Erik de Haan

Person-Centred Coaching: Facilitating the Coachee

‘Person-centred counselling’ is a form of coaching in which the coachee is welcomed entirely on his or her own terms and is given a maximum of space to work in his or her own way on personal issues. The coach refrains as far as possible from any form of direction, contributes a minimum of new information or advice, and acts as a sort of partner and companion in the coachee’s process of development. We might start by considering where counselling lies in terms of the various facilitating styles that we can identify (see Learning with Colleagues, Chapter 16), namely: Expert: focused on the coachee’s issues and problems. Process manager: focused on the process between the coachee and his or her problems. Trainer: focused on the skills and abilities of the coachee. Developer: focused on the person and values of the coachee.

Paradoxical coaching: Moving with defences

The paradoxical approach is eminently suited to tricky coaching situations in which ‘things are not going smoothly’; where, for example: The coachee does not appear to accept the coach whole-heartedly. Initiatives appear to get bogged down. In one way or another, the coach feels constantly challenged — to be a better coach or to give more, less, or cleverer advice.

Boundaries on Coaching with Colleagues

Coaching with colleagues is a broad concept. As discussed earlier in this book, both colleagues from outside the organisation (external coaches) and colleagues from within the coachee’s organisation (internal coaches) can play a helping role. There are also managers who use a coaching style of management but at the same time remain hierarchically responsible for their staff, with inevitable consequences in terms of what can and cannot be discussed during a coaching session. This book is not concerned with coaching leadership, though we find that leaders are able to use most coaching styles very effectively. In the relationship between manager and ‘coachee’, the coachee cannot really be at the centre: the manager’s task is to represent the interests of the organisation and the department, and those interests do not always coincide with the interests of the coachee.

A Rich Field of Exploration

This chapter sets out to provide a clear explanation of the complex and multi-layered nature of coaching conversations. It starts with a window onto the coachee used by both coach and coachee: this is an extended version of the Johari window (see Luft, 1969, or Learning with Colleagues, Chapter 10). It then introduces a window onto the coach, which gives an idea of the different emphases that coaches can apply in their approach.

Structuring the Coaching Journey

This chapter outlines a number of aspects that we generally attend to at the start of coaching and when structuring our coaching conversations. We give generally applicable suggestions for structuring and conducting the whole process and individual conversations and point out that different approaches to coaching are dictated by different initial conditions. Some coaching approaches can be applied during a stroll with the coachee; for others, taking notes during the conversation is vital. The differences between approaches are dealt with in Part II.

The capabilities of the coach

There is a wide range of literature on the skills of the coach. Most books and articles about coaching contain directions and practical recommendations described from the basis of a single perspective or preferred style, such as the GROW model, Rational Emotive Therapy or Transactional Analysis. In our view, there is no single best method of coaching and different coaching styles are effective in different situations. Chapter 5 contains a broad overview of four basic approaches for coaches: insight-focused, coachee-focused, problem-focused and solution-focused. The talents and personality of the coach, the issues and personality of the coachee, the goals of the coaching and the context in which it is taking place all determine the effectiveness of any approach. An experienced coach is aware of his or her own preferred approach or approaches, and is able to deviate from them if something different appears to be more effective. Flexibility in choosing a personal coaching approach is perhaps the most important skill a coach can have.

Directive Coaching: Structuring with an Objective

The most basic and straightforward coaching approach is undoubtedly the directive approach, in which the coach keeps a grip on the conversations and puts the coachee on a leash, so to speak, providing encouragement and helping him or her resolve their issues.’ This book does not describe the most directive methods, which simply involve the coach answering the coachee’s questions and explaining how to tackle the issues arising. These sorts of directive technique are not examined more closely because we believe that coaching always focuses on helping the coachee to find his or her own 1. In fact, the directive approach has the longest history of all, because an age-old tradition of restraint, disciplining conversations and hypnosis of psychiatric patients is entirely in keeping with this approach. For an introduction to the field of modern directive therapeutic techniques, see Hawton et al. (1989). Otherwise, the description ‘cognitive and behavioural’ is a more common description, at least in psychotherapy, than ‘directive’. This also highlights the distinction with the systemic and paradoxical approaches (see Chapter 9), which are also directive. We retain the word ‘directive’, nevertheless, because it appears more frequently in the coaching literature. answers (see also the definitions in Chapter 1). We do discuss a number of extreme directive methods in Chapter 9, in which the coachee does receive answers to his or her questions, albeit highly absurd ones. These are given with a completely different aim in mind than that of providing a solution — namely, that of mobilising the coachee’s own problem-solving abilities.

Historic Roots and Summary of Approaches

Personal development through coaching may have grown out of management training and sports coaching but it has much in common, in our view, with the older field of psychotherapy (see also Peltier, 2001). As a consequence, we look primarily to psychotherapy to find historic roots for various coaching approaches. In the history of psychotherapy different authors have made different choices and different recommendations, often related to their own approach or personality, or to the type of clients for whom their approach was developed. Strangely, research has shown that there is much more agreement between psychotherapists in practice than there is in theory (Corsini and Wedding, 1989). Therapists using completely different theoretical approaches therefore do largely the same things in the consulting room.

Analytic coaching: In search of insight

In analytic coaching, ‘understanding from the inside’ is central, in the form of a joint journey of discovery by coach and coachee. The aim is to increase the coachee’s insight into his or her own issues and problems. The coach does not pose as an ‘expert’, or even as someone who has acquired a large measure of self-knowledge or insight into human nature. The coach’s position is rather that of an ‘empiricist’ — someone who has already trodden this path of insight and understanding — and of a ‘companion’ on the journey of discovery. Preparation for analytic coaching consists mainly of acquiring deep understanding of your own coaching issues from the inside.1

The organisation coach

Every coach is an organisation coach. All coaching described in this book is coaching not only of a coachee, but also of an organisation, because the coachee’s organisation is present in and through every coachee. This is the main difference between coaching and psychotherapy: coaching is work- and organisation-oriented, while therapy is more remote from the working organisation — the organisation being only one dominant system of which the coachee forms part.