Intuition or co-creation?

One of the discussions I often re-visit with my coaching supervisor, Jan, is the issue of non-directionality versus making suggestions for how to think (differently) about an issue or sharing new insights about it, when one is coaching. 

Some of our purist friends would argue that the minute coaches make a suggestion, they are taking autonomy away from the client and thus working against the primary goal of coaching: increasing client agency.

Interestingly, and although I am sure they would deny it, I think that understanding springs from a view of the client as 'broken' - as necessarily lacking in autonomy or agency. That is not a view I share.

However, I do recognise that offering suggestions is not the first thing to do; that encouraging people to think through their own issues in depth is generally more productive (cf my frequent blogs on Nancy Kline's work for example) certainly as a starting point.

But I also think that where I have a piece of theoretical knowledge (eg the research on Negotiating) or specific experience, it would be a failure, as a coach, not to share that appropriately. And it is rather over-optimistic to imagine that skilled questioning will help an individual to come up with the fruits of twenty years' worth of research, or pluck from the air the idea that reading Getting to Yes might be helpful.

Perhaps it is the nature of the people I coach, who are mainly academics or senior professional people, but I don't find that they swallow my ideas whole, or that there is a huge power imbalance whereby they credit me with some spurious authority. On the contrary, they are typically highly autonomous and characteristically intellectually critical. So the danger of my imposing my thinking on them seems relatively minor. Of course I take care to make sure that I pose things as suggestions or options to consider, and the feedback I get from my clients is that this is a helpful part of the process.

What we were discussing at my last supervision, and which I found particularly interesting, was the sudden insight one sometimes has, as the person one is coaching describes their issues in depth.  There are several risks attached to these: they can be a distraction ('when will she shut up, so I can share my brilliant insight?' or 'I'd better remember that, so I can contribute it at the right time...'); or they may not be so wonderful or relevant an insight as one thinks. And, of course, they are the nearest one gets to imposing one's own ideas on the coachee. 

In discussion with Jan, we agreed that sometimes these are very valuable; indeed the discussion arose because I had had that experience in a session we were reviewing as part of my supervision. But we also agreed a few other things. One is that it is very valuable to wait before offering them; to put them aside mentally and continue to listen exquisitely to the other person. If they are good insights, they will still be relevant later; and if not, they are better not shared prematurely (or at all!) Likewise, if they are as good as I think, I won't forget them - rather than worry about that, I should trust my memory: if I forget them, that's probably a sign that they weren't as brilliant as they seemed.

But the most interesting part of my discussion with Jan was her insight (which I am truly grateful that she shared!) that these are not so much flashes of brilliant thinking by the coach, as ideas co-created by the coachee and the coach, and the process they are working through together. Insofar as they are accurate and perceptive, it is because they are grounded in the coachee's analysis of his or her issues. It is the coachee who has done 90% of the thinking, and perhaps all the coach does is articulate back to the coachee a fresh perspective on that thinking. But as Jan pointed out, the credit belongs largely to the coachee - and making that explicit also helps avoid the concern about undermining agency.

And of course, that realisation means that I can take some of the credit for Jan's brilliant insight!