In our current context of a Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear and Incomprehensible world order, maybe, just maybe, love is the antidote. I choose to believe that anyway. And I choose to bring love to the fore in my coaching. I want to build momentum through this beautifully loving community, so I have invited those I have connected with to write something of their own here. The remit was to articulate something that they hadn’t seen in my writing to date.
We (coaches) are the vanguard of change.
This week, Amy Elizabeth Fox, whom I’ve been following for a while, writes about the inner work that we must invest in if we are to enable those we work with to also do their inner work.
The Coach’s Inner Work as Preparation for More Loving Coaching
I am passionate about the craft of transformational group process work and too often see the skills needed to support a group in vertical development reduced to a series of techniques or moves that one can learn and then execute without any refined understanding of what creates a field of true catalytic change.
Based on my twenty-five years of leading executive programs and training other faculty members, it is my sense that the most important pillar of preparation is to invite the practitioner to go on their own deep path of self-exploration and undertake the painstaking work of coming to terms with, embracing and expressing their deepest needs, hurts, feelings and relational needs. The wider the field of self-acceptance and self-blessing they become the more of their subconscious facets reveal themselves and arise for integration. The more a facilitator does their shadow work and encounters their own inner complexity, the more they can bring a field of unconditional acceptance and love to their clients.
I had the privilege of teaching a program this last week for consultants who want to learn how to become facilitators of transformation for their clients. I opened the week by declaring the entire session “love school” in the premise that the key factor in our depth of impact with others is the degree to which we have been able to plummet the depths of our own inner life and widen the aperture of our own heart.
I began the first morning with a meditation in which I invited everyone to explore the myriad flavours of love that we can activate in order to build a mutual cartography of the nuanced expressions of open-heartedness.
There is tenderness which has kindness and softness and cradling within it; admiration which has inspiration and elevation and templating within it; there is empathy which can have attunement and resonance and connection within it; there is belonging which can have attachment and affiliation and affinity within it; and Eros which can have passion and artistic imagination and an urge for beauty within it; and devotion which has communion, caring and desire to bless bundled within it. As facilitators, we need to be able to turn the dial and tap into any of these unique relational mudras and bring them forth as needed. Likewise, the instinct for ferocity which can take the form of candour, confrontation and even intervention.
In the alchemical process of coaching another’s development, one uses one’s own journey as a source of wisdom and guidance, but also uses one’s internal experience moment to moment as a data source for what the other might be feeling but as yet unaware of or for receiving and recognising communication that their unconscious is telegraphing through somatic, non-verbal and energetic cues. All of this requires the instrument of an open heart to be well intact and the intimate resonance field between you and your client to be filled with psychological safety, profound respect for their defences and resistances and a pacing that matches their own natural rhythm.
In cultivating a radically expansive, undefended heart, we can allow more and more of life to permeate and touch us. Inevitably, we move from self-concern and self—protection to a yearning of the soul to be in connection, in community and in service.
Most of the executives who enter my program have not yet undertaken an inward personal journey and are living in a state of exhaustion, lack of self-contact and numbness. That numbness, in turn, keeps them overly autonomous and self-reliant and without an emotional infrastructure that could be providing them relational support and trustful places to ask for help. They are proud of their self-reliance and come softly to the recognition that underneath this well-honed autonomy lives a longing for friendship and closeness.
I believe that the strategies they deploy to keep their emotional lives behind a wall from themselves and others also cost them access to their landscape of creative imagination, fuel for passionate engagement in their visions, and the electricity to enliven and inspire others to their highest potential. More tenderly, it finds them deeply alone and unsure of where to find solace, listening or any holding.
As facilitators, we have a chance to embody and role model something quite divergent from this common world of shielded conversations and routinised exchange. As we offer our field of presence, we can bring a quality of spontaneity, unpredictability and luminosity to the realm of conversation.
We can offer a true and honest reflection to others about their strengths and gifts and uniqueness that can lift them up to their own grandeur. We can help teams to unfold their life stories to one another in such a way to foster greater understanding, real solidarity and meaningful compassion for their hardships and foibles. We can help entire organisations become healing contexts in which people can bring their hopes, their fears, their stories and their requests to others for kind reception and eager help.
I am envisioning here a business that is filled with love for its purpose, its leaders, its customers/clients/patients/guests, that goes far beyond high performing towards becoming a field of restoration. I have seen thousands of leaders get a first-hand glimpse of this possibility through a methodical process of de-armouring, vulnerable sharing, quiet shared reflection, and confidences. I have seen teams move from conflict-ridden to galvanised and from alienated to coherent. I have seen entire organisations rise up to address their siloed contexts and water cooler “nice” environments to embrace a culture that enables people to speak up, collaborate, and grow.
Those of us with the privilege to coach executives are well served to walk our talk and actively engage in our own learning and healing journeys and to gather in supervision circles and communities of learning to refine our ability to embody these qualities and make these invitations.
Likewise, we need to share the tales of leaders who embark courageously on this path of wholeness and watch in wonder as they reshape the cultures of the organisations they lead towards greater degrees of aliveness and contribution.
Amy Elizabeth Fox
Amy@mobiusleadership.com
www.mobiusleadership.com
