What is Change Coaching ?

It is very difficult to observe and create the conditions needed to transform our productivity and performance when in roles that challenge us to take responsibility for creating a better future for our family, community or the world as a whole. We have to develop new capabilities, new goals and new opportunities for ourselves and those around us. Because we live in language, we can use it to make sense of other people and the world around us. Our emotions and mood states too shape what we care about and this predisposes us to see and do things with different levels of energy and motivation. Even our posture and body language can communicate more about us than we realise and impact on all our relationships, not to mention our own wellbeing. Paying attention to the language we use, the moods we adopt and the body language we display will help us deliver real change, especially when we feel stuck in habits and situations that are not working for us. 

My job as a Change Coach is to contribute to someone's competence in a respectful, trusting, dignified and effective way. When coaching for change, I have found that traditional approaches have a tendency to produce only short-lived or partial outcomes. Conversation alone cannot access the deeper underlying structures in our unconscious minds where we interpret our internal conflicts, anxieties and other tensions. Often we do not choose these structures or ways of interpreting the world, they mental maps embedded from the bottom-up through education and our culture's values and beliefs. Sometimes we adopt these thinking and feeling structures because they are espoused as 'right' by someone with the authority to impose their will on us from the top-down. These 'structures of interpretation' only make sense when they are observed first hand and their impact on attitudes and behaviour are understood.  

So, until we become open to discovering who we are (our 'way of being') we can easily slip back into defensive routines, to try and change, only to fail yet again and again. Real change seeks to resolve the tension between our vision of what we want to create in the future and our observations of the reality we face now and what is stopping us from changing. A Change Coach asks their coachees to see themselves as powerful observers and creators of their own reality, shifting their mood state, language and body posture to resolve to change from the inside-out, not oscillate backwards and forwards just reacting and responding to events coming from the outside-in.

The Ontology of a Human Observer

This involves enabling the client to observe their own ontology (language, mood and body) and become a creative force in in their own life by identifying:

Facing Facts - the facts they must accept and free themselves from, to overcome any resentment or tension that may stop them thinking creatively

Exploring Possibilities - the possibilities and choices available to them from which they can overcome any resignation to change and create a vision/ambition, and

Embracing the Unknown - the creative process they can use to wonder about the unknown and release their anxieties around the unpredictable nature of things 

These three dimensions create a mood state that either serves or sabotages our ability to resolve our dilemmas. Coaching for change must create structures that serve rather than frustrate our declared vision and the assessments we make.  Every action we take then counts towards achieving the vision. This process is enhanced by adopting language that supports a positive attitude and positive action. Posture and body language also play their part in resolving inner tension.  The future we want is then created by the actions and interactions we pay attention to today. When this happens blame turns to gratitude, resentment into acceptance, resignation into ambition and anxiety into curiosity.  

 The Creative Cycle

 In any growth or life-building process there is a sequence of stages that always delivers a well formed outcome and involves:

Germination - having a clear vision of what is wanted, what success looks and feels like and how to create it.

Assimilation - accessing the inner resources and energy needed to resolve tensions and maintain outer action 

Completion - embedding a new 'way of being' and fitting into the ecology of a new environment  

The Structure of Interpretation

The result of any coaching process must be to change behaviour because it leads to new outcomes. The change comes from the way thoughts, ideas, experiences and feedback are interpreted.  This interpretation depends on the distinctions a person makes based on the deeper structures that frame their value and beliefs. In simple terms change requires a 'new way of seeing' - a new interpretation or perception. Without it the old interpretation will persist and so will the behaviour. A new behaviour requires a new interpretation of what is seen and felt.  Listening to someone's language and observing their practices enables their 'structure of interpretation' to be understood.Changes in behaviour can be effected by changing the language and practicing the new behaviour.  This allows the client or coachee to relentlessly self-correct and self-generate over the longer term as they discover what works well for them and what doesn't.

Conclusion

I have outlined above some of the principles that I adhere to in Change Coaching work, but I do not use one best format or coaching method.  Every relationship has its own unique dynamics and needs. The coaching relationship needs to be co-active and co-creative for it to work for the client - be they individuals, teams or organisations. I believe in having high quality interactions that enable us to co-create unique learning experiences. After all, coaching is just an artifact around which compelling experiences are created.It's the creation of new realities that will capture the imagination to  drive new action.