Why coaching is your best option?
By Jean-Christophe Beauvais
A few days ago, the French voted and designated their President for the next 5 years.
During this campaign, there was a lot of talk about the weight of the responsibilities of the President of the Republic, alone at the head of the State, with all the powers that he concentrates and cannot share with anyone.
Willingly attributing it to the peculiarities of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, the journalists often mention the isolation that would systematically affect, according to them, the highest dignitary of the country at the time of taking the heavy decisions incumbent on him in an extremely complex and uncertain environment.
And indeed, to be at the top of the hierarchy is to make heavy decisions, often alone, to play with confidential and sensitive information, to be responsible to the country.
We call it the loneliness of power.
Of course, what applies in politics is transposable to the business world and applies to all business leaders at the very top, alone on the tip of the hierarchical pyramid, legally and financially exposed in case of crisis, responsible for the economic viability of the company towards a headquarter, a board or shareholders.
The subject of isolation nevertheless has two readings that are neither contradictory nor complementary: it is simply necessary to distinguish the situation of “I am alone to lead” from the affective or even pathological corollary “I feel alone and isolated in my role”.
Indeed, a manager is, by nature, alone at the head of his company. His loneliness of the director is very inherent in the function.
It is when it translates into this altitude sickness at the top of the pyramid, this famous feeling of isolation, which leads to the syndrome of loneliness of power.
For the entrepreneur concerned, isolation can increase the risks associated with his function and already present daily.
Most leaders do not spare themselves, working an average of 60 hours a week with the impact that this can have on their personal life and on their health in general and on their mental health in particular: stress, exhaustion, burnout, detachment from the family, psychological suffering…
It is this same stress that can also paralyze the leader in his decisions or lead him to make erroneous decisions, for lack of discernment and anticipation.
For a leader affected in this way, the risk of locking himself in his ivory tower increases and the perception of his team can be negatively affected.
Even if worried, the manager must always look good, always show his poker face so as not to worry the teams. In the long run the teams are not fooled. There is then a risk for the good management of the company, employees imagining that the leader isolates himself to hide something.
And he does hide something: his feeling of isolation, which he thinks he cannot share with anyone and especially not with a member of the structure of the company, even if he trusts.
Communicating about your difficulties would undoubtedly be THE solution to get out of the gear but it is also the most difficult to adopt, because it entails the risk of appearing incompetent or vulnerable. This pushes the leader to entrench himself a little more. Vicious circle and Gordian knot.
Would an external interlocutor allow him to “confess” and externalize his vulnerability without risk to the organization?
For the business leader, for whom admitting his vulnerability is experienced as an unspeakable fault and to be hidden at all costs within the company, a first step could be to exchange with peers, in this case other leaders experiencing the same situation. This can be reflected, for instance, in memberships or participation in networks, fairs, and exhibitions.
Breaking one’s isolation must be based on a personal desire for sharing and openness, and a necessary willingness to admit one’s situation of isolation and the vulnerability it entails. But can it be to those peers I just mentioned?
Undoubtedly, it is possible but uneasy. How often will you see your fellow GM in fairs or exhibitions? Perhaps there are also conflicts of interest (commercial for example) that prevent you from confiding in this or that with another manager.
At this stage of reflection, the use of external coaching is generally the most effective solution.
The coach has the advantage of being outside the company and having an external and neutral look at it, a discussion that would prove much more difficult with a colleague, a relative, or a counterpart.
For the manager, admitting his vulnerability will certainly be effective, but it is also a huge taboo: letting Coaching create a space of freedom where the client can express his feelings without fear. For there is no judgment in the relationship, as judgment is part of what initially led the leader to isolate himself.
Following an accompaniment also allows you to freely discuss your weaknesses without stakes of postures or power.
The coach is not there to replace the leader but to help him to take a step back, to ask the right questions, to project himself into the future. The sessions are an opportunity for the manager to reflect on his talents, the strategy of his company, etc.
These regular exchanges give a healthy breath of fresh air to the entrepreneur and take him out of his loneliness.
And the sessions must allow the rapid implementation of action plans and behavioral strategies.
In a nutshell:
– the loneliness of the leader is rather classic on the structural level, as it is inherent in his position.
– but when it leads to pathological isolation, there is no point in fighting it head-on to defeat it at all costs, when the use of coaching is out there: available, confidential, and effective.
Jean-Christophe Beauvais
[email protected]
Loneliness of Power
Today’s bosses are under pressure of all kinds and must respect extreme confidentiality on a large number of topics. Because of this loneliness, the leader may tend to turn away from reality and look for an escape. Since time immemorial, men and women have sought to escape this loneliness by any means whatsoever. According to Blaise Pascal, everyone is prey to entertainment, which consists of the desperate search for consolation in the face of the difficulty of being oneself. Henry Laborit will praise flight: “in times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and keep dreaming”.
To accept one’s responsibility is in large part to sublimate and transcend this loneliness. Coaching will provide a window of opportunity to accompany all those who are faced with a certain isolation and wish to contribute to their personal fulfillment through a satisfying relational life.
Many studies have shown that being surrounded, being able to exchange and share has a positive impact on both our mental health and our physical health. Our hyperconnected society has contributed to the emergence of a very paradoxical loneliness. Isn’t that reason why Coaching emerges to reconnect with oneself and others?
The construction of a relationship linked to conditioned co-production
One of the great principles of professional accompaniment and so little expressed, is the construction of a relationship linked to conditioned co-production. Indeed, our work consists in basing ourselves on this model borrowed from the Buddhist canons.
Look at your hand. She looks the same as a week ago. Yet almost all of your skin cells are dead and replaced. Your hand is not the same as a day ago. Neither does your body. Your proteins are constantly changing. Your hemoglobin molecules don’t live longer than a day. However, they always remain in a fixed quantity in the blood network. The body of man (like that of a bacterium) is constantly regenerating; however, from within, from an incessant movement, a stable organization is created… an autonomy. It is the Chilean Francisco Varela who, with Maturana, underlines the self-organization capacities of the living with the concept of autopoiesis. He works on body-mind relationships and charts the course for a reconciliation of Buddhism and science.The conditions are renewed every moment. It is therefore useless to seek continuity and justify consistency over time. It’s just an illusion. That’s why I’m more interested in what you want to talk about today than what we talked about last time.
At any time, a new set of specific conditions will contribute to the precise contextualization of a new need. As a Coach, I will therefore ensure that the problem or simply the need of my coachee is contextualized. Otherwise, there will be no Coaching. My responsibility is to better live the present moment in order to explore the conditions that will contribute to the appearance of phenomena that will occur at every moment. I am in observation and feeling. At the same time, I try to put myself in the place of the other. This dance of any moment which is of a certain complexity, describes quite well this permanent movement of co-creation in the present moment.
Paticcasamuppāda (in Pali) is the Buddhist concept of conditionality, dependence, reciprocity. “Sam” associates and connects. The spirit of dialogic invites us to combine what arises from the specific conditions that co-produce it. Conditioned co-production is in a way the metaphor of the coach who integrates and connects seemingly contradictory concepts at the same time. We get out of duality and we are interested in the compound and conditioned phenomenon which is related to the circle, to motherhood, to renewal.
A process is recursive when the result of the process itself has an influence on its beginning. The principle of organizational recursion constitutes one of the three bases of complex thought developed by Edgar Morin, along with the dialogic principle and the “hologramic” principle. These three concepts are interrelated. Recursion is inspired by the idea of a retroactive loop (corrective feedback loop) formalized in Wiener’s concept of cybernetics. To this notion, Morin adds those of self-production, regeneration and permanent reorganization. It is a process born of order and disorder that could be infinite, because it is self-generating. The beginning feeds on the end of the loop, the end therefore becoming the beginning.
Conditioned co-production can be understood as the origin of an action.To simplify, we will say that “nothing is without cause and nothing is its own cause” or:
“When this is, that is;
This appearing, that appears.
When this is not, that is not;
This ceasing, that ceases.”
Conditionned Co-Production In Coaching
Transdisciplinary research is useful for giving meaning to our action and reconciling knowledge. Conditional co-production is a hallmark of Buddhist philosophy and an inexhaustible source of inspiration for today’s leaders. This area of reflection was decisive in the work of “philosophers of the mind” such as Francisco Varela and Maturana who underline the self-organization capacities of the living with the concept of autopoiesis. Edgar Morin will in turn consider the recursive principle as being one of the three useful means of managing complexity.
“The coach is not someone who contemplates, and it’s not even someone who thinks. A coach is someone who creates”.
“The coach is not someone who contemplates, and it’s not even someone who thinks. A coach is someone who creates”. Paraphrasing Deleuze allows us to highlight the importance of acting and creating. These are the common traits of the coach and the philosopher.
When we have a subject to deal with, we construct a concept which is similar to an amalgam of ideas and stacked aggregates, whose composition is completely original and in a certain way arbitrary. We give ourselves the means to explore a specific need in a contextualized framework. It is the encounter with the other in a space-time that triggers the whole process. The body unites with the heart and the spirit. The accompaniment is physical and the exercise is felt in our whole body. It’s not just mental.
There is no great or bad work. There is an intention which expresses itself, which also evolves over time and an idea whose plastic moves like an amoeba which deforms by emitting its protrusions.
Like an abstract painting integrating several necessary layers of paint, their superposition and their entanglements will reveal emergences that will give meaning to those who engage. We tend towards the beautiful, the sublime. Gestures can be incongruous, daring, they are never hesitant. Each gesture has its raison d’être. We are moving forward, but we are also going backwards. Creation allows mistakes and missteps. Our hypotheses make it possible to relaunch the action and will facilitate a change of perspective.
In the pursuit of the creative act, one follows one’s intuition so that the composition reflects the essence of the subject. The synthesis will redefine the contours of the concept by describing its characteristics. We must dive into the depths of the other to bring out hidden treasures, but these discoveries will be fully returned to him.
The creative power compels us to a result. It is the vital energy and our desire for performance that will accompany us on this journey.
The Coach Is Someone Who Creates
Artistic creation has a power of revelation just like Coaching. It allows us to access certain truths and catalyze certain ideas. The artist and the coach having another look on the world, a disinterested approach mixed with doubt and perplexity, not guided by the concern to know, are able to see truly (with their body and their eyes) what is offered.
And yes it is a good idea to distance yourself so as not to stray from reality! Accept that only a dispassionate approach will contribute to renewing our vital momentum. The creative posture integrates and weaves the links. It connects and brings people together. We teach the Coach to listen and ask the right questions. What about his creative posture? Understanding it, practicing it will allow us to become a “fertile soil” and to enrich what emerges here and there.
What if softness became a practice to cultivate change?
Softness caresses the skin of a newborn, brushes a lover’s cheek, writes an I love you on a post-it note, smells a warm bun and remembers, warms through a sunny window, consoles a scratched knee, discreetly offers a tissue, knows how to hold or just give a hand, listens to what words don’t say, smiles when we are speechless, observes what we don’t take the time to see, whispers to the soul…
Softness is silent for a moment, listens to a wrinkled brow, says you are always right on time when you call, shares itself eye to eye, is nourished by the sight of a sleeping child… Softness touches a relationship in its most intimate depth. It surprises by its truth. It crosses our cracks, illuminates our shadows. Softness suspends time, misunderstanding, fear, judgment, hate, ego, identity, it watches over the unexpected.
Enigmatic force, it combines tact, subtlety, reserve and discretion. Anne Dufourmantelle in her marvelous work on The Power of Softness describes it with depth and delicacy.
“From animality, it keeps the instinct, from childhood the enigma, from prayer the appeasement, from nature the unpredictability, from light the light.” Where to find softness? “Underneath is the softness, lurking. Under every looked at thing, just the line underneath, it’s there, under every touched thing, every word spoken, every gesture begun, like the melodic line that accompanies a sung line.”
What if we let ourselves be cherished by softness? Knowing how to receive it, loving to give it. What if softness became a practice to cultivate change, to cross the abyss of indifference?
Just when we are about to pass cross through the famous “Watch your step”, it would delicately whisper to our mind: “Pause”, to let us be surprised by its creative energy, in family, at school, with friends and even at work…
To all Men and Women, lovers of humanity, eager for strong sensations, I make a call to experience softness!
Virginie Dor – Convincing Coach
[email protected]
“Praotes” And Softness
For the ancient Greeks, gentleness was the opposite of “hubris”, the excessiveness of one who is prey to his impulses. The term “praotes” also means both gentleness and friendliness, it points to the question of “being together”, the first circle of ethics and politics.
Sweetness is expressed through our senses. These are simple and slow gestures. We can take the example of the tender gesture of a mother towards her child but also choose the tranquility of a summer landscape where the coolness of the night appears surreptitiously. Reflections borrowed from lightness. Slow movements.
Gentleness towards oneself reflects self-esteem. It is the demonstration of a assuaged vulnerability. This way of being present to oneself, to what is happening within oneself, around oneself, moment after moment. This way of being in the moment without real expectation and without haste.
It is the artists who express it best.
“There are very beautiful purples and blues in the clouds tonight, a blue above all more floral than airy, a blue of cineraria, which surprises in the sky. And doesn’t this little pink cloud also have the complexion of a flower, a carnation or a hydrangea?” – Swann 130/207, Marcel Proust
With Virginie Dor, we will reflect this week on this dimension so little explored and yet so determining that is the expression of gentleness and its importance in the relationship with oneself and others. Observing the creative genius of Sandro Botticelli or allowing oneself to be seduced by a watercolor by Marie Laurencin, we say to ourselves that the softness is in the choice of light and in the expression of the gesture.
The act of coaching is also elegant and delicate. Respect for others requires a certain gentleness so as not to rush straight away and heckle the system too quickly. In coaching, we work on low heat.
Take a picture
Photography is the very expression of a moment frozen in time. As a Coach, it is necessary to live in the present here and now. Nothing like taking a picture of this unique and irreplaceable moment and freezing for eternity our emotions, thoughts and bodily sensations. I see it as a metaphor for what is desirable in order to experience reality and gain wisdom.
Photography allows you to look at yourself differently, without filters, by letting emotions emerge in order to identify them, accept them, free yourself from them and reclaim your body and image.
We take a picture to extend the happiness of an ephemeral moment. Coaching will reveal these unique moments and will allow the creation of powerful emotional anchors.
Would the coach be a black & white photographer?
I’m a coach, it’s my job and I’m passionate about it. I am also a photographer; amateur certainly but just as passionate.
So here are two passions: contradictory, complementary or … indifferent to each other?
Ted Grant, the father of the Canadian photojournalist, said: “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. When you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls. »
Would the coach be a black and white photographer?
1. But to start with, a little news and current events:
Among the new trends in Coaching, both in France and abroad, we find the development of niche coaching: and there, there is already a “new” profession, coaching for photographers! Confreres have specialized in the accompaniment of photographers (professionals I suppose). Interesting, of course. Fun, for sure. But beyond the anecdote, specialization in our profession is a heavy trend to consider.
In parallel and more surprisingly, it seems that there are now service offers from “Photographers for Coaches” (true story). The circle is closed and at least these two professionals will be able to barter: if you coach me, I’ll shoot you a few portraits and vice versa.
In the news, more seriously, since the pandemic and the changes in behavior it has introduced, both professions have the same “concern” (understatement…): customers understand less the added value of a professional. Social networks have taken over in 2020 and between the fashion effects and the multiplication of pixels on our mobile phones or tablets, everyone proclaims themselves a photographer. The same is true for coaches: at the end of the pandemic, it seemed that anyone, without a base, experience, diploma, or qualifications, could proclaim themselves a coach. But this is a topic that deserves to be dealt with in another article.
2. In theory, the analysis of an image (or our client) is done through an approach that can be divided into three steps:
– Objectively describe what you see.
– Contextualize: what we know about the image or the client.
– Interpret but do not criticize what is deduced from the two previous elements.
With this in mind, the coach and the photographer must be sensitive (from 1600 to 3200 ASA) and passionate, it is a minimum. But they must also be benevolent with their subject, in front of whom they both pose as observers.
Together they ask themselves the essential question: how to best approach the subject, how to “treat” it, how to “frame” it, how to “make it stand out”, how to help the elements in front of them to present themselves in the best way, or the most original, or why not the most absurd… but always waiting for a result that transcends the subject while giving him back control.
And in the vocabulary of image and coaching, only similarities: analysis of the depth of the plane (foreground, foreground, background), but also context or plans-scenery (general, wide, or overall plan), which embraces a wide field of vision.
And they can choose at any time to change their angle of view: the coach will be able to perform a 360 where the photographer will take a panoramic view, while keeping an eye in the viewfinder.
They use different lighting, change the framing, highlight the contrasts, and focus on the session… and should not forget, if they use filters, to take them into account when observing the subject.
Finally, they take care of the resolution by avoiding saturation. Decidedly these two were made to get along: so much the better, otherwise it was schizophrenia!
Jean-Christophe Beauvais – Business Coach, BTI Partner
[email protected]
