Oftentimes our culture teaches us to take responsibility for the impact we have on other people and it follows that other people are responsible for the impact they have on us. In the English language this idea is embedded in such everyday phrases as “he made me really angry” or “she made me laugh out loud”. This language reduces a complex process into cause and effect and places our experience at the effect end of the equation.

There are times when those we coach – be they the clients we coach as professional coaches or the staff we coach as leaders in the workplace – hold the belief that their experience is the outcome of the actions of those around them. This belief can limit personal effectiveness dramatically: as long as an individual’s focus is on identifying those things others should do differently, it is unlikely that anything will change in his life. Lives begin to change when we recognise and act on the belief that – no matter what behaviours others demonstrate towards us – we can’t change the others, we can only change ourselves.

The leader as coach often meets a different presupposition in those he coaches. How often do those we lead focus on the words and actions of others when we seek to engage them in a discussion about their own contribution? How often do they look to us to provide a solution to their desires, e.g. for a promotion or payrise? The leader who shares the belief in his responsibility to make his staff happy is likely, over time, to miss many opportunities to help staff members to help themselves.

The coaching leader, on the other hand, knows that his words and actions have a significant impact on those he leads. And still he recognises that the way his words and actions are received is also a function of the individual with whom he is speaking (of their thoughts, beliefs, values etc.). As a coach, he holds the belief that the outcomes his staff members achieve come from their ability to manage themselves, rather from any ability to change others. By coaching from this belief, he invites staff to focus on those areas in which they can make changes and in this way he helps them to help themselves. In the language of leadership, the word “empowerment” is often (maybe over-) used to describe this phenomenon, whilst professional coaches talk of clients as being “at choice” or even “at cause”.

For a leader to be credible in helping his staff to act from this presupposition, he needs to act from the same belief himself. By focusing on those areas in which he can take action and by choosing his actions with care – as opposed to making vocal complaints about those actions he expects of others that haven’t been taken – he leads by example. This is pacesetting at its most powerful and compelling. And herein lies the paradox that sits behind Mahatma Gandhi’s often repeated invitation to be the change we want to see in the world: that it is by the example we set that we have the greatest influence on the behaviours of others.

If you would like to learn more about the presuppositions that underpin coaching or to undertake exercises to test and develop your own presuppositions, keep reading. In the coming days, I’ll be exploring additional presuppositions and offering exercises for you.