Professional Coaching is about Dialogue

Professional Coaching is about Dialogue

“Measurable empty space and intense SILENCE is what truly defines masterful coaching”

Most discussions we all engage in show a lack of poor listening skills. Unlike the consultant or trainer who is paid to have and sell if not impose productive answers, a coach needs to acquire advanced listening skills to professionally accompany individual and collective client dialogue so as to permit the spontaneous emergence of the client's own solutions.

Dialogue does not have any objective other than to share or facilitate the emergence of new shared meaning. Consequently, a dialogue between people permits the progressive emergence of a new meaning of which the content is generally unpredictable.

To be productive, a dialogue must be a process to share meaning without any predefined objective as to the specific content of its production. This free and respectful sharing process permits the spontaneous, sometimes surprising and relatively shared elaboration or emergence of new points of view and original shared meaning, unexpected directions or solutions.

Dialogue with a coach

• When clients engage in the coaching process, the nature of the conversation is relatively different. The client talks while the coach attentively listens, first to give expanding space for client expression and whenever possible, to validate the meaning conveyed by the client.

• The sheer power unleashed in the coaching dialogue will most likely cause the coach and the client to consider several serious questions, such as: What constitutes success in this dialogue? Who, specifically, is my client? How should confidential issues be treated? Which topics fall outside the purview of coaching, and how do those affecting work performance get recognized? In the face of these ethical conundrums, the coach may need to align dialogue in a direction punctuated by validated objectives set by the "client"/HR. The coach must also be brave enough to provide enough space and time for the client to move forward - often by pausing and confronting some taboo topic, hitherto deliberately ignored. The dialogue will always help the client pursue their selected objectives.

• The most robust coaching relies on broadly informed dialogue from others. Quite a lot of work may have to be undertaken in the collection, validation, and analysis of information before coaching of the client can begin. The kind of information that is assimilated might include current facts about the political environment in which the executive is working.

• Impressions held by colleagues, associates, and direct reports can provide vital indications about the executive's personal interaction. Sometimes the only alternative is to begin with an executive's own anecdotal information, but coaching in a vacuum is a dangerous game.

The Corporate bottom line: By incorporating the ethos of the organization within the coaching dialogue, it becomes possible to relate an individual's behavior to purposeful, productive organisational change.

The primary role of a coach consists of leaving more than enough space and time for the client to think, feel, formulate ideas, elaborate or discover a complete expression of his or her concerns. Respectful and attentive listening by coaches provides a receptacle for their clients to gradually elaborate or evolve the meaning they carry and need to unfold.

The meaning contained in the dialogue is developed by the coachee. Invariably this transforms and evolves and can reach a very different result from the ones that were first expected.

Facing attentive and silent coaches, clients give form or formulate meaning through verbalisation

• In this gradual process, client meaning gradually appears and slowly, again and again evolves and remodels itself.

• As long as necessary, the coach should neither answer nor intervene within client dialogue or conversation, but rather keep quiet so as to leave the latter with a large receptacle to unload, model and remodel volunteered personal thoughts, feelings and motivations. This receptacle exists in the form of an attentive welcoming vacuum or silence. Within this receptacle will progressively emerge the essential form and practical content clients wish to give their concerns.

• Only later and if needed, by subtly using other carefully chosen coaching techniques should coaches help their clients move forward another step. These questioning techniques should serve the complementary purpose of providing clients opportunities to explore and confront themselves with questions and growth options.

• Questions are chosen for the sole purpose to help clients reframe themselves to further explore or develop their own meaning or purpose. Through questions and other reformulating and communication techniques, a coach helps clients uncover or discover for themselves what they hold as their deepest beliefs, attitudes, motivations and ambitions.

• To help clients meander on their own personal search for meaning, a coach may also sparingly participate in the elaboration of client dialogue, but never by giving any importance to his or her own personal contributions. These should only be volunteered at the sole service of each client‘s self-defined progress.

The Search and Development Process - The Discovery First Stage

• This S & D function is to facilitate emerging client meaning. Note; there can never be a conscious or unconscious attempt by a coach to influence or direct the dialogue. Any attempt to redirect the dialogue at this early discovery stage would risk transforming the client‘s personal dialogue into a discussion with the coach.

• As the client searches for meaning and resolution they may at times move into realms that are completely outside their coach‘s areas of competency. It doesn't matter though -for as long as the client is reaching their objectives the coach is fulfilling their role.

Client dialogue facilitates the process of re-centering or realignment

• This is how coaching clients gradually develop conscience and awareness and tune into their senses as to where they are really at. They discover deeper aspirations and motivations. As they deploy or unfold the accompanied personal dialogue, they discover and implement a greater capacity to discern, a keener intuition. Little by little as they discover themselves they; develop a greater competency to listen and understand others; are more able to engage in discussion on themselves; create a more comprehensive vision of their own potential and a more powerful motivation to act. In short, through their accompanied dialogue, coaching clients gradually operate their own transformation and deploy their own development.

Summary:

1. Any client transformation will almost naturally carry consequences in all the facets of their personal and professional lives.

2. The real expertise in masterful coaching is the coach‘s professional capacity to accompany the development of the individual through the unfolding process of their own personal dialogue.

3. Being totally present both to the coaching process and to one‘s own senses and intuitions can take years of focused experience and training. Indeed, for many coaching practitioners, developing the deep attentive presence and listening stance of masterful coaching is like learning how to meditate. And, most coaches do not make the journey.

4. Learning attentive presence rests on daily, sustained training. This skill can be developed with the same voluntary approach as when one physically exercises. Developing attentive presence is not learning how to use an occasional technique. It is about changing the way one is built, modifying the equilibrium of the way one is.

"Acquiring attentive presence cannot be improvised. One needs practice and discipline."