Thinking?... or just talking?

I continue to enjoy - and get great value from - the Psychology for Coaches programme run by Marie Stopforth. One of the many moments that made me think this week was a brief conversation about coachees who talk so much the coach has no opportunity to contribute much. 

On the one hand, some coaches may feel that they have not added any value in such a situation. Marie pointed out that Nancy Kline, for one, would question that.  Her Thinking Environment is predicated on the assumption that people thinking out loud about their own challenges are likely to come up with better solutions than coaches.

However, we also discussed the possibility that it was a defensive strategy, to prevent the coach from asking questions that might make the coachee have to think... Some people turn up and jus talk about anything and everything, to fill the time. 

My view is that that falls well outside what Nancy is getting at. Her (and my) interest is in people thinking in live time - not repeating what they have already thought. 

Moreover, in my experience, one can quickly tell if a client is genuinely thinking out loud in live time, or simply rehearsing an often articulated train of thought, which again might be a (possibly subconscious) defensive strategy.

So I would challenge such a client, and possibly have a renewed contracting conversation about our mutual expectations of the coaching, in terms of both process and expected outcomes.

Which brings me to another passing comment that really stuck with me: Marie mentioned that in her supervision of coaches, more often than not it comes down to one of two things: either better contracting (or re-contracting), or calling out breaches of the contracted expectations.  I'm not quite happy with 'calling out' but certainly think that we should call attention to any breaches, and have a conversation about them.  

And I agree with Marie, these two things do seem to address a large proportion of the issues that coaches bring to supervision. 

I will doubtless write more about some of the other insights I gained from the Psychology in Coaching programme, but don't want to go on too long now, lest you think it is some kind of defensive strategy...

What's the (implicit) contract?

I have  blogged before about the importance of contracting for coaching; and the fact that as a supervisor of coaches, whenever I hear a disaster unfolding, my first thought (and often my first question) is What was the contract?.

Occasionally, however, one comes across something that sits outside the normal contract, and that is causing the coach some retrospective anxiety: 'This happened, so I said/did this, and now I'm wondering if I should have...' Often, I hear, 'It felt ok at the time, but now I'm not so sure...'

Naturally, I find such cases interesting. One can't contract for everything, and often we can't talk in terms of absolutes, either. The Confidentiality aspect of the contract is a classic example: coaching is confidential except... {safeguarding, supervision, invoicing...} 

So for example, if a coachee decides to withdraw from a coaching relationship halfway through, one probably has an obligation to tell the client organisation, for reasons connected with invoicing.  Is that a breach of confidentiality?  Might it be perceived as such but the individual?  What if the client organisation asks for the reasons? After all, they have a right to know about the quality of the coaching being delivered...

It is here that I think that the concept of the implicit contract is valuable. You may not have contracted for the specific eventuality that has arisen, but it is worth asking two questions of yourself:

If I had contracted for this specific eventuality, what would I have been discussing with my coachee?

Given the contracting that we did in fact engage in, what would my coachee reasonably expect of me in this specific eventuality?

I find (so far) that asking these two questions helps coachees to evaluate their retrospective anxiety, and to decide whether it is well-founded - and if so what to do differently in the future. If not, of course, they can lay it to rest.

And one of the actions that often becomes clear as desirable, is more explicit contracting...