September 11th and the Coaching Agenda

By Phil Hayes

During a coaching session last September a harassed executive talks freely of the need to balance his life and to decide on his real personal and professional aims. Our coach begins to help him explore his options and to create a set of new, more empowering goals. After a period of optimistic exploratory dialogue the executive slumps back in his chair and says “What’s the point of this when I know I’m going to go back into the office and deal with 500 emails every week? What is the point of it all?”

This is a tiny example of the kind of discussion some of our coaches are beginning to notice occurring more frequently over recent months.

Its significance is that the coaching conversation is concerning itself more and more with big life questions at a time when the rate of change and the pressure to achieve more at work is reaching new peaks. This kind of ‘big life’ discussion in the coaching room has in my experience increased quite dramatically since September 11th.

Consciousness is shifting at a rapid rate and we are trying to find out how to live. At a personal level we have seen huge changes of social attention to issues such as feminism, environmentalism, personal development and politics. Hitherto ‘beard and sandals’ issues are now very much in the mainstream. Simultaneously, ‘mainstream’ issues such as politics are failing to attract public attention as before. There is also a rise in interest in spiritual matters, much of this outside the traditional religious orders.

At the organisational level there is a massive shift of attention towards ethics both inside and outside organisational walls. Petrol companies advertise their commitment to develop renewable sources of energy. An overall trend is of institutions looking to build social/emotional capital as well as financial capital.

Reality lag

Reality is lagging behind awareness, and aspirations are frustrated by lingering negative structures, behaviours and beliefs at all levels of society

At the executive level we see some of our pressured clients struggle to conceive and carve out a ‘better’ way of living when the realities of their working lives are often unbalanced, morally confusing, and exhausting.

In finding new ways to live and work our executives are often searching for reliable maps and rules drawn primarily from the ideologies of the relatively recent, primarily industrial, past. Many are finding the very rules and beliefs (some of which are held unconsciously) that have given them success in the past no longer adequate to meet the fast-shifting future.

September 11th has speeded things up

September 11th has been for some a trigger, giving them a new impetus and a new freedom to discuss these big life issues. At times of trauma many people go into periods of reassessment and September 11th was a trauma with many added issues of politics, ethics, spirituality and morality.

Despite claims that the acts were simply perpetrations of evil by evil people, the events were also symptomatic of the need to embrace global issues of ideology and power. Thus the individual search for meaning and right action has been echoed and amplified by the aftermath of a truly global event.

Coaches must act as explorers and companion guides to the unknown

It is a privilege to share the aspirations and dilemmas of our clients as they find ways forward. What we cannot do is offer them certainty or truth. What we can do is to offer support in exploring challenging and unfamiliar territory, and a sense that we are equal companions on their journeys.

We may also at times show a little courage in embracing the challenges of the unknown.