Bill. So, you’re not going to give me the ten steps to successful coaching?

Julio. No, I won’t. One of the things about which we just talked is often heard as a metaphorical way of speaking, and I’m not speaking metaphorically about it. I do believe that we become in a dance with other people. The poorer the dance, the poorer my becoming. So, we need to ask questions, not only as individuals but as part of humankind.  What has impoverished our becoming? What has brought us to the place where we are? What wants to manifest that we are not allowing? These questions take me to reflecting in a different direction than if I go to solving problems which is a secondary territory. Coaching is never about solving problems.

Bill. We just published an interview in IJCO with Gervase Bush (2007), who’s an extraordinary contributor to the field of Appreciate Inquiry (AI). Gervase is very critical of the approach often being taken now in the field of appreciative inquiry. He indicates that the key concept in this field is not the appreciative conversation, per se. It’s the generativity in the conversation that comes out of the appreciation. That’s what AI is all about. The appreciation is only meant to begin the generation.

Let me conclude this interview by pointing to some recent neuro­ science research , suggesting that I “light up” (neurologically respond) to someone in a quite different way if  it is a person  that I love than if it is a person who is my friend. The way in which I light up in my brain and in my body is entirely different with you than it is with anyone else.

In the field of psychotherapy, the patient and the therapist light up like lovers, which means that the transference process is quite real and based at least in part on the therapist’s and patient’s neurological responses to one another. We can begin to realize the extraordinary discipline required of the therapist because what’s lighting up for them and their patients resembles that found in a love relationship.  So, it becomes interesting to look at coaching. We haven’t done the research yet, but is it going to look more like a love relationship or a friendship relationship or something completely different, knowing that in each case it could be different?

Every gesture of your body when you are tender to a human being is to help to produce safety.