Mindful Coaching

How Mindfulness can Transform Coaching Practice

Liz Hall

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780749465674
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Mentoring & Coaching
• Index: Business

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to the present moment, helping us become more aware of our thoughts and feelings so that instead of being overwhelmed by them, we are better able to manage them. Mindful Coaching is a comprehensive guide to using mindfulness effectively in coaching. It enables coaches to work closely with their clients on a range of issues, including work-life balance, stress management, decision making, coping with ambiguity, dealing with crises, employee engagement, heightening focus and clarity, improving listening and communication, and increasing presence. Mindful Coaching includes a range of real-life examples and practical exercises to enable coaches to become more resilient in their practice, something that is of particular importance at a time where coaches are facing increasing challenges in defining clarity in their work.

PART ONE

Overview

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In this section, we explore mindfulness, its history and documented benefits, with a look at some of the science behind this before moving on in the next section to how we can use it in coaching.

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01

Definitions, origins and relevance to coaching

We’re in the midst of a mindfulness revolution. I just Googled ‘mindful’ and got more than 27,000,000 results – by the time you read this, the number will undoubtedly have risen significantly. The drivers behind this movement include the growing repository of scientific research on mindfulness, some of which we will look at in the next chapter. Another driver, which we touched on in the Introduction, is that mindfulness seems to be ideally suited to our times – to all times, I would argue.

Also fuelling the growth in interest in mindfulness is its secularization. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I see that taking the Buddhism out of mindfulness or at least not mentioning it explicitly in mindfulness teachings such as those included in MBCT and MBSR programmes has made it accessible to a much wider group of people. Increasing reach and access to what I believe to be a profound and wonderfully helpful approach is fantastic and I wholeheartedly believe that anyone of any or no religious persuasion can tap into its wonders as we will see. On the other hand, I do sometimes feel that in some cases, the bid to be wholly secular and to avoid any teachings which mention the S word (spirituality), the B word (Buddhism) or the R word (religion) at all costs can hamper true open enquiry about our meaning and purpose. It can mean missing out on the essence of some powerful teachings which can help us be happier, more fulfilled, more compassionate and more whole beings. Exploring concepts such as impermanence, non-duality and non-self, which crop up in many mindfulness teachings, will not be for everyone and it’s possible to reap far-reaching benefits simply from watching our breath for 10 minutes each day, for example, but it’s good to know they are out there.

As interest in mindfulness grows, inevitably many are jumping on the bandwagon. We’re seeing increasing numbers of people adding the adjective ‘mindful’ to whatever it is they are doing, in the hope they will attract more business. Mindfulness is becoming a best-selling brand. This in itself may be fine; the problem is there is still widespread ignorance and confusion about what mindfulness really is. Many think mindfulness is about becoming passive or that meditation is about clearing your mind totally. It is neither. If we are going to be working with mindfulness in our coaching, we need to be clear about what it actually means.

Defining mindfulness

Around the same time I encountered mindfulness, or re-encountered it as something to be woven into everyday life, one of my daughters encountered bubbles for the first time. I have a photograph – and a clear memory – of her totally captivated and delighted by these iridescent delicate spheres that danced about and landed on her little hands, only to disappear as she attempted to catch them. She didn’t know what they were or what they were called. She was completely caught up in the moment within her direct experience of bubble-ness, no labels, no judgement, just bubbles. Molly’s bubble encounter was one akin to mindfulness.

We perhaps have memories of when we were younger and were totally engrossed in something, having just discovered it for the first time. Perhaps more recently too, we’ve had times when we’ve been totally caught up in what we’re doing. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have something in our lives which we love so much that we often find ourselves lost – or found – in the activity. Accomplished sportspeople report getting ‘in flow’, a state where everything else just seems to fall away and is very much like mindfulness.

As we mature, we become able to be aware of what we’re doing as we’re doing it, which we don’t have when we’re really young – this capacity is part of mindfulness, and it can be developed, as we’ll see. However, as we grow older, we also seem to lose our ability to naturally drop into in-the-moment absorption, which is what we’re seeking in mindfulness. Again, we can work on this.

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For Linda Woolston, an executive coach with UK-based coaching provider The Alliance, painting enables her to move into a state of mindfulness. Linda, who has been practising mindfulness for the last decade and uses mindfulness with many of her clients, only discovered painting three years ago. When she plays the piano, much though she loves it, she will sometimes stop to go and send an e-mail. When she paints, however, it’s a different scenario. ‘For me, being mindful is doing certain things where I have complete focus. When I’m painting, I don’t think of anything else.’ For one of her clients, it’s photography that has this effect; for another, it’s crocheting which this client started when she heard about Linda’s painting.

Linda does not practise meditation as such but she often prepares for sessions using mindfulness and she does go for mindful walks. Sometimes she ‘sits mindfully’ in Richmond Park in London. ‘When I do, it’s such a pleasure, it’s absolute bliss. It comes down to noticing more, noticing the rustle of the leaves, the ferns, mindfully aware and appreciating the tiniest things.’

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This quality of paying attention in the present moment, without judgement, as Woolston does when she is painting, is very much what mindfulness is about, as we can see in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition (Kabat-Zinn 1994). Probably the most oft-quoted definition of mindfulness, he defines it thus:

paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

One of the difficulties with defining mindfulness is that you only really know what it is once you’ve experienced or re-experienced it.

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As Neil Scotton, leadership coach and former president of the UK International Coach Federation, says: ‘It’s hard to describe, it’s more a felt experience. I know when I’m not being mindful. For example, when I am keen to say something or there’s lots of self chatter or the client has said something and I’ve snagged at that point, or when I have an agenda.’

He continues: ‘I had a disastrous coaching session when I didn’t know what the client wanted. We were both getting frustrated and I was not being mindful that here was a person with lots going on. What is mindfulness? I feel a sense of wanting to say something simple, just being there with the other person, deeply connected to our body. I am constantly reminded of the importance of the body when we are connected to something deep within us that is deeply meaningful and deeply communicates with the other person. Paradoxically mindfulness is a misleading word. It’s not a calculating logical experience, it’s stepping beyond that. It’s something quite natural and we can train ourselves to be aware of it… we’ve grown mechanistic and everything is very brain-focused.’

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Often when people talk about ‘being mindful’, they aren’t talking about meditation, or any particular mindfulness practices such as the ones we explore later. What they often mean is ‘being more attentive to what is around them’, ‘paying more attention to detail’, ‘being more aware of’, perhaps ‘being more careful’ and so on. A leader might urge employees to ‘be more mindful of customer needs’, for example, or a manager might say, ‘We need to be more mindful of costs.’ Others mean mindfulness as a specific approach, backed up by practices including meditation.

Oxford Dictionaries Online offers two definitions for ‘mindfulness’:

The quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.

A mental state achieved by focus...