Readers of my blog may know that I am a regular reader of, and contributor to, the Training Journal Daily Digest. This is a forum where a diverse group of in-house and independent trainers, consultants, coaches and sundry professionals come to share views with and seek help from their colleagues. It’s also a place of abundance! There’s so much that I enjoy about it.
Recently, there has been a discussion thread about how different people are experiencing the recession. Is it all doom and gloom? Clearly not. Still, the question implicit in such a discussion is: “how honest are we prepared to be?”
One posting caught my eye and resonated with me. It has messages for those of us who work as coaches – those to whom others look for an example. It has messages for those of us who lead – again, to whom others look for an example. The message was from Hilary Cooke (see http://www.merlin-consultancy.com/) and, with her generous permission, I reproduce it here:
To reply to your question, my biggest learning has so often been, and still is, around how I handle myself and certainly managing my own anxieties and vulnerabilities is an important part of that. John Heron (one of my heroes) is red-hot explicit on how we cannot safely take clients to areas we have not been to and do not dare visit ourselves.
I work a lot with people who are in jobs or roles where it has become important to fake what you feel and then manage the emotional labour that it creates. It takes huge amounts of energy to deny feelings and I don’t choose that for myself.
I have my own lightbulb joke about consultancy – how many consultants does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer – I don’t know, and I’m too busy to think about it now, but I’ll send you a proposal when I get time at the weekend.
So – we become seduced into our own brand of “macho” (I think) – and it’s about success equating to being raftered with work. Ask any colleague at a networking do and they will shake their head from side to side, tut like a plumber looking at a leak and adopt a pained expression whilst proclaiming how soooooo busy they are. That’s the facade for clients too – after all, if we are not busy, the unspoken rider is “well you can’t be very good then” and so we come to believe our own propaganda.
The risk to ourselves is building our dream-life – and then becoming too busy to benefit from it or enjoy it – and then have the temerity to advise other people on how to live theirs??? (Talk about “take my advice – I don’t happen to be using it myself!”)
Personally, I wouldn’t employ a coach or developer who couldn’t prove and quantify their own time and income expenditure on objective self development – I certainly do and expect the same from my partners. I also think it’s a shame that there is not a compulsory supervision practice to support consultants and coaches, as there is in psychotherapy. I choose to go in to supervision if I feel I am approaching or bumping into the coaching / therapy boundary with certain clients, and maintain my coaching tribe for different purposes. It’s knowing my own limits that enables me to create and hold the safe space that you talk about and that we know to have such value in our work – both with groups and individuals.
So yeah – vulnerabilities, anxieties, fears, – bring them on – and acknowledge that they are there. Only then can they be managed. It’s the ones I don’t yet know, my blind spots, that are the dangerous ones – so if you spot any, I trust you will tell me!