Wharton on blogs

In a new article in “Knowledge @ Wharton”, their weekly newsletter, professors of this prestigious business school report on their use of blogs in their work. Both positive and negative opinions are vented.

I have been thinking about using blogs for an intervention: as a possibility to give people an (anonymous) voice for their concerns, and perhaps even to build up or connect to a community. The advantage of blogs is that there is most like something or somebody out there (among 50+ mio blogs worldwide) appealing to you and vice versa. Since many blogs are private, you can also take a peek at other people’s concerns and worries: this helps you realise that you are not alone (“hey, my problem isnt THAT bad compared to X’s”). However, I have not tried it yet. Odd, really, since I use the web quite a lot to connect and to obtain last-minute-information. (Not to mention logistics, but that is a different, non-therapeutic use).

The real value of blogs, for me, can be harvested when several people work on the same (thematic) blog – which is my wish for this blog. Otherwise it’s just another form of regular (electronic) column.

Coaching is about story, too

Yes. Any questions? The truth of this statement hit me when I picked up a book on novel analysis today. It has long been known to contenders of the “storytelling” school of knowledge management (e.g. Steve Denning – I like the man and his work).

The client has a story, and tells another. The coach has a story, too, and also tells another. Both storylines meet and begin to get entangled from the moment of their first meeting. This is a process perspective on something that carries a lot of passion, since stories are not (only) about plot, but about character, emotions, about mistakes we made and hope to never make again (yet often still make).

It would be interesting to explore coaching from a story-analytic point of view – I am sure someone must have done this, but I don’t know of any studies – do you?

There is no way back

“The reason why we are unable to predict the result and the end of an action with certainty is that an action has no end.”

- Hannah Arendt (from: “The Human Condition”, German edition: “Vita Activa”)

The Arte channel in Germany brought a long portrait of the German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) yesterday. Looking for a quote for one of my business school courses, I found the quote above (my translation from the German – though the original is in English), which left a deep impression on me. She distinguishes between processes that have a material result (a product) and others. “Nothing that is ever done, can be taken back” could be a short form of her statement.

Why am I posting this here? – Because a female student of mine complained about another professor: “Somehow he looks down on women – I cannot really pin him down, I just feel it”. That made me think on whether and how I exclude women in my class, and I realise that, in my weekly quotes, I only ever quote male artists, scientists etc. So there: next week’s quote will be Hannah Arendt.

It is interesting to see her on TV (there are a number of interviews from the 1960s): she seems so different from other women on TV – they are so terribly well-behaved these days! Everybody is! During the sessions, she smokes incessantly, hits the armchair with her right hand in the rhythm of her sentences, she speaks a lot. Some of this is a change in TV interview culture in the past 50 years. Some of it is her personality and fate (a Jewish emigrant to the U.S., who lost her father at age 6). Some of it is her role as a thinking women in a culture, and at a time, when people still were not used to seeing women succeed publicly, and certainly not in philosophy. She does not come across as very traditionally “feminine” when she opens her mouth – she radiates intensity and passion for thought.

It would be interesting to show interviews with Hannah Arendt to my female clients and ask them for their impressions, in particular in comparison to how they believe they are permitted to express themselves in public!

And here is the counterpoint, a quote by the admirable (for me, anyay) British novelist Fay Weldon – not known to be very well behaved (thank God):

“The New Women! I could barely recognize them as being of the same sex as myself, their buttocks arrogant in tight jeans, openly inviting, breasts falling free and shameless and feeling no apparent obligation to smile, look pleasant or keep their voices low. And how they live! Just look at them to know how! If a man doesn’t bring them to orgasm, they look for another who does. If by mistake they fall pregnant, they abort by vacuum aspiration. If they don’t like the food, they push the plate away. If the job doesn’t suit them, they hand in their notice. They are satiated by everything, hungry for nothing. They are what I wanted to be; they are what I worked for them to be: and now I see them, I hate them.”

Of course, Weldon exaggerates to provoke and stir up discussion. She comments on the passing of time. It sounds shocked only at first reading – she really admires these women. Who define themselves more through their actions than through the mirror-image of society. They do what men have done ever since – why shouldn’t they? Perhaps quite a bit more like Hannah Arendt, and less like Elizabeth Bennett.

Acquisition and the value paradox

Ah-kwee-zee-shon … our most hated/best loved four-syllable word, isn’t it? Went along for the ride yesterday. Even during an acquisition, which is essentially a business transaction, coaching skills come in handy: observing the client’s body language, checking your own expression and feeling, checking in and out of a group, etc.

What stays with me today is a paradox: we want the coaching to be based on our values, and of course we respect the private space in which coaching takes place. Companies are ambivalent: as a system, their instinctive drive is to protect their identity (often against the interest of an individual); at the same time, they are nothing without the individuals, who make up the whole. One obvious solution is to look at the values as the result of collective creativity and intelligence – instead of a top-down set of rules fertilised by corporate identity. This, however, would require that strategy is created everywhere in the organisation, not just at the top.

Which is how it is done in families: each sustainable decision made in a family is the result of input from all sides. Yes, the parents still have the responsibility, but wise parents test the waters first, they remain in touch with their children throughout the process, and they don’t stick to decisions that obviously harm the child.

Perhaps you think this is too simple a model for an organisation. But if we take the “learning organisation” and our insights from organisational constellations seriously, then the family model of the firm is not a bad one. There is, of course, the market, and lately the global market, which is used to justify the increasing gap between lower and upper levels in many companies. The result of this gap, however, is that companies loose strength in the market place. They do not use their greatest source of power: the loyalty that ties links all members of the system – including the deceased ones.

Fielding technique … and Aikido

Background: Aikido is a modern Japanese martial art, developed by Morihei Ueshiba between the 1920s and the 1960s. Aikido contains a very significant spiritual component.

One of the key experiences of aikido is that the attacked uses his love, or appreciation, for the attacker to neutralise him. As much as possible of the energy of the attack is turned into an action that brings the attack to a halt.

Even without the (for aikido necessary) spirituality, there are a few lessons in there for coaching. E.g. the “attack” may corresponds to an assault that the client has experienced in his work environment. – It is often (not always) best responded to by turning the energy of the aggressor against himself. How can this be done?

One possibility is an old assertiveness training technique called “fielding” – when you are bullied, simply react by repeating a simple message. E.g. when the bully is trying to manipulate you into doing him some special favour, you might say: “I don’t want to”. He will usually come at you with the same request from a different direction. You say: “I really don’t want to.” And so on, possibly a few more times. All this achieves is to make clear where your boundaries are, no more. It does not give you magic powers over the aggressor, it does not guarantee victory. However, fielding regularly takes the air out of an attack or a manipulative attempt or a bullying.

In my coaching practice, I have found this fielding technique especially useful for female coachees.

Another technique similar in spirit to Aikido is Erickson’s fundamental tenet of “Speak the client’s language.”

I will write more about lessons from Aikido for coaching in subsequent posts, since I have recently begun studying it & enjoy it very much though it regularly brings me to the limit of my physical abilities (as I am writing this, my every muscle hurts!)

Fear in coaching

Saw “V for Vendetta“, a recent, very political movie by the Wachowski brothers, creators of the “Matrix“. Excellent acting by mostly British actors.

An important message of this movie is about defeating personal, bodiless fear by facing the possibility of death – a specialty of existential therapy. (Interestingly, the fathers of ET, including Abraham Maslow and Rollo May, are also the fathers of executive coaching).

It made me think of the times when fear is a topic in coaching, and how it often is not addressed, because, officially, fear has no place in the modern corporate world. I wonder how other coaches address this issue of fear when it comes up. I suppose my preferred way is to give the fear a voice, or a shape, or a name so that it can be looked at and dealt with, at least partly, on the rational level.

But then, we know that existential fears go underground – only to surface in the form of bad dreams, lousy sleep, addictions and the like. Some methods from TA have helped me here – e.g. the drama triangle, or the parent-adult-child (PAC) scheme. They sometimes help the client grow up and face the part of their fear that is regressed.

In my practice, the most frequent fear is fear of failure – often expressed as fear of losing the appreciation of the boss, the peers or team members. Insights following an explanation of PAC have sometimes helped here. At other times, a roleplay or a constellation with chairs have been useful, whereby the client assumes the position of those he or she fears. The result is empathy, understanding, sometimes even compassion. If the fear is the result of bullying or mobbing, however, sometimes the client is in denial of a situation that’s gone bad. Here, too, a constellation can help him face the reality of the situation, and regroup his options accordingly.

Definitions by the truckload

Since I divide my time between teaching and coaching, I would like to add an executive coaching blog to my teaching blog. Check it out if you are so inclined.

Here are a few definitions – pretending that this were a YASA [Yet Another Scientific Activity] … google yields (among a lot of obvious bullshit) these nine definitions that someone has collected. Most coaching sites are not of the FAQ- but of the Ad-type, so it is very difficult for clients to distinguish information with from information without an agenda. Not that I believe for a minute that there was such information – but the better sites are upfront about it.

There seems to be a different set of foci in these “definitions” (remember from philosophy 101 that definitions have no inherent truth value):

• the relationship between coach and coachee
• the process of coaching

A number of definitions stress “professonality”, others stress the contractual nature of the relationship. A few definitions appeal to non-corporate values (feeling etc.). The spectrum of definitions is amazing, some call it worrying – when looked at with paradigmatic lenses, one sees a field growing organically, like a jungle, in all directions.

What does Internet-Man have to say about executive coaching? Let us look at the Wikipedia entry – an excerpt from the longer article:

Executive coaching is a hands-on, one-on-one process between an executive and an external coach.

It is interesting that this definition excludes executive coaching in teams and groups – IMO among the most effective modes of delivery. Also, the coach must be external (i.e. to the company). The process ought to be “hands-on” – not very specific. As a Freudian slip, this betrays the assumption that coaching is even less about the body than therapy. on the conscious level, this underlines the pragmatic nature of coaching, which is expected to lead to (positive) practical consequences for the coachee.

Now, “process” also is a bit of a cop-out: relationships are not production, and human processes are notorious for being complex (in a technical sense), non-routine and messy. Hence, the exact opposite of factory processes.

Despite these difficulties, it might be interesting to come up with a better definition.