it’s more a matter of ‘I’ve now had enough of this’ and people have a face-saving excuse to have something now so if someone comes to you as a coach and has a particular crisis, I think you need to listen seriously, professionally and respectfully to the picture of the crisis, but also in your mind, say, ‘ho, hum, what else is going on?’ ”
It’s important not to make assumptions about what clients are capable of too. Those coaches who work with sportspeople, for example, can be stunned by the acts of resilience they encounter.
Fatal flaws
- Projecting ourselves onto others and associating our own benchmarks with those of others
- Being judgemental
Ensure you’re psychologically equipped and know your boundaries
In the current climate, given all that’s going on, including many clients’ and even our own, highly activated stress responses, it’s essential that at the very least we do no harm. To do excellent work, we need to be psychologically informed, including around resilience and mental health issues such as trauma.
Make it work
Ask yourself questions such as:
What is your stance on working with trauma, past and/or present? Are you trauma-aware (Vaughan Smith, 2019, and see Vaughan Smith, pages 38-42). Do you have adequate regular coach supervision? Are you insured? What about if your clients are struggling with their mental health? Do you know when and where to refer on?
Fatal flaws
- Not having support yourself
- Not being psychologically informed
- Not knowing your own boundaries and not referring on when appropriate
The power of nature
In these Covid times, many of those in lockdown have been nourished by being able to go out for a walk in nature, while in some countries such as Spain, there have been restrictions on going for walks outside unless there are valid reasons such as going shopping for essential items or walking dogs. Many of us have come to appreciate the power of nature for our wellbeing and self-care even more than before. Spending time in nature can form part of self-care regimes for coaches and clients. A study on people suffering from depression found those who walked in nature experienced more of an improvement in their moods, as well as their memory span, compared to those walking in an urban setting (Berman et al., 2012).
Exercise generally has been shown to improve mood but it seems that ‘green exercise’ in particular helps to reduce anxiety (Mackay & Neill, 2010). And being out in nature boosts creative problem solving, partly because exposure to nature arouses positive emotions, and also because in doing so, we’re spending less time on attention-demanding technology (Atchley, Strayer & Atchley, 2012).
Professor Stephen Palmer, who has been researching the impact of nature on wellbeing, said, “Just a five minute ‘dose’ of walking with nature in green space can enhance self-esteem. Even looking at photos of the natural environment such as the countryside can not only lift your mood and aid relaxation, but it can also have a positive physiological impact.
“On 30 December, 2019 I launched a web radio station, 24/7 Nature Radio, to provide 24/7 natural and ambient soundscapes of nature such as seawaves, waterfalls, birds, walking in a forest and rain.
“Sounds from around the world with human interactions with nature such as hearing a person walk on a beach or through a forest. Just listening to these soundscapes can aid relaxation and currently is an excellent distraction from distressing news programmes.”
Pay even more attention than usual to psychological safety
In challenging times, our clients’ (and our) threat responses can be highly activated. Self-management can become more of a struggle, as can relationships with others.
Make it work
Clients need for us to ensure they feel as safe as possible so they can do good work in the coaching, particularly when they may be more triggered than usual.
Drawing on approaches such as compassion and mindfulness (eg, Hall, 2015) and the work of Harvard professor Amy Edmondson (eg, Edmondson, 2018) on psychological safety can help build trust and a sense of safety.
Fatal flaws
- Not being/feeling grounded yourself
- Jumping straight into goals, experimentation or solutions before creating conditions in which the client can settle and feel safe
Pay even more attention than usual to dynamics
Make it work
In terms of what may be playing out dynamically, consider that things might get very primitive in challenging times, and park your judgment as best you can.
Obholzer (interview with Hall) says, “People sometimes say, ‘how do you understand what’s going on?’ I say, ‘I recommend you go to kindergarten where you’ll see the basic unadulterated natural dynamics of how groups function.’ You fast-forward 40 years, there’s the same thing of uncertainty and turbulence…If you look back at the origins of things, you can see strong parallels. The point is not to fall into judgment and think how can someone behave like that? When things fall apart, the primitive dynamics come in.”
Fatal flaws
- Not paying attention to dynamics
- Expecting people under stress to manage themselves as they might otherwise do
- Being judgmental
Working with emotions
As we’ve seen during the pandemic, in times of crises, emotions can be intense, there can be a sense of being on an emotional rollercoaster. Clients may soon feel depleted, or can experience a strong desire to numb their emotions, through self-medication, excessive exercise and so on.
Make it work
- Appreciate the importance of emotions, understand their role and do our own work
- Embrace vulnerability
- Normalise emotional experience, particularly with the current backdrop
- Draw on approaches to help you work safely with emotions (eg, Gestalt, mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioural Coaching)
As coaches, we need to pay attention to what’s going on for us emotionally in times of shared crisis and also our willingness and ability to work with emotions. Emotions are not something to be ignored, they are messengers, and help to mobilise energy. They can be key in understanding what narratives we’re holding, and which may serve us better.
Embracing vulnerability can be key here. Thanks to the work of social researcher Brené Brown, being able to turn towards our vulnerability is beginning to be seen more widely as a strength. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness,” writes Brown on her website (Brown, 2015; http://brenebrown.com/ accessed April 2015).
In challenging times, many of us, including health service professionals, can feel called upon to be heroes/heroines, for example, and may feel ‘difficult’ emotions such as shame, anger, frustration, fear, when there can be a strong sense of being out of control and of not being able to fulfill our roles to the best of our ability. Part of the work many are currently doing with health service professionals on the front line is helping them to understand that their feelings are normal.
Working with approaches that offer a safe container for navigating emotions such as mindfulness or specific frameworks such as the FELT model (Hall, 2015) can help clients recognise, be with and potentially transform emotions. The FELT process is to first set the focus (issue/s to be explored, and intentions around how to do this, eg, with curiosity and kindness), then explore with mindfulness and compassion whatever is present, including ‘difficult’ feelings, how they show up in the body, for example, then whether there is anything that the client wants to let go of, let be, and/or let in, and finally if there is anything they want to transform. Key is the idea that instead of pushing feelings away, we turn towards them, which gives us more chance to manage and potentially transform them.
As Gilbert and Choden (p62, 2013) point out “the key thing with emotions is understanding and transforming them, not trying to cleanse or eradicate them, partly because these emotions are hardwired in our brain – we are designed to experience them – and so cannot simply ‘get rid of’ them.”
Fatal flaws
- Being afraid of emotions
- Failing to normalise emotions
- Trying to be ‘superhuman’
Frame and explore crisis as a learning opportunity
Last but not least, and this is of course territory that’s hugely familiar for coaches, crises can be framed as opportunities for learning, once the client is feeling safe and better resourced.
The idea that crisis and difficulty is crucial to transformation and growth is nothing new. It’s one found in many cultures and plenty of literature, both academic and fictional.
One of my favourite metaphors for this, frequently cited in literature on mindfulness and compassion, is that of the lotus flower and the mud. Without mud, the lotus flower cannot exist – the mud nourishes the lotus plant so it can grow and bloom. As humans, it’s very often the mucky murky difficult stuff that brings growth.
In the spiritual literature and context, there are many examples. In shamanic circles, an individual crisis can represent the calling to become a shaman and one which leads to a reconstructed psyche, identity and consciousness which are less conflicted, less symptomatic, less bound to the past and more healthy, integrated and whole (Walsh, 1994).
Scholars such as Frankl (1963) and Yalom (1980) and others highlight the possibility for positive outcomes from crisis, and from trauma (Joseph, 2012). These may come after the event. However, being up for learning in the midst of a crisis can counteract fear (Bachkirova, 2020).
As Bachkirova (2020) points out, the crisis response strategies outlined earlier are “sensible actions” that are “externally faced”. They’re understandable, but “when the nature of the danger is so vague, prolonged and disruptive of our normal activities, constant alertness is exhausting. It depletes resources and brings low the general mood. Life becomes dominated by fear.”
A desire to learn can be a “powerful drive that can counteract fear”…. that can work internally against fear,” says Bachkirova (2020). She too argues that “crisis provides a golden opportunity to learn much more about yourself” and to help others learn about themselves. She continues, “Difficult situations bring to the surface tendencies that are not generally noticeable, or kept under control, in everyday living. Crisis is a test that is even more critical. By learning to observe ourselves in crisis we also improve our skills for helping others to learn about their selves. We can offer them these skills and quality of attention when needed in our daily and professional life.”
Spinelli says, (interview with Hall, 2015),“The other thing around the response to crisis is it’s either a response that tries to in some way or another negate the crisis or it’s a response that meets it…if you meet a situation which could be called a crisis, you’re connecting with possibilities. As we saw in the economic crisis, which was a crisis for lots of people but became an opportunity for lots of people too. How come it became an opportunity? Because of how they responded to it, asking, ‘what has it to offer me? How can I respond in a way that [turns it into an opportunity]?’
“What enables them to respond in that way? It’s just a guess but there is a sense of them not being so rigid. If I have a rigid outlook about how the world has to be, I am going to be thrown by circumstances that the world has thrown at me If I have a flexible stance towards my existence, I am open to what life throws at me.”
Make it work
- Explore what will resource the client so they can be open to learning
- Point to the literature and other examples of opportunities for learning through crisis
- Gain a broad and deep knowledge of clients’ worldviews and the values and assumptions of the religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions they come from. Understanding how clients would answer existential questions about mortality and the meaning of life can help us support them to experience positive change as a result of going through trauma or crisis (post-traumatic/ post-crisis growth). Support clients to reexamine core beliefs – doing so post crisis and/or trauma can enhance the likelihood of growth (Taku, Cann, Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2015)
Fatal flaws
- Jumping in too soon
- Making assumptions about clients’ worldviews
With one frontline NHS client I worked with recently, having done some deep work, we then zoomed out from their own experience to share some commentary on how the pandemic is offering us all lots of chances to grow. “There’s nowhere to hide, is there!” said the client. I shared with this client the acronym, AFLO (another f*****g learning opportunity) and we chuckled at how there are currently “AFLOs galore”. There was comfort for both of us in normalising the intensity, uncertainty, fears, and the nowhere-to-run-ness of what’s playing out. We were basking in our shared common humanity.
- Liz Hall is a senior practitioner coach, certified mindfulness teacher/trainer, author of Coach Your Team (Penguin, 2019) and editor of Coaching at Work magazine. She can be contacted at liz@coaching-at-work.com and liz@lizhallcoaching.com
Useful models, frameworks and approaches
- Bridges’ Transition Curve (eg, Bridges, 2009): always start with the ending, which is followed by the neutral zone and then the beginning
- Cognitive Behavioural Coaching: identifying self-limiting beliefs (eg, Neenan & Palmer, 2012)
- Constellations to surface systemic issues (eg Whittington, 2012)
- Dilts’ Logical Levels (Dilts, 2014): explore each of the six levels in turn – environment, behaviour, capabilities, beliefs and values, identity, and mission (eg, Hall, 2015, pp41-16)
- Existential coaching exploring meaning and purpose
- FELT (Hall, 2015, pp207-210)
- The Hero’s Journey (in Campbell, 2008), and Archetypes
- Lifespan approach: this can include exploring identity crisis, for example, and assumes development continues through adulthood (eg, Palmer & Panchal, 2011). Their positive psychology model INSIGHT: Increase self-knowledge; Normalise transitions; Support positive coping; Integrate past, present and future; Give time and space; Highlight broader context; Tailor solutions.
- Kegan and Lahey’s Immunity to Change Process model (2009)
- Kübler-Ross Change Curve or The Five Stages of Grief (Kübler-Ross, 1969): denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
- Mindful compassionate coaching (Hall, 2015; Hall, 2013), relational mindfulness (pages 34-37) and psychological safety building (eg, McMordie, 2019)
- Positive psychology and strengths-based coaching: identifying and building clients’ strengths, which may be taking a back seat in difficult times
- SCARF: status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness (Rock, 2008)
- Somatic coaching, eg, Aquilina (2016)
- References and further information
- E Aquilina, Embodying authenticity: A Somatic Path to Transforming Self, Team & Organisation, LIVE it, 2016
- R A Atchley, D L Strayer and P Atchley, ‘Creativity in the Wild: Improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings’, in PLOS ONE, 7(12), e51474, 2012
- T Bachkirova (2020) www.coachingcontentresearch.org/understanding-yourself-in-crisis-fear-vs-learning/
- M G Berman et al, ‘Interacting with nature improves cognition and affect for individuals with depression’, in Journal of Affective Disorders, 140(3), 300-305, 2012
- W R Bion, Experiences in Groups and Other Papers, Routledge, 2013
- A Bradley, The Human Moment: The Positive Power of Compassion in the Workplace, LID publishing, 2019
- A Bradley, TEDx talk on compassion in the workplace https://youtu.be/MvfaTer5t7A
- B Brown, (accessed April 2015) http://brenebrown.com/
- L G Calhoun and R G Tedeschi, Facilitating Post Traumatic Growth: A Clinician’s Guide, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998
- J Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (3rd Edn),New World Library, 2008
- R Dilts, A Brief History of Logical Levels, NLP University (online), 2014
- A C Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons, 2018
- V E Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press, 1959
- L Hall, Mindful Coaching, Kogan Page, 2013
- L Hall, ‘Nourishing the lotus flower: turning towards and transforming difficulties with Mindful Compassionate Coaching’, in Coaching in Times of Crisis and Transformation: How to help individuals and organizations flourish,Kogan Page, pp192-221, 2015
- P Gilbert and Choden, Mindful Compassion: Using the Power of Mindfulness and Compassion to Transform Our Lives, Constable & Robinson, 2013
- S Joseph, What Doesn’t Kill Us: The new psychology of posttraumatic growth, Piatkus, 2012
- R Kegan and L L Lahey, Immunity to Change: How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization, Harvard Business School Press, 2009
- E Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying, Routledge, 1969
- G J Mackay and J T Neill, ‘The effect of “green exercise” on state anxiety and the role of exercise duration, intensity, and greenness: A quasi-experimental study’, in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 11(3), 238-45
- M McMordie, ‘Be safe, be free’, in Coaching at Work, July/August, 2019 https://www.coaching-at-work.com/2019/07/07/be-safe-be-free/
- M Neenan and S Palmer (Eds), Cognitive Behavioural Coaching in Practice: An Evidence Based Approach, Routledge, 2012
- S Palmer and S Panchal (Eds), Developmental Coaching: Life transitions and generational perspectives, Routledge, 2012
- D Rock, ‘SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others’, in NeuroLeadership Journal, 1 (1), 44-52, 2008
- K Taku, A Cann , R G Tedeschi and L G Calhoun, ‘Core beliefs shaken by an earthquake correlate with posttraumatic growth’, in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 7(6), 563-569, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000054
- J Vaughan Smith, Coaching and Trauma: From surviving to thriving, McGraw-Hill Education, 2019
- R Walsh, ‘The making of a shaman: Calling, training, and culmination’, in Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 3 (34), 7-30
- J Whittington, Systemic Coaching and Constellations: An Introduction to the Principles, Practices and Applications, Kogan Page, 2012
- I Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, Basic Books, 1980