Coaching as a Provocative Activity

There are many providers of coaching and many ‘schools’ of coaching.  Some of them are exclusively ‘Rogerian’ (Rogers C., 1957), or ‘client centred’, stressing the importance, among other conditions, of listening, empathy and ‘unconditional positive regard’, and it seems to me that a 'client centred' orientation should be foundational to all coaching approaches.  Some, like ‘solution focussed’ while focussing on solutions, do so from a mainly appreciative or ‘positive’ orientation. Others follow Nancy Kline’s (Kline, 1999) approach which privileges the client’s thinking, and still others follow Ashridge’s (Critchley, 2012) ‘relational’ approach which puts particular emphasis on the dynamics and quality of the emerging relationship between coach and client as the core factor in bringing about beneficial outcome.    

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“When will we ever learn”

I have recently been watching Margaret Heffernan’s TED talk and she talks about a number of themes which, in my own way I have been talking about for the last 20 years. She talks about ‘social capital’, by which she broadly means, good social connection and quality interaction, and she shows with many examples this is every bit as important as any other form of asset. She also rails against excessive hierarchy and the premium placed on ‘talent’ and a preoccupation with a ‘hero’ form of leadership, which she argues is always at the expense of ‘mobilising collective intelligence’ (my phrase)

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‘The dirty little secret of leadership’

I think the “dirty little secret” of leadership, is that, despite legions of books on the subject, nobody really knows how to do it.

The problem, as I see it, and as I say on my web-site, is the prevailing way of thinking about organisations as if they are somewhat like machines to be engineered. If we listen to the discourse in most organisations we will hear such words as ‘engineering’, ‘driving’, ‘leveraging’, and talk of human ‘capital’ or ‘assets’ or ‘resources’; such language suggests an engineering mindset.

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Isn’t it interesting how much time and energy managers invest in re-structuring their organisations?