De Coach Winkel

Happy Existential New Year

From the internet: « There are two ways to cope with existential panic: do what you love everyday or copious alcohol abuse . »

A new Year. With my small circle of friends, we closed 2020 and celebrated the new year with bubbles and this Dutch traditional pastry called oliebollen, a fried ball of dough which fills the stomach and soul with a greasy sensation of plenty. And to mark the moment we all had our words about what made 2020 and what were our expectations and hopes for 2021. Endings and beginnings. We honored the cycle of life. I want to express below what my hopes are when it comes to coaching and walking along my clients as we are having a conversation we never had before.

I have recently met two very different people in my life. The first is the heir of a rich family, extremely intelligent, brilliantly graduated from the best universities. This person has received a strong hand of cards in life. Yet he is confronted head-on with the question of finding a purpose for himself, maybe even more so as the most primary objectives of economic survival have been fulfilled before he could even start getting involved. And this notion of purpose brings along a strong anxiety about choice, freedom and the meaning of things. The second person is fighting for his life as he is trying to enter Europe after already one year of travel, bringing him from the war in Syria, to Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and now the border of Hungary. His father was shot by the regime. His family lost all their belongings to defend their lives. His struggle is made of the absurdity and meaninglessness of our rules and the deadly cat and mouse play he has to accept at our borders while his demands for asylum would pass any tests of what we call human rights. Both are strong albeit opposite manifestations of existential themes in our lives. Both are affecting deeply the way I am looking at resilience, at purpose, at choice in the face of absurd outcomes, at congruence and meaning in our lives.

Meanwhile, as I am just over 3 years into my coaching practice, I am blessed with enriching encounters. I sometimes ask myself who is benefiting most: me or my client? I, for sure, am learning every day. Recently, however, I have become aware that our look at what is there can be narrow, as we are unconsciously or by contract, circumscribing our landscape to only a part of our reality. My main activity so far has been into Executive Coaching, which, by convention, is focusing on the professional life of my client. And, although I carefully enquire about what my client is « bringing along », what is on his mind, we are both happy to talk mostly about work. The experiments we devise to better understand what is there, or to bring some change into what seems stuck, are all geared towards that very piece of my client’s life.

By and large, my clients are happy they get to reflect on their being at work. It is a comfortable, coded, contractual environment where they have been vested with a purpose and are applying themselves at doing a good job. It is a safe territory, a sort of playground where a lot of the things we call goals and objectives are really a pale reflection of their more fundamental cousins, the existential drivers. At work, we talk about vision, strategy, purpose and goals and how to share those with our colleagues and create conditions where the team can thrive and perform better. But talking about these, we seem to be distracted from what life is really about: death, life, freedom, aloneness and the fundamental difference that is: the other. And so, I sometimes find myself celebrating with my client a piece of work we did and how it did bring some new understanding of her situation at work, but cannot stop myself thinking we haven’t really started the work she could really benefit from. As I see her looking with some disbelief at what has really been achieved, I can hear her thinking: this will not alleviate the fatigue and desperation I find myself into, week after week of so many hours of hard work, with so many battles fought, so many conflicts faced, so little reasons to really be happy with my life. But as we either haven’t contracted for that or because we let ourselves be led by the artificial compartmenting of our lives, I keep to my role as an Executive Coach and she keeps to her working space. And so we both fail to really look at what is there.

Thankfully, I have a solution for this. At Ashridge , blessed be my teachers, we used to agree that, while the relationship established with the client, through the chemistry, through contracting, through the building of our working alliance, should always prevail, this relationship also demands that I take my whole self to our encounter. It is this encounter that makes change possible. It is the working of a dialogue between two beings that are fundamentally different and are genuinely engaged into the act of listening and tuning themselves to what the client is reflecting on. In this operation, as a coach, I must not hold back anything of what makes me. I must let myself, as my instrument, resonate fully with what the client is bringing. And therefore, when my client is happy with the results of her work experiment, but not with how this is actually impacting her life, I must listen to that too, and see how it resonates with what I believe to be existential topics my client is confronting.

And so I must break with the traditional boundaries of Executive Coaching and accept that we will, if what is there so demands, that our coaching will explore those more fundamental issues that I have called existential, because I hear how they are resonating in our work together. I have undertaken to deepen my understanding of existential issues, through the reading of Yalom , Frankl , May , Van Deurzen , and confronting the topics of death, freedom, aloneness, meaninglessness. I want to bring these topics into the coaching room, or rather let them exist, as they are the very background of our existence. I have been and am still every day struggling with these notions and how they are driving my choices and my efforts to be congruent with myself. And these choices are equally driving my clients, whether it is in their awareness or more subconsciously. Ignoring these topics is isolating ourselves from what they have to tell us as we are looking at what is there.

And as I am looking back today, at the beginning of this new year, at my coaching experience and how it blends with my own personal life, it feels good and coherent to incorporate all these dimensions of myself into my coaching, and to bring myself to the coaching relation, resolutely accepting that existential matters will be part of what is here. 2021 promises to be an exciting year indeed. Happy New Year!

How coaches resonate with their clients

Resonance in the coaching room Have you ever had a moment where you felt suddenly you were in phase with your environment, submerged by a feeling of belonging, of almost fully merging into the scenery around you and bathing in a contentment that can grow into exhilaration? The feeling of being in the right place, at the right tim

Acceptance and change

I may have triggered something with my previous blog about difference and repetition, something about duality and the power of this concept. Duality here is taken in its more common sense of the observation that opposite things seem to keep each other in balance and complement each other. Duality as in the intertwining of the Yin and Yang in Eastern culture, as in life and death, where death means the end of life but also gives its meaning to life. A duality so well expressed in the famous drawings of Esher, where the opposites (for example below angels and demons) are actually defining one another in the most literal sense. And after having pondered the dual movement of difference and repetition, I am now playing with some thinking around change and acceptance. Let’s do some Eshering of these concepts, shall we?

Coaching is about knowing oneself and it is about changing things around. My clients come to me because they believe they could benefit from changing some things in how they are at work and become better at what they do, often, better at leading others. And in our work, we do talk a lot about how, in front of a given situation, it is the force of habit that’s guiding our conduct rather than a good pondering of what would be best. And at the start there is the consideration that if my client wants a different outcome he must change something: if I keep doing the same things, it is likely that I’ll keep getting the same results: a simple but powerful postulate in the coaching work. Yet, in looking at things this way, we may overlook this other important ingredient in the coaching work, which is: acceptance. Sometimes, it is not about creating change but accepting that things are what they are. Actually, this piece of work may yield the most results. We are, particularly in our modern societies, the makers of our own lives. We are summoned to make our biographies outstanding and unique. In this context, being in the action and wanting to change something comes naturally, accepting that things are as they are, less so.

It all starts really with knowing oneself. I often propose my clients to collect some 360 degrees feedback from their colleagues and rendering this feedback generally triggers interesting conversations about who my client is at work. And in this conversation, if we are able to bracket our judgement and really accept to draw a portrait of the client that best reflects his being at work, we often establish something that helps us understanding better what is working well and what is more difficult. Duality is helping greatly in this exercise too: oftentimes it is the strongest quality of my client that also creates his challenge: it is because Peter is holding very high standards in delivery that he is so reliable, yet it also means that he may be more challenged keeping tight deadlines and managing many tasks. Dorine is an excellent team player, she listens intensely and shows great empathy, but this very quality makes it difficult for her to keep her own boundaries. David is extremely driven and able to achieve good results in the most challenging circumstances, yet his very outspoken personality makes it difficult for him to see value in different characters and hence to excel in team work.

I have noticed that it is at least as important to determine what are the strengths in one’s way of working as it is to look at possible developments, and it is often a game changer and a liberating experience to see how the two are related because this understanding creates acceptance. Once my client has a better understanding of his personality and how it drives a large number of behaviors, he is better able to see things holistically and make real choices about who he wants to become. Seeing how particular competencies create their own shadow side, which we may or not see as a weakness in a given context, can help my client understand who he is and accept himself better. Then, but I am tempted to say only then, comes the time to devise what could be changed. Knowing oneself better, accepting ourselves in our infinite differences, is therefore more than half the work and it creates this liberating view that things are not wrong, they are what they are, often as a consequence of precious skills we have developed. As in Esher’s drawing, the contours of the angel are outlining the devil. Duality: I told you.

We spend a considerable amount of our time pondering our lives and in this pondering we often wish things were different. And this little voice in our head, this voice that has acquired an almost dictatorial power in this Risk Society (inn the words of Ulrich Beck), is generally prompt in criticizing our own doing. Looking at our strengths comes less naturally, yet it is the key to seeing ourselves more holistically and with that comes acceptance. It is then from a much better place, a place where we stand in the stronghold of all these things we do well, that we look at those things we could change without losing any of our unique qualities.

Difference and Repetition: Happy New Year! The ritual of the New Year wishes is for me the reminder of this dual movement: difference and repetition. Repetition first: rituals are repetitions.

The Naked Coach gets Coaching: Unconditional Positive Regard.

On this early summer evening I’m walking fast through the Amsterdam Central Station area towards a meeting I am very much looking forward to: I am to meet again with Victoria Speers (from Contiguity Partners) the coach that has given me the virus of coaching. She has been coaching me four years ago when I was Chief Risk Officer and member of the Executive Committee of this Dutch bank in Italy. It is this experience, the realization of how much a coach can help you change for the better your professional and personal life, that has pushed me to undertake this conversion into Executive Coaching, and this is the first time I will see her from coach to coach, so to speak. I graduated in May and I am looking forward now to build my own coaching activity.

We are meeting in the Sky Lounge of the DoubleTree, a bit of a show-off place, but one of the very few spots in Amsterdam where you have a breathtaking 360 degrees view over the city, with the Central Station, the North area and the Sint Nicolaas Church on the foreground. After having taken in the view, as we settle in our comfortable lounge chairs, Victoria is inquiring about my progress in acquiring new clients. And there, we stumble, as if by accident, on a coaching moment. The fact is, I have had quite a few chemistry meetings lately, but my “hit rate” is on the low side. Why is that? Calling back the memories of these different chemistry calls, I have to admit that I am always at a loss when my client is asking me how we are going to operate in our coaching. I stutter, I search for my words, I hesitate. Why is that for me such a difficult question?

The thing is: as Charlotte Sills, our Ashridge professor and adulated role model used to say (after Richard Wainwright), coaching is nothing more than: “sitting down and having a conversation we never had before”, something I have evoked in my previous blog The Ashridge Odyssey. Telling that to my clients in chemistry calls is hardly going to win me any new clients. And this is my problem: a lot of what is implicit in these simple words is hard to convey. As I was telling all these things to Victoria, I was feeling the same anxiety and the same powerlessness I had experienced in these chemistry calls when the client was asking me the simplest question: what are we going to do? Somehow, I was as speechless with her, equally at a loss for words, I felt as naked as the emperor I was referring to in my blog. All this time, Victoria was sitting there, in front of me, smiling with her warm and encouraging smile, a smile that says: I’m with you, I’m listening and I’m picturing what you are feeling. Victoria has this unique talent to make the world less threatening just by looking at you and smiling understandingly while showing her curiosity about your situation.

And then it came: the ingredient that was missing in my picture, the thing that would help my client create a mental picture for himself of what coaching really is about. Victoria suggested it at first very casually, as if it was just a tool that was laying there all the time but my eyes hadn’t actively seen it yet : the unconditional positive regard. Victoria said : “what you have not yet expressed, when you say you will listen with care, when you say you will be curious and ask all sorts of questions, when you say you will focus to be in contact with what is there, is that you actually will give your client your unconditional positive regard’. A big word, but a simple concept really: it means that I will not judge my client whatever it is he brings to our discussion but accept to work with him on it. And of course, she was right: this was the missing piece: my client, when he is exposing something that troubles him wants to know he is safe with me. All the way back home, Victoria’s words were dancing in my head, and as soon as I got home, I couldn’t but read again this article of Carl R. Rogers (dating back to 1957, mind you) and called The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change (in : Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol 21, No 2). I won’t bore you with all the details of it. In short, it says that if a client and a therapist (we will take here the coach to be doing the same sort of work as a therapist) are in relation and communicate and the therapist shows unconditional positive regard and he has an emphatic understanding of the client’s internal framework, then constructive personality change will be able to take place.

Unconditional positive regard has to be nuanced : we are not always completely unconditional nor completely positive. This is more of a goal, something to strive for. At Ashridge, my Coaching school (Ashridge Executive Education) we used the term of « bracketing my judgment »: if only I am able to suspend my judgment and accept my client as he is. And then comes the empathy, which is there to say that I am able to have an accurate emphatic understanding of the client’s awareness of his own experience. In other words, I am able to understand what the client is experiencing including in the parts where he is having difficulties to picture it fully. The words in italics in this paragraph are directly borrowed from this article.

And then, as I am pondering this, two opposite feelings are surfacing. The one is one of anxiety and stress: how often, in my coaching, am I failing this unconditional positive regard? How often am I taking sides and judging my client? How often am I conditional: liking my client better when he says this or that or when he is responding to some unspoken expectations I have? But at the same time, somehow, I have this positive and energizing feeling that I want to do this. I can be this empathic coach that does not judge his client but tries to understand him and help him understand himself. In these moments, I am almost happy with my grey hair, with the long years I passed being in the business and facing the sort of challenges my clients are facing now: this experience helps me tremendously to have this empathy.

Zoom forward: late summer: an other part of Amsterdam: I am about to enter one of my favorite late evening venues. At the entrance stands Tom, a 2 meter tall giant who is the security guard of the place. I hug Tom, as do more than half the customers of this place. Tom has become the face of the joint. Where in other places generally distant and rather aggressive looking bulgy security blokes are scanning you arrogantly from top to toe and somehow making you feel guilty even if you haven’t killed a fly in your life, Tom is welcoming you with his protective and generous smile, his arms always open, always ready to make a joke or give you a compliment about your clothing. And it came as a lightning: because I was writing this paper, I understood: Tom is the incarnation of unconditional positive regard. Somehow, he has managed to make this thing his own active ingredient, in the job where this is the least expected. And guess what: he is the most effective, most respected, most hugged and loved, and also the most famous security officer of Amsterdam’s nightlife. His relation with the customers goes way beyond his role, he is a confident and a consolation, a father and a brother, a friend to most. Because he does not judge. Because he is grounded, self-assure, focused on his job and on his customers, attentive, listening and fundamentally positive. Tom: tonight, you are my hero. And as I was formulating these words in my mind, as if by echo, I had to think of Victoria as we were sitting on the terrace of the DoubleTree, smiling at me confidently. She shares with Tom this capacity to diffuse around her the same confidence as Tom does: the face of unconditional positive regard.

So what will I do differently in my chemistry meetings? How do I convey these active ingredients of my coaching to my client? How do I communicate this conviction that I know what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for coaching to be effective and that I will apply myself to embody them the best I can? Tom and Victoria are showing me the way: just be them, as often and as much as I can. And when asked, simply explain that this is my belief: unconditional positive regard and empathy are what makes coaching such a different and life changing experience. That simple.

The Ashridge Odyssey “They should issue a warning before we sign for this thing!” “There should be small print in the contract, telling us how we will not get through this Masters unchanged”. “How many of us have given their lives a dramatic turn? How many have left their jobs? How many have even changed somet...

A December afternoon

Me: Hey Rutger, thanks for coming. I told you about this job I have for you. It’s about this website for my new “purpose in life”: my coaching practice.

Rutger: ah! Of course, I should have known. Well, how about we reverse the roles for once? Why don’t I coach you through this process. What did you have in mind?

We’re sitting at my kitchen table, a distant imitation of a Piet Hein Eek, on the last floor of this new building in the Pijp in Amsterdam. This is actually the setting in which I receive those clients that are coming to see me at home. Equally often, I go to their workplace or some other location we have agreed. The room is clear, lots of sun coming in from the windows on this early December afternoon. Rutger is a friend, a talented designer and website builder (http://www.rs-design.nl/)

Me: Well, I don’t know really. You’re the designer. Let me introduce this paradox: there is a fortuitous coherence in my becoming a coach. As if I am arriving almost randomly where I was meant to be. As if this sequence of events, my resignation from the bank, my engaging into this long coaching study, is a logical outcome of all the things that I have done or that have happened to me before. Yet, at the same time it is all very new and right now I’m in very deep water. It’s funny you know, I have started this training at Ashridge (http://www.hult.edu/en/executive-education/) and the coaching practice just 10 months ago. It is really so different from what I used to do at the bank and at the same time, it already feels a part of me. But to come back to your question, let’s see: I have looked at a few sites from peer coaches which may help us figure out what we are looking for.

Rutger: that’s good, show me, that should help us get on our way.

How do you say: hello? And What do you say after you say Hello? to cite Eric Berne, one of my inspirations right now. How do you make your first steps in the world of coaching? How do you choose to present yourself to your future clients? I feel like a debutante at her first dance. Nervous, insecure, everything feels odd and dangerously treacherous and all eyes are on me: if I make a wrong step, say the wrong words, stumble while getting down the stairs, ridicule will pursue me for years to come. And all this while I have to wear these too high heels, this too long dress and this acrobatic couture hat that threatens to capsize at every step. I’m actually relieved that Rutger will coach me through this difficult exercise.

Me: Look at this one: I like how peaceful and straight forward it looks. I’d like my website to reflect how I would like my coaching to be. Having a discussion that goes straight at the heart of things, in the quiet and trusted circle of the coaching relationship. Being able to be authentic and sincere while we undertake together this journey into whatever life has put before us and that we must consider.

Rutger: I get that: you want people to be able to go straight at what they have to explore. What would you say is motivating you in this?

Me: that’s a good one. I guess we should introduce that somewhere. The thing is, I have had coaching myself, while I was in Italy facing many challenges in my work, and I found it to be a game changer, something that can make you look differently at things, at your entourage, at yourself. Victoria, (https://www.contiguitypartners.com) my coach, will forever remain, in my head, associated with her warm smile, with her support and compassion, while we were going through the issues I was facing. She kept following me from a distance since then and supported me in taking this step towards coaching. We are still in contact. I want to help people have such experiences: find a way upwards out of their challenge, create opportunities in complex situations, unleash potentialities. I want to help people become their best selves.

Rutger: and have you thought about saying something about you? How would you like people to see you?

Me: You’re right. Oh, this all looks so difficult suddenly.

Right then, I feel exposed and my fear is mounting. At Ashridge, I have learned to observe my physical reactions to a situation: I feel a pressure on my chest, my breath is shorter, I’m wobbling a bit on my chair and I’m scratching the top of my hand with my other hand. Rutger sees all this, and, while remaining silent, he gives me his most emphatic and supportive look. His posture is telling me: we can do this.

Me: of course I should tell something about myself. But it must be different from just the standard CV. People must be able to really get to know me so they can relate to what happened in my life. Where I come from, how I was raised, my parents, my family, how I moved to France when I was just 6 years old and how this has made me a compulsive traveler and observer. And I guess they should know I’m gay and how that has made me comfortable with unconventional lives and with ambiguity generally. You see, I want people to feel they can speak freely, that I am with them all the way.

Rutger: ok, so that would be the biographic part. What about your offer as a coach? How do you see that?

Rutger is very concentrated now. He is sitting almost by my side but still facing me, the laptop has gone. He is giving me his presence and I have this feeling that we are in this together. It feels good to have his support and attention while I’m struggling through this: a website, your window onto the world. Not something easy for a shy person like me. But Rutger makes me feel we will come to the right design and structure, no matter what it takes. He’s showing all the things I hope I am showing my clients.

Me: well, it isn’t rocket science, really. Actually, I have learnt mostly to reject templates, frameworks, complex psycho-metric tools, so that I can focus with my client on what he has in mind to work on. He is at all times at the center of our work. Our relation, being in the here and now, our discussion, our earnest will to undertake this journey and my undivided support and compassion: these are really the ingredients of my coaching.

Rutger: the emperor is naked…It’s not “less is more”, it’s “less is better”. I get it. But your clients will want to see what kind of issues they can bring to you, don’t you think?

Me: yes, the client is at the center of the coaching relation, and so are his demands. And actually, we can easily distinguish a few different fields: leadership, for sure remains the most important one. What does it take to inspire, motivate, facilitate and empower colleagues to realize an ambitious future? But change processes can present their own particular challenges, and coaching can help people to navigate this process while keeping an eye on the defined goals. In my short experience as a coach, I have found that career and life coaching can also make a great difference for who is confronted to a choice, or simply unhappy with his professional life. Finally, I should probably mention team building: helping people give each other feedback and create a stronger bond to achieve superior performance.

As we progress through the conversation, things I didn’t suspect were in my head, come out as if out of themselves. My breathing is now more regular, the pressure on my chest has gone. Relief.

Rutger: All, right, I understand. We’re almost there. You want to have a face to the world as well, don’t you?

Me: yes, you’re right. I’m not sure I have a picture that is staging me as a coach. Note to myself: ask Charlene Daniel (https://www.charlene-rose-k.com/) to have a photo shoot.

Rutger: I start to understand why you want your website to be simple and sober. We should create room for other things to be complex and not distract people unnecessarily. But are you not afraid this will all be a lot of reading?

Me: You’re right. There’s no avoiding some long texts. Maybe we can lighten things up with some pictures? But we must find something that keeps the peaceful and clean design. I’d hate to have, you know, these friendly advertisement faces, the sunset, the happy dancing family in the countryside.

Rutger: Let me make a few suggestions. I’ll mail them to you.

Me: that would be great. This has been a good session, Rutger. I feel we have gone deep into unknown territory but I felt safe with your guidance and I believe we have a much better view now of where we want to go.

We are now a few weeks later. And here it is: http://decoachwinkel.com/ , my baby, my website, the window onto my new work as a coach: the time has come to present it to the world. Rutger found this stones theme that illustrates the different parts without creating unnecessary distraction. I like it.

My life has been put upside down when I decided to leave the bank and start this activity. Since then, I am out of my comfort zone (some would say: out of my depth) but I’m enjoying every bit of it. Coaching feels already like destiny. It’s like what happened before was, not a mistake, but a long journey to get where I am now. It may sound cliché but the pieces are falling into place: the 30 years of banking, the sabbatical leave where I worked on this philosophy masters, the reading, the events in my life: it is as if they all contributed to bring me to this place where I sit down and talk with you, and we have a conversation we have never had before.

I feel alive. I feel I can help people and do relevant work. How cool is that?!

I hope you will enjoy your visit and will help me making this website better with your honest feedback.

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