VULNERABILITY AND COACHING

Keri Phillips

‘There’s a difference between the vulnerability of being raw and wounded and the vulnerability that comes with an open heart. Our challenge is learning to orchestrate the openness and vulnerability of the heart’. Linda Marks1.

Homeless Camp, St Ann’s Square, Manchester

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‘Vulnerability is theonly authentic state.

Being open means being open for wounding,

but also for pleasure’Stephen Russell.

‘We can learn and embrace forgiveness and lessons;

walk in the light of healing or return to the shadow of

vulnerability’. Jim Boone.

Two conversations in the last few days have vividly brought home to me the wide range of experiences that can typify vulnerability. First a conversation with two young women involved with the homeless camp at St Ann’s square Manchester. The slightly older one, who visited the camp to help out when she could, told me tearfully about her struggles to get back her sixteen month old child who had been taken from her because he was regarded as being at risk and was now currently being adopted. The younger one, aged seventeen was the youngest person living at the camp. They both showed me the scars on their wrists and arms, the results of self-harm. The word vulnerability did not arise in our conversation, but it was etched on their faces. The second conversation was with a friend and colleague who is very close to completing a long and demanding professional qualification. As a result of her research she will be challenging some of the established thinking as she presents her case at her oral examination. She spoke eloquently and movingly of her sense of vulnerability in this process. She knows she will need to make a stand, both at the examination and beyond. There is nowhere she can hide.

Reflecting on my conversation with my friend reminded me that there can be risks in being an explorer and openly pushing the boundaries; as, for example, was seen in the so-called Freud Wars2. That is the philosophical, pragmatic, political and personal disputes about the true nature of psychoanalysis.

It seems to be frighteningly easy for that which was once lauded for being ground-breaking then to become regimented and ultimately sanctified. The next generation of explorers are then put under pressure to conform by those who claim the cloak of authenticity and rectitude in order to disguise their hypocrisy. Adulation can delude the recipients into believing they have been deified.

Also, in the context of coaching supervision, I have had several interesting conversations about vulnerability where, amongst other things, we realised that we were in our language bouncing around between ‘coulds’ and ‘shoulds’. ‘Could I share with the client the fact that I had a very similar experience at her age?’......‘Should I share my very personal story about bereavement with the client....?’ These made intriguing discussions where the boundaries between option and obligation were suddenly blurred; perhaps this in itself can be an indication of vulnerability; even a cause?

A large part of my excitement and curiosity regarding this topic is its intriguing blend of vividness and elusiveness. Similar to betrayal3/4 it can seem initially to be quite straightforward and the ‘truths’ evident. However, it quickly becomes apparent that there are many, often evolving, dimensions. In this paper I will start by outlining some of these and then weave them together. From there I will more explicitly consider the implications in terms of the client’s (coachee’s) vulnerability and then that of the coach. I also touch on the coaching team dimension before then returning to the homeless camp in the conclusion. I will offer both the theoretical and the practical. In all of this I refer to coaching even though much of my inspiration comes through the worlds of counselling and therapy. I am aware of

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the ethical and professional issues which may arise in this and have written about them elsewhere5; hence I am choosing not to consider them here. Another aspect about which I feel uneasy, perhaps even vulnerable is that sometimes the examples I give are painted in primary colours. I fully accept that often experiences are shaded.

Vulnerability: Vivid and Elusive

Below I tease apart some of the strands within vulnerability; at the same time, recognising that there is much interplay between them.

Good/Bad

The quotations at the start of this paper, following Linda Marks’ delightfully incisive comment, bring to the surface some markedly different views.

Sometimes vulnerability is seen as distinctly good, for example, a willingness to be vulnerable is, almost paradoxically seen as an indication of strength. On the other hand, it can also be regarded as a failure to protect oneself and leaving oneself open to attack, literally or metaphorically; a lapse of self-care.

Dictionary definitions6/7 give further interpretations; for example, capable of being hurt, open to criticism, liable to temptation, defenceless, tender, sensitive, thin-skinned; generally it is about being at risk in some way. Taking just two of these words, ‘tender’ and ‘thin-skinned’ graphically illustrates the balancing which may be needed. As a manager, or leader or friend I may show another some tenderness but there might also be the possibility of my becoming thin-skinned as I move from compassion then to being overly sensitive to some minor, mildly negative comments. This balance may be even trickier when, for example as can quite often be the case, a colleague is also a friend. This aspect of balance I regard as crucial and I will return to it regularly during this paper.

Choice/No choice

Sometimes it is seen as something over which one has a choice, sometimes not. Clearly there are many situations where there may well not be a choice – being a young child, as a refugee leaving war-torn Syria, and mourning the loss of a loved one. Equally, Jean Bolen for example, when describing vulnerable goddesses, writes of the need for women to avoid the risk of victimisation: ‘.....a woman needs to look focused and confident. She must walk briskly as if in a hurry to get somewhere – appearing aimless or absent-minded invites trouble’8. She emphasises a clear point of decision, at least in terms of how to appear.

Current/Past

Peter Block in his classic work, ‘Flawless Consulting’9 refers to a sense of vulnerability triggering resistance. This might manifest itself in many different ways, including being

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apparently invulnerable; being exceptionally articulate and intellectually clever as a way of avoiding feelings; through to being apparently overwhelmed by vulnerability and seeming totally hopeless and helpless.

Such resistance may be grounded in the present, based on a clear and reasonably objective logic. Alternatively, the resistance may be energised much more by the past, even distant past. I am reminded of Stan Woollams and Michael Brown’s influential text, ‘Transactional Analysis’10 where they describe the ‘quotient of vulnerability’; this refers to the experiences and factors in childhood which can have a profoundly negative impact on the child’s sense of well-being: lack of power, inability to handle stress, immature thinking capacity, lack of information and lack of options. I am struck by the extent to which these may also apply to adults in organisational life; or are at least believed to do so. I convince myself that I am not being briefed sufficiently and this confirms my sense of myself as an outsider. Hence the experience of child and child-like vulnerability as a grown up.

So, a sense of vulnerability in the present may be focussed on the ‘here and now’ or the past or a mixture. For example, “I feel vulnerable with you now because you can be cleverly mordant and cause me embarrassment in front of my colleagues”.....or.....“You are assessing me for my coaching qualification”.....or.....“You remind me of my elder brother, who used to tease me all the time”. (The use of the word ‘mordant’ was a vain attempt to make a pre-emptive strike). Clearly in all this a Martian perspective11 may be difficult to achieve.

Aware/Unaware

As will be evident from the previous point, the person may not be aware of their sense of vulnerability, let alone its origins and the extent to which it is essentially current, past, old or young or a mixture. This in itself may paradoxically accentuate the sense of unaware vulnerability.

Individual/Collective

A sense of vulnerability may be specific or generic; for example, “It has been announced that there will be some redundancies, but I do not yet know what it means for me”.....or..... “There seems to be a strange and unsettling vibe around the place at the moment, but I do not know what it might be about”. There might be an even wider, culturally unsettling atmosphere; for example, being in a business sector which is rapidly becoming outdated or is subject to profound political pressure. Then, of course, there are those instances where whole communities may be under the threat of harassment, or even extermination.

Linked to this there is the experience of absorbing the vulnerability of another, whether an individual or organisation; whilst also having one’s own sense of vulnerability evoked. This is described by David Armstrong when writing about a consultancy assignment in a hospital setting. ‘These experiences of vulnerability in the presence of my clients had an institutional undertow, in that I became aware both of feeling the vulnerability of my own institution –

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what would happen if I made a mess of the assignment – and of feeling the vulnerability of my own relatedness to my institution. I believe these experiences, registered in myself, could be understood as correlates of the experience of my clients. More exactly, I would say that I experienced myself temporarily as both in and of their institution: something akin to a kind of institutional projective identification’12. I shall return later to this point of ownership.

Sometimes somebody may speak up in a way that is contrary to the prevailing norm regarding vulnerability. For example, she might express vulnerability in the face of the fact that it is a ‘be strong’ organisation, where one is not supposed to do that13. This can risk a response similar to that often inflicted on whistle blowers. This may then lead to the sense of vulnerability associated with being an outsider14. It will be particularly painful if one had previously been an insider; indeed perhaps of a group which was, or proclaimed itself to be, an extended family.

Taking/Avoiding Responsibility

Some see vulnerability as an inevitable part of the learning process. Andrew Kakabadse15 for example, sees it as a necessary part of transition as one goes, in his model, through the phases of False Competence, Relearning and Performing. Consequently owning one’s sense of vulnerability is important in order not only to generate but also to maintain the energy to learn. Denying or not acknowledging one’s vulnerability potentially diverts energy into self-delusion; energy that is then not available to support the movement forward. However, there will be a need for balance. An over-concern with vulnerability might lead to an obsession with what went wrong or might do so. The appreciative inquiry movement has sought to challenge such fixations16.

The person can become consumed with vulnerability and sees it as their identity. Thereby, staying stuck and ‘inviting’ others to rescue or persecute them10.

The Script

I now draw some of these threads together, having teased them apart. In doing so I employ the idea of scripts, from transactional analysis17. In this short section I thereby offer a point of reference for subsequently exploring the client’s vulnerability.

The essence of scripts is that people, both inside and outside awareness, create a life-story for themselves based on their answers to the following questions: ‘What sort of person am I?’, ‘What is my world like?’ and ‘What happens to someone like me?’ Below is a model to elaborate this further, including a strand of vulnerability.

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Creating: Developing a story with

vulnerability as one the strands, positive, negative, a mixture.

Clearly there is the potential for much of the process to be self-fulfilling; patterns of learning and living have been established and experiences may be sought and interpreted in ways that are consistent with the script. Organisations can also be seen as having scripts. Somebody may indeed join an organisation because of a convergence between the personal and the collective.

It could well be against this backdrop that the coach arrives on the scene.

The Role of the Coach: The Client’s Vulnerability

From this perspective of the script the role of the coach is to help the client uncover and revisit his assumptions, and indeed his assumptions about assumptions; that is, supporting double and triple-loop learning18; linking back to the earlier strands model:

Experiencing. ‘What do you see?’, ‘What do you imagine?’, ‘How do you know?’, ‘What are you noticing now?’

Feeling. ‘What are you feeling?’, ‘Are there ways in which your sense of vulnerability works for you?’, ‘Where is it in your body?’, ‘What is it saying to you?’, ‘What is your reply?’

Creating. ‘What is your story?’, ‘What type of story is it – comedy, tragedy, melodrama, thriller.....?’, ‘Who are the characters?’, ‘Which character are you?’, ‘Are there any particularly important characters?’, ‘Are there any animals?’, ‘What are the subsequent chapters?’

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Experiencing: Real and imagined threats, challenges, opportunities ; receiving love, anger,

indifference, support, sabotage.

Confirming:Seeking, creating, interpreting experiences and people which

back up the storyline

Feeling:Vulnerable, excited, threatened, clever, stupid, adoring, furious,

confused.

Confirming. ‘How does your story play out in the present?’, ‘Who are the key players?’, ‘Where are you in this?’, ‘What is it leading to?’

Clearly there are many different types of intervention which could be made to support the client in this; for example, a script questionnaire19. Also creative approaches – imagery, play, movement – are helpful in engaging the child within the client20. Particularly so since some aspects of the experience of vulnerability, originating in childhood, may be beyond words. Elements will also have been acquired at a preverbal stage. As is evident, the child is a key figure in scripting.

In offering the model of the cycle along with the possible interventions I am not necessarily proposing a linear approach in terms of exploring each area in turn. Linearity may simply be too grown-up as an approach and lead the coach unwittingly to disengage from the child within the client. Permission to self and the other to play and be messy may be important. One can always put a boundary around this, for example by inviting experimentation. “I suggest we play around with this idea for twenty minutes and then see where we have got to”. Boundaries are an important source of protection; that is, supporting the parenting role of the coach. The greater the permission, the need for greater protection; just as with child-rearing.

I now offer another perspective on the script. As is apparent from the rationale behind it there are both micro and macro dimensions : there are the day-to-day, even minute by minute actions and reactions and these then link to the much wider stage of the longer term and life. ‘I have a habit of being tentative in presenting my ideas for fear of getting too big for my boots; one of my father’s worst fears’. One of the ways in which this dimension of the immediate and the longer term has been illustrated is by Mavis Klein’s model which I have marginally adapted by placing a circle in the centre to indicate it is the client’s script21.

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CLIENT

This may run quite smoothly, regardless of whether the script is positive, negative or a mixture. For example, a person may have a script, the essence of which is ‘you have to fight’. He therefore, inside or outside awareness joins an organisation where he will be a bad fit. There may be a lot of pain and anguish, but there is a smoothness in the predictability; it is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Then, for whatever reason, the established patterns and habits are disrupted. This may be triggered internally in the sense that almost out of nowhere the person realises, for example, ‘I am capable of so much more than this!’. Or it may be external; the relatively new girlfriend says to her boyfriend, ‘I don’t know why you keep saying your Dad is so wonderful; I think he has quite a nasty sarcastic streak in him’. The coaching may be the prompt. The person only comes to coaching because he was told he had to and then discovers he has some important questions about himself and his role that he wants, indeed needs to consider.

In all of this vulnerability may be a cause, consequence or both; then potentially self-reinforcing.

I now illustrate this disruption by adapting the scripting model.

It may intensify more, ending up being a struggle to find solid ground; there may even be a

Catch 22 where the desperate search for solid ground makes it ever more difficult to find.

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CLIENT

This disruption can certainly be part of the coaching process, even being a sign that the coaching is going well; unfortunately the client feels the need to self-sabotage. For example, the client feels close to the coach and this then provokes a visceral fear of loss. In order to manage this fear the client takes the pre-emptive action of undermining or breaking the relationship. Apparent, even imminent script change turns out to be script confirmation. This has similarities with the idea of the ‘escape hatch’11; but without the profound destructiveness of self or others.

Hence, regardless of the degree of disruption, the importance in coaching of the coach helping the client to find the 3rd Position, from which he can observe himself in relation to the script. In order to do this the coach needs to be a part of and apart from the client, as I show below. She also needs to be supervising herself from the 4th Position.

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CLIENT

CLIENT ISSUE

CLIENT OBSERVES

SELF / ISSUE

1st position 2nd position

Shared 3rd

position

COACH SUPPORTS

COACH SUPERVISES

SELF

4th position

A strength of the 3rd position is that it potentially gives the client the opportunity to reparent self22. That is, using the starkness and intensity which may flow from vulnerability to visit assumptions, habits and beliefs about himself and his life. Much of the script will have been the result of parenting whether coming from Mum, Dad, Auntie Vera, the wonderful Miss Nicholson at primary school or Fred the apparently ageless local newsagent who always had a great sense of humour. Some of the parent rules and role-models may end up being seen as outdated or unhelpful. Equally, that which had been discarded or even hated may now be seen in a very different way. “I can now recognise what a fantastic job my Mum did under hugely difficult circumstances. Yet somehow I ended up blaming her for everything”.

As a consequence of poor attachment in childhood the person may not have a sense of having been parented23. A consequence is that unpredictability is particularly hard to handle, provoking a more intense sense of vulnerability. Anxiety becomes the existential feeling, rather than fear which, by definition is more focussed, specific and situational.

The client’s organisation may have been a source of inconsistent parenting. For example, sometimes organisations seek to promote a coaching culture based on the philosophy and practice of empowerment but in other aspects of the business rely on a command and control mentality as a last, or even first resort. People may even be told, “You MUST be empowering!” The recipients of such requirements may feel unsafe in directly challenging these contradictions; they consequently use their unexpressed anger to fuel a display of inadequacy. For example, exaggerating and emphasising the extent to which they are “merely trainee coaches” and not accepting that any of their existing leadership behaviours provide skills which are directly transferable. Arguably, they are exacting revenge from a one-down position.

In all of this, including the reparenting of self, the support of the client’s Wise Child is crucial in moving things forward. That part of self which is insightful, recognising core truths even when not able necessarily to express them. This may be in the context of some intriguing domains of exploration. I outline these in the model below:

CULTURAL

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HELPFUL UNHELPFUL

PERSONAL

SELF

OTHER

PRESENT

PAST

The Wise Child is supported by her sense of vulnerability; it helps her with the dilemmas of being on The Cusp of change24. ‘Now you see it……now you don’t’......‘It makes sense……no it doesn’t’......‘I want to go……I want to stay’…...‘I love myself……and hate myself’…...‘I want to be centre stage……I want to run away and hide’. Perhaps a world where ‘coulds’ and ‘shoulds’, options and obligations, ‘oughts’ and wants are remorselessly intertwined. For reasons mentioned earlier she is not always be able to identify, yet alone articulate what is going on for her. Her confusion is beyond words. Understandably she can feel herself to be in a somewhat precarious state. I show it as a parachute:

An alternative, rather more engaging and encouraging picture of this process is shown below:

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cUltural

paSt

helPful

SeLF

uNnhelpful

PeRSoNAL

OTHER

pResent

This time I show it as a hot air balloon, believing the analogy still typifies the dynamics, but in a slightly less scary way. The Wise Child as a navigator has a great deal of influence over the journey and the landing; however, a sudden change in the weather may have a profound impact. What seemed like progress suddenly feels blocked. Excitement becomes fear, or indeed vice-versa; or an unplanned landing site suddenly looks much more interesting or indeed necessary. As can be seen from the picture, the Wise Child can benefit from the company and love of the Wise Cat!

Depth of Working

The coach may work at deeper levels, moving from social, to psychological, to existential and perhaps spiritual25. There is the likelihood that the coach and the client will have or have had increasingly common concerns simply on the basis of their shared humanity – love, hate, appreciation, betrayal, disillusionment, infatuation, ecstasy, excitement, frustration, destiny and choice. The coach needs increasingly – as the work progresses over the short or longer term – to be a part of the client’s world in order to be apart from it. Some coaches may choose to pay attention to their body and physical movement in this balancing of being open to vulnerability, one’s own and the other’s. Such an awareness may, for example be a way the coach informs self about her or his emotional age in preparing for the session.

In all this the identification, exploration and differentiation between introjected and integrated values will be important26/27. Introjected values are ones that have been swallowed whole; as Fritz Perls suggested, not chewed over in order to decide which bits to spit out. ‘This is how I must be’, ‘This is what I must say’, ‘This is what I must do’. From a Martian perspective they may have made sense at the time they were swallowed; ‘If I don’t Mum will smack me’. Over time the introjected value may become so familiar that it is experienced as integrated; part of who one truly is. ‘This is my belief and experience’. However, the disruption mentioned earlier may be of such a depth that even the truly integrated values are revisited. That which felt right, made sense and was totally authentic is called into question. The pull to reassess may be like a grown up tap on the shoulder, but it is more likely to feel like a determined, perhaps angry, loving and desperate child tugging at one’s sleeve; the Wise Child.

Discarding the value can feel like discarding those people who were held dear from whom the value was acquired. The coaching is about separating these. Distinguishing the person from their bequest. On the other hand, if the person was seen to be clearly toxic then discarding them and the value may be easier; though not necessarily so.

The coach’s interventions, particularly if based upon ‘loving dislocation’28 may prompt a fundamental reassessment of what had previously been regarded as THE TRUTH. Such interventions are not about the coach deliberately encouraging vulnerability, but rather accepting that it can be part of the learning process. Also the coach may support the client

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in exploring the differences between ‘real’ and ‘racket’ feelings, as they are described in transactional analysis19. Rackets feelings are learnt and sometimes introjected; for example, ‘it is safer for me to express sadness rather than anger’. Consequently over time, and through habits which become entrenched the real feeling of anger is buried; in time turning to fury since it is unacknowledged; this then requires an even greater amount of sadness in order to seek to bury it.

Clearly much of the above assumes a high level of engagement by the coach. His or her sense of vulnerability will be a key factor. This is explored in the next section.

The Role of the Coach: The Coach’s Vulnerability

So it is a self-evident and important truth that the coach’s vulnerability is an essential aspect of her helping the client with his vulnerability. At the same time, this strength may also, in the moment or over time, become an impediment to working well; just as the client may find himself helped and hindered by his vulnerability. By way of précis and illustration, this is captured by the idea, indeed archetype of the Wounded Healer: as a child she experienced wounds. She drew amazing strength and motivation from this in terms of a great capacity to empathise with the pain of others and she then chose to become a Healer; for example, coach, croupier, social worker, jockey, comedian, organisation development consultant, bishop, insurance sales person, veterinarian surgeon or vegetarian. Her professional training and indeed later life experience also taught her the need to give priority to looking after herself – otherwise how could she truly look after others? However in the present, for a variety of reasons, she can lose sight of this and end up being trapped (trapping herself!) into seeking to heal others rather than healing herself; she deludes herself that by doing the former she is doing the latter and indeed that she has cured herself.

As always awareness is crucial; the coach’s awareness is necessary to help the client be more aware; hence this next section.

Degrees of Awareness

I suggest that the coach will feel less vulnerable the more she is dealing with ‘knowns’ and more vulnerable when she is dealing with ‘unknowns’, particularly if they catch her unawares.

Known..................................................................................Caught Unawares

This spectrum might cover a number of possibilities.

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Known. For example, regarding that which is known in advance of a particular coaching session:

- About self: she is feeling rather tired and stressed; she knows that she is facing particular and pressing challenges at work and at home.

- About the client: she knows that he is furious about being transferred to a less challenging role.

- About self in relation to the client: she knows she feels very protective of him. He reminds her of how she was 20 years ago. She is worried that she may not challenge him enough. Or, he reminds her of her patronising elder brother......she can feel angry towards him for no apparent reason and then does not cut him much slack.

- About the client organisation: she knows that she is quite confused and angry about some of the political rather than, in her eyes, sensible decisions that are being made. She knows that in the past with other client organisations she has made the mistake of leaping on a soap box about such things.

She can therefore plan in advance in a number of areas; asking colleagues, supervisor or others for support. It covers many possibilities ranging from a consideration of her own script to noticing her physical movement into the coaching room; this latter aspect is itself a transition; being aware of that which Eric Rhode called liminal phenomena, that which happens on the threshold; it may even be a rite of passage29. Part of her preparation also includes checking that she is not over-preparing, particularly if that is part of the client’s organisational culture. This links back to David Armstrong’s story and the notion of absorbing outside awareness the patterns of another; consequently, whether individual or collective, it may be rescripting or script confirmation.

Caught Unawares

- The client unexpectedly raises a hot topic: that he is being moved to a new location and this will have to be the final session. The coach had previously carefully thought through the process of endings and ‘proper good-byes’ were something dear to her heart in personal and professional life. Perhaps ‘doing it properly’ was a current professional and indeed personal development goal.

- The client raises a topic which is unexpectedly hot for the coach; she previously thought she had fully worked through her issues about being bullied at school.

- She notices some intense feelings that seem to come out of nowhere, but she knows they are related to the client in some way. She bounces around between guilt and shame and then realises that she is envious of the client who has been telling her of a fascinating assignment he has been given.

- The coach notices some intense feelings but has no idea at all what that is about: she feels sad, but has not the faintest idea of the origin – past...present... real...imagined...who knows?!

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With any of these there is potential for the coach suddenly to feel unsettled and vulnerable. The suddenness of the sense of vulnerability adds to it.

Arguably unpredictability is itself predictable in that it will inevitably happen at some point. On that basis the coach might have already established a self-care routine based upon mindfulness, grounding and paying attention to breathing patterns, posture and thoughts; taking a second or two to gather oneself.

I am very aware of having presented the extremes of a spectrum. Frequently there will be the evolving middle ground. An aspect of this middle ground may be a subsequent realisation of vulnerability. Hence this next section.

Subsequent Realisation

There are times when the awareness of vulnerability comes after the event:

- A sudden realisation after the session has ended. This is evidence to support those who see time to reflect between coaching sessions as important in order to reduce the likelihood of unaware vulnerability being carried forward and impeding the work of the next session. Quite often organisations do not have/give themselves sufficient reflection time and this may be transmitted to the coaching practice – particularly that of internal coaches? The neglected child keeps her resentment hidden during the session and then suddenly reveals it afterwards. It is part of the liminal phenomena, when walking down the corridor away from the coaching room in order to have a coffee in the cafe.

- It may only be in supervision that the coach realises she felt vulnerable. It can be part of an apparently low-key catch up. Not, ‘I have got this burning issue’, but rather ‘I just feel like talking through this particular session....’ It may be that the coach wants to talk through a success and in doing so realises that a reason for the success was a strong sense, outside awareness at the time, of having entered the client’s world of vulnerability, but of having not allowed herself to be inducted into it; arguably an instance of unconscious competence.

I will now revisit depth of working.

Depth of Working

Petrushka Clarkson, in her book, ‘The Therapeutic Relationship’ refers to a therapist telling a client about and showing her the scar on her left leg that she had used as a child to remind her of the difference between left and right. ‘The two become siblings in incomprehension, siblings in discovery and siblings in the quest for wholeness’30. That can be a point of vulnerability; an intervention is totally justified from a therapeutic perspective, yet suddenly brings an intimacy which is appropriate yet unsettling.

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This child-to-child engagement may have several sources including:

- As mentioned before, simply a sense of common humanity - The coach is needing to access her Wise Child in order to support the client in

accessing his Wise Child. Consequently the coach may be balancing on the Cusp whilst seeking to ‘hold’ the client who is also balancing on the Cusp.

The coach may then over-identify with the client in the 3rd position. Children can suddenly become unaware of boundaries. As a consequence she abdicates from the 4th Position; she is no longer supervising herself in her work. The model below shows this:

This collusive experience means that the pair develop a shared rigid boundary which impoverishes their view of the client (1stposition) client’s issue (2nd position), and their world. This has similarities with the idea of negative symbiosis, in transactional analysis19 and ‘groupthink’31.

Another aspect lying beneath this is that the coach’s energy initially becomes strongly focussed on her own child - current or perhaps past and feeling like a 7 year old - and then worries about whether she can emotionally ‘hold’ the client. An added dimension is that almost out of nowhere comes a sense of resentment. This is because the coach suddenly denies her own child needs in order to look after another. That may mirror moments or lifetimes in the past, having been brought up always to look after her younger sister. Denied needs can be experienced as abandonment32.

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COACH / CLIENT

3rd position

4th position

Pushing the child aside means that not only the child’s vulnerability, but also the child’s wisdom is discarded, at least for the moment.....inevitably also the Wise Cat will have left as well, feeling unloved!

Giving Self Options

As already mentioned, the world of vulnerability is often filled with uncertainty and rapid, unexpected movement between the known, the unknown and back again. This can lead to quite strong reactions from the client in terms of sweeping generalisations about things being ‘wonderful’ or ‘terrible’; this may be about the journey, the destination or both. It is about looking for, seeking to create certainty in the face of anxiety and ambiguity. I am also reminded of Melanie Klein’s belief that very young children necessarily engage in such behaviour; that is, ‘splitting’33.

As a consequence the coach, in empathising with the client, may also see his options as being of extremes: ‘Either I say nothing……or I say everything’. In reality there are likely to be many points on a spectrum between these: “Just to say that I experienced something similar once”……or……“I can say a bit more about it if you think it might be helpful”…..or……“If I seem a bit unsettled it’s because your story reminds me of a similar experience I once had”……or……expressing the dilemma, “I am truly uncertain about whether to say a few words about a similar experience I once had, but I am a bit worried about distracting you. What’s best for you?” There other possibilities; these include some ‘stage management’ options such as suggesting a short break, moving round the room to get some different perspectives, going for a walk together, moving from words to imagery and so on.

So, the interventions may be explicit in the sense of dealing directly with the issue and raising it openly with the client; or implicit in terms of a change of approach where the rationale is not openly shared with the client. The coach may appropriately and ethically decide that the client would not be helped by full openness at this stage. Of course this assumption may be revisited later for example in peer review or supervision, checking in case negative aspects of the coach’s script have intruded.

Paul Wachtel is very clear that there is not a single correct approach. ‘Self disclosure is neither better nor worse than silence or the refusal to disclose; each choice must be examined for the attitude on the therapist’s part that it may be unconsciously expressing and for its meaning for the patient and the dyad’34. So in his eyes, each case has to be taken on its merits.

Being Gentle with Oneself

The urgent need for clarity and certainty may lead the coach to punish himself. Such may be his sad but understandable way of confirming his vulnerability and attempting to create some solid ground; arguably a verbal, lower level form of self-harm. There are also links with

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the transactional analysis idea of ‘negative strokes are better than no strokes at all’. ‘At least if I am being shouted at I know I exist’. The client may have had little to say at the end of the session. The coach wisely decided not to push hard for feedback, but was then left in something of a void. There may again be resonances with the client’s organisational culture which is a ‘no news is good news’ environment.

Being gentle and loving with oneself also includes looking for the ‘10% okness’. I learnt this phrase from Stephen Karpman when he described it as a key part of the Drama Triangle: OK Aggression (Persecutor), OK Caring (Rescuer) and OK Vulnerability (Victim)19. Similarly Petrushka Clarkson in ‘Gestalt Counselling in Action’, when she describes the interruptions to contact also points out the potentially positive aspects within each one. For example, ‘A positive use of retroflection is restraining yourself from crying inappropriately in a committee meeting’35.

So the coach might be giving himself a hard time for having responded too fully to the client’s question, “How was your weekend?”, describing the great pride he felt in seeing his daughter’s school play and the subsequent dinner celebration. The business agenda had not been moved forward as much as needed; but perhaps the personal relationship between coach and client had been significantly strengthened and will provide dividends in the longer term. Clearly there are links to appreciative inquiry.

Often the coach is encouraging the client to be more gentle with herself and to acknowledge her talents. The client may well notice, certainly at a child level, when the coach is inconsistent (in his parenting?) and does not practise what he preaches. This also resonates with Brene Brown’s TED talk, The Power of Vulnerability, where she stresses that compassion towards self is necessary in order to be compassionate towards others.

Exploring Vulnerability in the Coaching Team

A long-established and powerful truth from the work of the Tavistock Institute is the recognition that boundary awareness and management is an important consideration in any organisation development intervention36/37/38. One of the many subsequent insights is the acknowledgement that the level of risk being taken within the consultancy team needs to be at least equal to if not greater than the level of risk being taken by the consultancy team with the client organisation. If the members of the consultancy team have fairly superficial relationships with each other then there is little likelihood that they will be able to work profoundly with the client. If the consultant experiences her colleagues as unsupportive, indifferent or even mildly persecutory then there is a much increased probability that she will contract poorly with the client; for example, being overly generous because she is shown more respect than back at base; then flipping into being unavailable because she regrets her excessive generosity. She is angry and unfocussed; potentially then going into a vicious circle.

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Clearly these circumstances also apply in the world of coaching, particularly as it takes an increasingly prominent role in organisation development. With this in mind, I suggest therefore that if the coaching team knows or expects that vulnerability, whether implicitly or explicitly will be a key part of their work with the client organisation then it HAS to be part of the conversations within the team. Coaching and consultancy teams need, as much as the individuals, to be able to help the client take the 3rd Position. If vulnerability is an undiscussed or, in the words of Chris Argyris, an ‘undiscussable’39 topic then it is highly likely that the 4th Position will be lost. The team will not be supervising itself, either because it has become caught in the vulnerability trauma of the client organisation…..or it has metaphorically gone scampering down the corridor for fear of being faced with the unbearable.

An exploration of individual and collective vulnerability within the coaching or consultancy team enhances skills and provides valuable data; not least in helping to identify what is and is not held in common with the client organisation. With this in mind it will be important to consider the constructive aspects of vulnerability; the 10% okness.

In all this there are many options. Here I deliberately offer extremes in order to indicate the spectrum. Crudely put, the lower risk options are likely to be rather more cerebral – “Let’s talk about the topic of vulnerability…..by the way, does anybody know whether Gaston Bachelard had anything to say about this in his ‘The Poetics of Space’?”…..whilst the higher risk options will be rather more visceral, “Jo, whenever I enter your room I feel quite anxious and vulnerable because behind your polite words I think you are really telling me to ‘F**k O**!”. Profanities leading to profundities?

With any of this there is the opportunity to identify and hone internally the skills which will be needed externally. Also, there is the likelihood, perhaps inevitability, that client learning will have relevance to consultant learning. A parallel to the common experience of the coach posing a question to the client and then realising he could valuably pose that question to himself.

Closing Thoughts

Some writers and observers, such as Jean Baudrillard see the world as a place of increasing uncertainty. ‘Everything is taking us into a world steeped in definitive uncertainty’40. Along with this uncertainty, perhaps as a response to it, there may also be a growing starkness and intensity; for example the polarisation of peoples, beliefs and values (Cultural ‘splitting’33)? The many diverse and inspiring tools at our disposal mirror a multiplicity of ambivalences. For example, social media vividly has the potential to educate and liberate or bully and oppress. ‘Maximum interconnectedness means maximum vulnerability’41.....and maximum potency3; Arab Spring and Arab Winter.

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As indicated, with all this as a backdrop, vulnerability in its many changing forms will continue necessarily to be part of daily life. Consequently there is the requirement to engage with it, whether in ourselves or others. It may be vital to embrace it in order then to be able to distance oneself from it; or vice-versa. This can be a route to excitement and learning42. In such a process of revisiting assumptions it will be helpful to recognise that there can be very different perspectives on the same experience. To illustrate this, there is below a picture of Jon Buck’s, ‘The Family’:

Perhaps it embodies support, intimacy and love......or oppression and suffocation......or both love and suffocation......or......protection and paranoia.....or none of these? My perspective on it may change dramatically or minimally evolve over time.

In all this ‘wake-up calls’ are invaluable. This leads me to end this paper by returning to the homeless camp. As described in the conclusion I experienced that which I now regard as ‘loving dislocation’, even though the particular realisation at the time was rather upsetting and unsettling for me.

Conclusion

As I was leaving the homeless camp I offered the women some money. They were suddenly rather anxious and said it was better for me to put it in the collection box. I gave it to them anyway, saying, “I trust you”. I later discovered, when telling the story to a friend who is well-versed in legal matters, that by accepting the money they had put themselves at risk of

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being arrested by the police for begging. There had indeed been a couple of police officers observing the camp. Whilst seeking to be supportive I had, it seems, unwittingly increased their sense of vulnerability. By calling my subsequent awareness ‘loving dislocation’ I am more likely to be compassionate towards myself.

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References

1. ‘Living with Vision. Reclaiming the Power of the Heart’. Linda Marks. Knowledge Systems Inc. 1989.

2. ‘The Freud Wars: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis’. Lavinia Gomez. Routledge. 2005.

3. ‘Coaching and Betrayal’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2010.4. ‘The Delight and Terrors of Betrayal: Coaching Implications’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2013.5. ‘Coaching in Organisations: Between the Lines’. Keri Phillips. Claremont. 2004.6. Collins Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms. 2005.7. ‘The Penguin English Dictionary’. 20038. ‘Goddesses in Everywoman’. Jean Shinoda Bolen. Quill. 1984.9. ‘Flawless Consulting’. Peter Block. Learning Concepts. 1978.10. ‘Transactional Analysis’. Stan Woollams and Michael Brown. Huron Valley Press.

1978.11. ‘Dictionary of Transactional Analysis’. Tony Tilney. Whurr. 2003. ‘The Martian view is

the totally objective view of someone who comes from outside our culture’. Escape hatches are ‘a major obstacle to script change since they represent a mechanism for evading responsibility for making life changes ( at the back of the mind there is the thought ‘if things get bad enough I could always....)’ – harm myself, harm another, go crazy.

12. ‘Organization in the Mind. Psychoanalysis, Group Relations, and Organization Consultancy’. David Armstrong. Karnac. 2006.

13. ‘The Miniscript’, Taibi Kahler in ‘Transactional Analysis After Eric Berne’. Graham Barnes. Harper’s College Press. 1977. Also, an extract from reference 19, ‘Be Strong. ‘I must not show my feelings, particularly any weakness. One of my favourite sayings is – you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. I often appear quite stern and indifferent. Sometimes my jaw aches through clenching it so much. On occasion I lapse into a monotone. Often I take on too much believing I can cope with anything’.

14. www.outsidersnetwork.com Excellent material from the Outsider’s perspective.15. ‘The Wealth Creators’. Andrew Kakabadse. Kogan Page. 1991.16. ‘Appreciative Inquiry. Change at the Speed of Imagination’. Jane Magruder Watkins

and Bernard Mohr. Jossey-Bass. 2001.17. ‘Life Scripts. A Transactional Analysis of Unconscious Relational Patterns’. Richard

Erskine ed. Karnac. 2010. 18. ‘Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective’. Chris Argyris and Donald

Schon. Addison-Wesley. 1978. Loop learning: How can we get this room back to 55 degrees? (single-loop); Does it need to be 55 degrees? (double-loop); Do we need to be in this room? (triple-loop); Do we need to be in a room? (quadruple-loop).

19. ‘Transactional Analysis in Organisations’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2005. Negative symbiosis – people being smaller, diminishing themselves in order to be together.

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20. ‘Creative Coaching; Doing and Being’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2008.21. ‘Lives People Live’. Mavis Klein. Wiley. 1980.22. ‘Re-Parenting the Self: a key skill for the leader, the coach and the supervisor’. Keri

Phillips. The Listener. October 2014. 23. ‘The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds’. John Bowlby. 2008.24. ‘Coaching, The Shadow and the Transition Curve’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2011.

25. ‘Intuition in Coaching’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2007.26. ‘The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy’. Fritz Perls. Bantam. 1976.27. ‘Organizational Consulting’. Edwin Nevis. Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. 1987.28. ‘Fragmentation at Integration’. Keri Phillips. KPA. 2008. ‘......loving dislocation aims

for reconnection. Reconnection with the real as opposed to the false self; reconnection with a ‘good enough mother’; and reconnection between the mind and the body’. ‘Dislocation can take place at two levels: Content. For example, the client wants to talk about her failures and is asked to talk about her successes. Process, in terms of method or way of being. Method simply means that the technique might surprise the client. Way of being refers to how the coach responds; for example avoiding an invitation to engage in counter transference’.

29. ‘Psychotic Metaphysics’. Eric Rhode. Karnac. 1994.30. ‘The Therapeutic Relationship’. Petruska Clarkson. Whurr. 2014.31. ‘Victims of Groupthink’. Irving Janis. Houghton Mifflin. 1982.32. ‘Playing and Reality’. Donald Winnicott. Routledge. 2002.33. ‘Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context’. Meira Likierman. Continuum. 2006.34. ‘Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy’. Paul Wachtel. Guilford. 2008.35. ‘Gestalt Counselling in Action’. Petruska Clarkson. Sage. 1989.36. ‘Systems of Organisation: The Control of Task and Sentient Boundaries’. Eric Miller

and Andrew Rice. Tavistock Institute. 1967.37. ‘Working Below the Surface. The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organisations’.

Clare Huffington. Ed. Karnac 2004.38. ‘A Consultancy Approach for Trainers and Developers’. Keri Phillips and Patricia

Shaw. Gower. 1997.39. ‘Skilled Incompetence’. Chris Argyris. Harvard Business Review. Vol 6 No 5.40. ‘Passwords’. Jean Baudrillard. Verso. 2003.41. ‘The Illusion of the End’. Jean Baudrillard. Polity Press. 1994.42. My speculation is that this movement between embracing and distance may

stimulate the Wise Child to the extent that it may echo an early phase in the child’s development. Namely, ‘A psychic conflict between the urge to cling to the mother and the reactive tendency to be free of her…..’ ‘From Death Instinct to Attachment

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Cusp

Theory’. Philippe Van Haute and Tomas Geyskens. Other Press. 2007. Hence, as already mentioned, the potential power of the 3rd Position as a basis for reparenting self. Aiding the client in experimenting with extremes, as proposed in some approaches to gestalt training and therapy, can generate an energy to enable the clarity of the 3rd Position. See also, ‘Envy in Coaching and Coaching Supervision’. Keri Phillips. KPA 2011. It may also, depending on one’s philosophical beliefs, validate the idea of the dialectic; that is, movement between extremes can generate a perspective which is qualitatively different from, yet informed by that which preceded it. (see ‘The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’. Ted Honderich ed. Oxford University Press. 2005). In the coaching context the extremes might be about feelings, for example to help explore real feelings and racket feelings. Equally the extremes might be about staying.....going, oughts....wants, hopes....fears, love.....hate, forgiveness......retribution, Wisdom.....Vulnerability or other Cusp dynamics.

©Keri Phillips Associates 2015.

Personal Note: My thanks to Debra Winterson and Liam Moore for their valuable comments on the final draft.

Further feedback is always welcome: keriphillips@o2.co.uk ; +44(0)7711527336; keri.phillips1; @keriphillips1

Visit www.keri-phillips .co.uk for blogs on a variety of topics such as: Mourning and Melancholia, The Transitional Object, Judgement, Recreation is the Path to Re-Creation, Boundaries and Unconditional Love, De-Skilling Self, MBTI and The Shadow, Impostor Syndrome, Envy, Contracting and Scripting, Reparenting Self, The Shadow Side of the Truth Teller, Team Coaching Supervision: The Three P’s, Forgiveness, Self-Sabotage, Coach as Le Flaneur.

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