Breaking the fourth wall
Reflections half-way through a month of daily coaching conversations.
Thank you to those who’ve worked with me in coaching throughout this year, my supervisors, coaches and therapists, the She Leads Change community of coaches, the MOE community of coaches, Enrol Yourself community, the Association of Coaching, Simply Coaching, 3D Coaching, Spectra, my friends, parents and sister, my trans poetry group— for helping me learn, change and connect. This blog post is shaped by all of you.
Breaking the fourth wall — like they do in theatre
I called this blog post breaking the fourth wall, because I want to break the wall in my head that maintains the illusion that as coach I need to bring and/or guarantee answers. Last month I joined a conference on Simplifying Coaching, organised by Simply Coaching. That’s where I heard from Claire Pedrick at 3D Coaching speak about coaching as an insight-oriented process rather a content one. Claire also emphasised building partnership and equity into the coaching relationship through making the process transparent.
Alabaster de Plume (see min 20) breaks the wall in his live performances when he turns to his band and says ‘this is where you go la la la and this is where I go with my guitar like this’, all the while breaking through the otherwise all too-easy-to-access sensation that he might be simply magic as a singer and poet. Though that is also true!
What would that look like in coaching? It’s when I say ‘I’m thinking’, ‘my assumption right now is’, ‘I’m not sure this is the right question’, ‘where are you’, ‘where do you want to go?’, ‘I feel stuck’, ‘how is this going?’ What happens next is more room to breathe for both of us, more room to not have the answers, to get stuck and be ok with it, to get curious about it, to play, imagine and experiment.
Learning the foreign language of kindness
I’m also thinking about kindness. Last week I talked to Kirsty at Simply Coaching who invited me to think about what it would be like to learn the language of kindness as if it was a foreign language.
When I think about this it reminds me of joy, too. And how the two are linked in coaching. My mind goes back to this paragraph from Padraig O’Tuama, from In the shelter: Finding a home in the world.
‘She realised she needed to start developing a theology of sorrow. I looked at her, aghast. How can you be your age and not already have a theology of sorrow? I asked her. Has she known me better, she might well have replied” ‘How can you be your age and not have a theology of joy?’ Hello to joy. Hello to here.’
Another concept I recently discovered is called the inner stable rules — a way to internalise success, to define it based on inner rules rather than external outcomes. I’ve identified that right now my inner stable rules that determine my success in coaching are: I care a lot, I strive to listen for the other, I continue to show up for what I still need to learn.
The capacity to meet another
I read a quote somewhere that goes along these lines ‘we have to build within us the capacity to meet someone else other than ourselves’. (let me know if you know the author) And it stuck with me ever since because it’s hard to do. An example of this is sensing my own resistance to goals and results that don’t look like what I thought results looked like.
To move from ‘diagnosis-coaching’ and ‘I know how to fix this and I will tell you’; I look at compassion, towards the part of myself who wants to fix, to rescue, to be right, to feel valuable. I also look at stretching my capacity to imagine life outside my head and ideas about how change happens, 8 billion times different to mine.
The next time in a session where I feel we haven’t gotten ‘there’, I will ask again ‘where are you in relation to where you wanted to be?’ and I will trust the answer. And sometimes I won’t. And then, I’ll say hello to learning.
I’m Iacob, a certified coach offering space and support for reflection, accountability and structure to explore career, business, jobs and big life transitions. Read about my work on my website here.
If you resonate with my writing I’d love to meet you. I always appreciate suggestions and new learning. Get me on: iacobrbacian@gmail.com.
