Love in Coaching Series – Part One

Bringing Love Out of the Shadows: A Coach’s Journey

I come from a corporate background, where love was a bit of a dirty word.  Or at least, it was side-stepped with more businessy wording, like the taglines of “every life has a story” or “truly human”.  Even those seemed pretty revolutionary at the time.

I’d say that I displayed a form of love in the workplace with my advocacy for coaching as a leadership style and encouraging leaders with the tagline “Developing People Is our Business”.  You see, I don’t believe that it is either/or.  It’s both/and.  But sometimes, the pendulum swings too far in one direction – towards profit over people.  I see that happening in some organisations right now with the abolition of DEI initiatives, for example, denying the privilege that white-male-created systems and processes afford.  That feels downright unloving of our fellow men and women to me.

We cannot let hatred, in any of its forms, win.  Misogyny, racism, religious fundamentalism, xenophobia….micro-aggressions or macro.  Subtle or blatant.

Maybe it’s easier to talk about and act upon love as a refugee of that corporate world, but it’s been ten years since I left and only now am I noticing how much of a shift I have been making lately.  Not to dismiss the lessons I learned as an employee, but to live by more of a yin and yang approach.  Love and business.

In this blog series, I plan to explore some of my discoveries, as time feels absolutely right for us to be talking more about love, in order to crowd out the hate that is so prevalent in the world.

I’m reminded of the book (now also a film) Small Things Like These, which quietly encourages us all to do what is right, not what is safest.  To show acts of love for our fellow human beings, even if it means that we will be outcast from our community.

Where did the exploration of love start for me?

My more conscious inquiry into love started for me with Helena Clayton’s research and that took me to her wonderful Acts of Love for Tough Times.  I highly recommend this space if you want to dip your toe in the warm water of love.

Reading followed, with books such as:

• In Love with Supervision, Shohet and Shohet
• The Art of Loving, Fromm
• Attuned, Hubl
• No Bad Parts, Schwartz
• Staying in Love, Julia Fehrenbacher

And a focus on leading with love in the therapy that I started in February 2024.  I’ve learned, and am still learning, what love means for me in my work and home contexts.  I am a work-in-progress in that regard.

Someone asked me the other day what distinguished my supervision style from that of other supervisors.  We all espouse the value guided by Carl Rogers’ suggestion of Unconditional Positive Regard, that our clients are creative, resourceful and whole (Whitworth et al).  That feels very loving, without mentioning the word love.  But for the first time, I actually blurted out that my supervision is led by love.  That felt quite risky to say out loud.  Too late – I had said it!  Would this prospective supervisee run a mile at the mention of love?  So, I know I have more work to do, to truly embrace love in all my work and to call it by its name.  In my own supervision, I am exploring love and tough love and how the two are part and parcel of this work.

I’ll leave it there for today, and ask you a few questions to ponder about love in your own coaching:

• What are your beliefs about love in the working world?
• How do you display love towards your clients?
• In what ways do you feel cramped in your display of love?

Next time, I’ll attempt to give you my answers to these questions.  But please don’t skip your own reflections.  This is a collective responsibility that I feel we have – if you agree, then go ahead and reflect on your own or in supervision or with your peers.