5 top tips to systems psychodynamic coaching
TRANSCRIPT
5 top tips to Systems Psychodynamic Coaching
A systems psychodynamic approach…
…allows coaches to work at depth, to tackle the hard to reach issues that are limiting the performance of organisations, teams and leaders.
This method of executive coaching is often necessary to uncover ‘what’s really going on’ and here we share our five top tips to working successfully with this approach.
Emotion is Data
• People are often encouraged to leave emotions to one side and trained to work with purely logic. But work can evoke irrational feelings.
• Emotions are the undertow at work and if left unattended, can trip us up in the most unexpected ways.
• Our Advice: Use the ‘emotions’ you experience in the room with a client to inform your work -‐ they are a communication that needs attention.
Remember the Person, Role and Organisation Triangle
• As systems psychodynamic coaches the PRO Model is a crucial part of of our coaching work with clients.
• ‘Small talk’ or other forms of personal material might shed light on the current situation that a client has sought coaching to address.
• Our Advice: Always link the ‘personal’ back to the role, organisation and even the context of the referral.
Pay attention to ‘small talk’: holiday plans, difficulties at home,
historical autobiographical information…
Working Below the Surface
• Whilst concrete, visible and factual information is important. What is also vital is the more difficult to access material.
• As systems psychodynamic coaches we work with the metaphor of the iceberg to draw our attention to a client’s blind spots.
• Our Advice: Through your coaching journey work to uncover the area that is unknown to the client and unknown to others.
Johari window
Known to self
Not known to self
Known to others Open Blind
Not known to others Hidden Unknown
Have courageous conversations
• It’s often the conversations that seem to be the hardest to have that are the most important to have with clients.
• Clients often come to coaching because of a systematic turning away from the difficult to grasp conversations.
• Our Advice: Handle courageous conversations sensitively and carefully consider their timing and pace. If handled well, they can lead to creative outcomes.
Coach as accompanist
• The coach serves the client. The coachee is the expert in terms of the organisation and culture – our job is to help them harness their expertise in a way that works for them.
• Our Advice: Work at your client’s pace and hold onto the idea that if there was a simple solution, the client would have found it.
Executive Coaching programme starts May 2016
• Tavistock Consulting is running a systems psychodynamic Executive Coaching programme that is accredited by the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) at senior practitioner level.
• Click here for further details on the programme and course open evenings.