Coach as Mid-Wife

Coaching for transformation requires a new skill set guided by new metaphors. As coaches, we know the power of metaphor to invoke change in the service of our coachees. I wonder what metaphors would best describe our work and roles as coaches. Traditional metaphors of coaching include coach as thinking partner, facilitator, healer, guide, mentor. In all of these metaphors, there is an implicit ‘power over’ relationship. However, we know as coaches that we are partners to our coachees and recognise that the real work is the work of the coachee and less ours. In this context, are there different metaphors that better describe the work and the role of the coach that embodies this genuine partnership, where each party has something valuable, diverse, and necessary for the transformational process?

Coaching Intricate Minds

My client was pacing up and down the room, occasionally balancing on the edge of the carpet as if it was a tightrope. About an hour into the conversation, she finally sat down across from me without interrupting the flow of conversation for even a second. The thoughts and words had started to slow, the emotions had quieted down, and so had the movements. We started to work on defining action steps. My client is a beautiful example of an individual with a trait that the Polish psychologist and physician Kazimierz D?browski called “psychomotor overexcitability.” People with this trait release emotional tension through movement in a way that may seem extreme to the more even-tempered. It is important to note, however, that this quality does not stem from a psychological disorder, but rather a healthy variation in the person’s neurological wiring.

Team Coaching

Coaching is increasingly recognized as a fundamental leadership skill, required across the board if organizations are to succeed in getting the most from their people, in encouraging people to collaborate effectively, and in creating the kind of environment needed to foster innovation and extraordinary performance. More and more organizations are teaching their leaders how to coach, but the focus tends to be on coaching individuals. What about training leaders to coach their teams? In a recent piece of research, we found a wide range of different activities being practiced under the banner of team coaching. Few of the coaches we interviewed had undertaken formal training specific to coaching teams. If a leader has direct reports and she believes that she will need to coach them as a team in order to maximize their collective performance, then she must learn to be a team coach.

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This is our eight annual volume of Curated. It represents some of the best of 1,000 plus essays that have been published in the Library of Professional Coaching over the past decade. We hope that you find this sample of the best we have published to serve as vivid evidence of the value-added nature of our digital library. We also hope this volume of Curated serves as a motivator for your further exploration of many valuable resources to be found in this coaching treasury.

William Bergquist
Co-Curator