Coaching with Meaning and Spirituality

Peter Hyson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135086251
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Coaching with Meaning and Spirituality aims to help coaches with those occasions where a clients' search for meaning needs to be addressed and explored. Working with spirituality in a coaching context can be difficult and unfamiliar for coaches, but in this book Peter Hyson provides a vocabulary to facilitate this exploration, and ultimately to help coaches to address their clients' doubts and worries, especially in an economic climate where old certainties may be lost.

Part I of this text argues the case for why coaches should be willing and able to explore areas of meaning and spirituality with coachees. It provides definitions and terminology. Part II uses case studies and activities to help coaches apply these definitions to specific contexts that we might face as coaches. The final part provides some deeper skill-development and extended resources.

This book looks at motivation; legacy; drive to succeed; increasing profit; maintaining work-life balance; stress, breakdown and crises; and qualities of effective leadership. It will be especially useful for professional coaches, both the experienced and the relatively new, who coach in a variety of contexts. It aims to stimulate a new area of discussion across the wider coaching profession.

Part One

Setting the scene

What's missing?

Overview

This chapter argues a need for this book because the topics of meaning and spirituality are now being discussed more openly and widely and coachees are increasingly likely to be wrestling with them. Yet there are few if any books that relate them into coaching and coaching skills. It then provides definitions of spirituality and coaching and argues that the value gained from them makes it essential.

The quest for meaning

The quest for meaning, the feeling of being drawn by and to something external and the drive to contribute back alongside what we take out, seems to be universal. It can be present in people not necessary regarded as ‘spiritual’ or indeed even particularly humanitarian. For example:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one … I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

These words were penned by George Bernard Shaw, renowned as a playwright rather than a spiritual philosopher. Yet they contain much of the essence of what spirituality is about.

One of our roles as coaches is to help our coachees recognise those things that, like the political prisoner, they are

Box 1. 1

Two former political prisoners met up again many years later. One was now a successful businessman with all the trappings of success. The other was shabbily dressed, grubby and bitter. ‘It's all very well for you,’ he moaned, ‘you've always had all the advantages. Even when we were doing forced labour you would always carry much heavier loads than me. I nearly broke my back and I still couldn't keep up. You know how often the guards beat me for it.’

For over an hour the businessman listened to a torrent of anger and recriminations for the injustices of life. When his companion finally ran out of invectives he turned to him and said, ‘My friend there is only one difference between us. I put the loads down when I left the prison. Why are you still carrying them?’

still carrying. Not, of course, in the realm of counselling or therapy, but in the realms of unchallenged assumptions, preconceived restrictions, of blinkers, if you will. The story of the two former prisoners raises a triple-challenge: at one level, it's a challenge about what we continue to needlessly carry long after the event; at another level, it's a challenge about why we continue to carry them; and at a third, deeper level, it's a challenge about what underlying needs they reveal.

Why is there a need for this book?

First, it provides practical activities for an area rising in significance, that of meaning and spirituality. Issues such as climate change and economic downturn have forced more people to think and be aware of our individual and corporate place within a global web of interconnectedness. John Donne put it rather more graphically:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less: … any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.¹

Second, coaches are increasingly likely to encounter people engaging with these ideas, however subconsciously. And since the coach's role is to offer clients the opportunity and support to achieve their full potential, we need to be in the forefront of such an exploration. This book will enable coaches to identify when the questions may be emerging.

Third, there is an urgent need for some clear, agreed language, definitions, concepts, models and coaching skills in order to explore these things. This book aims to contribute to an ongoing debate by its use of story, image and metaphor: not only because these are effective communication tools but also because metaphors creatively challenge our thinking, help us move outside previous assumptions and engage our right-brain in a world dominated by left-brain. Some key points will appear in more than one chapter but they are important precursors for understanding that chapter for those who may not have read the previous chapter; they also serve as a reminder for those who have.

Box 1.2

In 1512 a violent and aggressive young warrior named Inigo was severely injured defending Pamplona. Invalided home, he spent many happy hours dreaming of the brave deeds he would perform when recovered and the beautiful maiden who would swoon at his feet. But over time he began to tire of these great deeds. There was little to read in the castle where he lay so he had to make do with religious texts about Jesus Christ and about the early Saints. But he soon began to imagine himself outdoing the austerity and piety of the saints! For many hours he alternated between dreams of war and dreams of devotion. But then he noticed something more: whilst at the time each type of dream was equally satisfying, shortly after the dreams of heroics and maidenly virtue ended he felt listless and unsatisfied, whereas with those of outdoing the saints, he felt excited and challenged. After further reflection, he began to recognise the former as characterised by a destructive inner mood and the latter by a creative mood. He began to spend more time with the creative inner mood, from which emerged Simple Contemplation and Spiritual Exercises. The man was St Ignatius of Loyola; the result was the Ignation Spiritual Exercises.

Point 1: Spiritual reflection can challenge and encourage creativity, becoming deeply satisfying.

One of the challenges for professional coaches (or any other professional) is to maintain creativity and development, to keep taking our skills to new breadths and depths. This is not about blindly following any fad, trend or gimmick; it's about critically examining emerging trends to test relevance and applicability. Sometimes that reveals entirely new areas; sometimes it challenges preconceptions and prejudices; sometimes it reveals a blind alley. So what follows invites critical reflection, experimentation and experience.

A word about language

This topic is explored in more depth in Chapter 2. Here, I introduce some core terminology that might begin to move us forward. Let me be clear at the outset (and repeat with frequency): spirituality is not the same as religion. It is perfectly possible to have spirituality without religion -though arguably more difficult to have religion without spirituality. At the risk of initially over-simplifying in the cause of brevity: spirituality is ‘an innate need to connect to something larger than ourselves’;² religion is one of the ways that people may express that externally and organisationally.

Any terminology — and language itself — is symbolic, representational and prone to confuse. There is usually more lying behind it than is conveyed by it. In the context here, I want to distinguish between two types of terminology.

Gateway terminology is the hint to bring out the detective in us, the clues that something else may be going on under the surface. Like the best forensic clues, they can easily be overlooked by the ‘untrained’ eye but if pursued can reveal all sorts of leads towards discovering the broader picture. Gateway terms in the context of meaning and spirituality might include: ‘give back’; ‘something missing’; ‘fulfilment’; ‘purpose’.

Core terminology is perhaps more akin to the threads of a tapestry: a very clear and inherent part of a broader picture. Revealing the whole picture often requires some unravelling (if I might use that in the metaphor of a tapestry). Core terms might include: ‘spirit’; ‘meaning’; ‘greater good’; ‘Higher Purpose’.

To place this in the coaching context, gateway terminology may often be an aside, a throwaway remark, added in parenthesis to the subject matter currently taking place. The skill required from the coach is first to spot it at all and then to craft the questions that will explore with the coachee exactly how significant it is. Very often the coachee is not yet conscious of what is bubbling away under the surface. The significance of the throwaway remark is often missed by the person uttering it as well as those hearing it. But spot the clues, pursue the trail, and a rich potential may emerge. The coachee of course has every right to decline this opportunity for whatever reason.

Point 2: Gateway terminology is often the most fruitful area to explore because it is bubbling away below the surface but has not yet been consciously articulated.

Core terminology is much clearer. Here, the coachee is already aware of the language they're using and its implications, has chosen to do so deliberately and is willing, even keen, to pursue what that means in practice.

More of this in Chapter 2.

What is ‘coaching’?

There are almost as many definitions as there are coaches and academics. In this book coaching refers to those situations where the coach may have little or no direct experience in the working context of the coachee but skilfully uses a series of questions...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part One: Setting the scene
• Part Two: Putting into practice
• Part Three: Skills and resources
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index