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- Narcissism – what’s that!
- Coaching Supervision: Self-Reflection and Lessons from Nature
- Nourishment
- A Walk in the Park
- Cultivating mindfulness is essential now
- The Heart of our Work
- Living fields…….living spaces
- Silences, mindful presence and pausing for breath
- The Bishop of London re-contracts.
- Mindfulness explored
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Caroline MontagueDBM Executive CoachNextThankyou CSA! I just wanted to say thank you for the supervision programme. As an executive coach I have discussed a number of challenges with you. Your feedback, insight and support have been invaluable. I have been able to take away practical approaches to use with my clients and have also developed my own coaching style and level of awareness. Thank you for your sponsorship and challenge.
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Narcissism – what’s that!
I am currently finishing an article on how some of our clients – often the most successful ones – have a particular blindness regarding their behaviour and the enormous pressure they put on themselves and everyone around them.
“Narcissism includes the inability to accept failure and it brings with it a marked need for power and control; what the person actually feels is at the opposite end of the spectrum – he actually feels worthless, powerless and believes that he has not achieved enough; there is never ‘enough’ to compensate for what this person feels inside. Driving the compensatory behaviours is the ‘injured self’, the ‘little person’ inside who has been diminished at an early age, has not had sufficient endorsement from significant others and who tried to get love and affection through achievement. A leader with this type of psychological background usually tries to hide their true self from others, by identifying almost completely with achievement and very high standards. Coaches may find this type of coachee almost impenetrable and slow to acknowledge their need to change. Classic work/life imbalance can be a signal to the coach here. And when a coach gets to know their coachee better, this client will often ‘confess’ to feelings of not being good enough, or of fearing that others will see through them and that, in spite of huge achievements, they have little sense of pleasure and even less sense of their own personal reality. These are all major indicators of a narcissistically driven person. They are likely to be present somewhere in every boardroom.”
Coaches see behaviours associated with mild narcissistic personality disorder every day. This is especially true when we work with successful, charismatic, driven individuals – the sort who work all hours and are hugely committed to their work and their organisations. They bring so much to the table, but often at great cost to themselves.
These clients usually have little sense of pleasure outside of work and can be oblivious to the imbalances that are characteristic of this type of leader – they are often leaders. Coaching to restore work/life balance and to invite the client to begin to feel, rather than remain numb to their own feelings, is a good way to begin with them. It is also important to show up authentically and give genuine endorsement to the client. Making a true, robust relationship is very important in order to provide a container in which the client can begin – without shame or fear – to share their thoughts and feelings. It may be that you are the ‘first person ever’ that they have really been open with. I’m sure that you recognise this ‘first person ever’ comment!
Watch this space for announcement of the completed article…………..
Edna Murdoch 2012
Coaching Supervision: Self-Reflection and Lessons from Nature
It is amazing what insights emerge when we give ourselves time to notice and open our hearts to the work we do with others!
This is what struck me when out walking on a beautiful dry, crisp, clear and sunny afternoon as I reflected on a piece of supervision I had recently held with a small group of my clients.
I was thinking about how the session had gone, what had worked well and what could have been better when I noticed a solitary tree. The tree stood solid, rooted in the ground looking quite dark with the bright blue sky behind it. As I got closer I noticed the many branches reaching out in different directions, the birds nest supported high in its branches, the shape of the tree reaching out at different angles and yet holding some symmetry, the small birds hopping along the branches and then opening their wings and flying off across the land. I noticed the shape and texture change in the sunlight as I moved in a different direction and the detail I could see on the bark and the tiny shoots of green starting to emerge.
So, how does this relate to supervision you might ask?
Well, I thought about the very different needs of the clients working together with me in our supervision session; their different development levels and how we had worked with these differences in an authentic way. The branches of the tree made me think about flexibility – the need to be flexible and responsive in the work we do. The tree supports many things – the nest, a resting point for the birds, it nurtures the growing buds of blossom and it remains firmly grounded from its roots and yet is also vulnerable and exposed to the elements. It made me wonder about my own vulnerability as a supervisor; to what extent am I able to manage and allow my own vulnerability in my work, as I in return encourage the vulnerability of my clients? To what extent am I also able to remain firmly grounded and supportive of my clients in the midst of my and their vulnerability?
In the supervision session, one coach wanted much more practical support; the other was working on herself as a coach and her fear of delving too deeply with her client, whilst another brought a very specific client issue. I considered how I had allowed space for the group to bring what they needed, to provide some support and challenge for them and to encourage them to share their own observations with each other. Had I done this well enough, could I have done it differently and had I been sufficiently present in my work?
I thought about how the light on the tree changes how it looks; if I had moved in a different direction with my clients what might the responses and outcome have looked like. I was struck again by the choices we make in the moment and the impact that has on the here and now.
We cannot change what we have already offered into our work but we can be aware of it, noticing the subtle signals as we work that tell us to move in one direction or another – a flutter in my finger, a tightening in my gut, a lightness of body as something shifts. Sometimes I can catch myself too heavily engrossed in thinking. Whilst thinking is valuable it can also get in the way of what we are feeling, what the signals in our body are telling us.
I thought of the fledgling bird as I reflected on the supervisee holding the fear of delving too deeply. We had explored that fear and where it came from, we had discussed the possibility that the client had come to the coach to offer some great learning. I had invited curiosity, I had offered feedback, I had encouraged reflection and I had stayed alongside this coach as she wrestled with what was going on for her. Her colleagues had been alongside her too, supporting, questioning and challenging but mostly just being present with her, allowing her to open her wings and embrace the wind that would take her to her best work with a client who had come to her for a reason.
I reflected on how we sometimes need to take risks, to be open, to hold firm in the knowledge of our capacity to be present for those who need us most – supporting, nurturing, encouraging – as coach, as supervisor and as a human being.
I considered the supervisee who wanted more practical support with the ‘right’ way to coach. I smiled as I reflected on the different presenting issues of these two supervisees and yet the support they both needed was equally valid. The other was the bird on the tip of the branch ready for that moment to lift up and fly, trusting their instinct and intuition that this will be the right moment. This one was the bird still in the nest, having its first look around and needing some support in what to do next, how to take those first tentative steps along the branch and to wobble, deciding which branch to take.
As I thought about the third supervisee, who had tried some different and creative things and wanted some feedback on how this had been managed, I was struck by the shape of the tree and the different directions the branches had grown. Over years each branch will have responded to the direction of the sun, the forces of the elements – wind and rain – as they created a direction of growth. This coach was creating the direction of their branch, through reflection and responding to challenge that may take a new direction or by continuing to move towards the sun that represents the successes they are having in their work.
As I walked away from the tree I felt content and understood that I will continue to nurture others and myself; I will struggle sometimes, I will stand firm in adversity, I will get things wrong and mostly I will continue to grow alongside those I work with.
My invitations to the readers of this piece are to ‘stop’, ‘notice’, ‘reflect’ and see what that brings up for you.
© Jan Brause 2012 Jan is a CSA graduate. You can find out more about Jan’s work at: www.janbrause.co.uk
Nourishment
Nourishment
‘Today, like every other day,
We wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading
Take down the musical instrument -
Let the beauty you love be what you do.
There are hundred of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’
RUMI
2012 is a pivotal time. Whatever we make of the many ideas that are circulating about this year, it is obvious that socially, environmentally, economically and politically, there is a gradual breaking down of old structures and certainties.
What’s this got to do with coaching and coaching supervision? Well, everything actually. We are profoundly affected by whatever is going on in the global culture – in the ‘field’, and as it is quite dramatically shifting now, we are living and working in environments that are in a process of considerable change – just as we are. Coaches work with change every day and with the values associated with change. In the wake of a big focus on the need for Resilience, we may need to look more closely at a central component of resilience, which is nourishment. Many years ago, I was talking avidly about some personal breakthroughs and a kind friend said: ‘And what will nourish these insights?’ I have never forgotten that observation. The implication that we need to be vigilant about self-support and ensure that we are nourished made an impact on me.
Re-listening to Rumi’s poem the other day (see YouTube), I was struck by its seduction – the lure of ‘letting down’ in the morning, instead of automatically beginning the day with our computers. Or the relief of imagining that there might actually be something more than me, a bigger mind if you will, that would invite ‘kneeling’ – a healthy surrender to something more than myself.
How we nourish and refresh ourselves, affects every relationship and conversation that we have. Being balanced and nourished, feeds our capacity to attend, to listen, to connect and to be authentic. It means too that we can respond fully to those clients who may be really struggling. If I can continually create the environment in which I can flourish, it is so much more likely that I can enable the client to create this for themselves.
As this year begins, I am looking at ways to nourish my life even more. And rather than ask you about your New Year Resolutions, I invite you to consider ‘the beauty you love’ – are you getting enough of it? Really – are you?
Edna Murdoch
A Walk in the Park
Throughout this year Ian Mackenzie and I have been meeting with coaches and coach supervisors for a monthly lunch time hour of mindfulness in the Park. It has been a blessing that every single month the weather has given us the thumbs up with exceptionally attractive weather. I have really enjoyed coming back to the same place every month. It has enhanced my appreciation of the subtle, and not so subtle, seasonal changes as the year pushed through each month. Throughout the mindfulness exercises and walking in dialogue, several things stand out most for me:
1) the quality of attention possibly by going that bit more slowly
2) being 100% present, really noticing with fascination and deep interest what was right in front of my face and allowing that to speak to what is going on in my mind
3) Walking through the work in nature helped the integration of thinking and stimulated insight and ideas
I think I have developed a really intimate relationship with ‘my’ park. I think all our colleagues who joined us regularly might agree they experience Green Park a little differently now. Nature is a good teacher if we take the time to stop, breathe and connect with it in an active and conscious way. Watching people in determined tides heading from one end of Green Park to the other, intent on the next destination, heads down – they seemed to be missing so much. The rushing, straining and striving can be managed a little bit better sometimes with a little easing off of the accelerator of life. Might that not also be true for some of our supervisees and clients? The value of this reflective space in the fresh air helps to connect us with to ourselves in a different way than sitting in an office.
Coaching supervision as a walk in the park really interests me. There is something about the notion of being alongside someone in companionable dialogue can really help people do some of their best thinking. I like the French word ‘accompagnement’ (to accompany someone) and it seems to fit beautifully with the notion of coaching supervision too.
CSA’s Full Spectrum Model supports this idea. It is all about what we as coaching supervisors can do to enable our supervisees to go back to their work with greater resourcefulness as coaches.
With our regular mindful noticing there has been a fascination getting to know the different parts of the park, month after month. It has a cumulative impact. The Park as a container for our experience begins more and more to feel like meeting a familiar and trusted old friend in a known and safe place. Walking slowly a supervisee can review, muse, explore a situation or a piece of work in their practice and re-own it with a different awareness, walking around it, literally, to gain another vista or perspective.
Sometimes just coming outdoors from the constraints of the office energy has a restorative aspect symbolically, energetically and physically. I can’t think how many times someone has said,” I really need to get outside more.” A raft of recent research points to the fact that, in order to stay healthy, we need proper, full spectrum sunlight, rather than just vitamin D in tablet form.
It is too easy to stay indoors. Today I am looking out on the bright blue cloudless sky of the flat lands of Cambridgeshire. The trees have a skeletal bareness, beautiful in their starkness. I am meeting a supervisee for a riverside walk supervision session in the market town 5 miles away. I am sure we will have an interesting session and nature and this late autumn season will bring the opportunity to tap into the wisdom and insight around. A nice hot chocolate would not go amiss either!
Karyn Prentice December 2011 www.fletcherprentice.com
London EC4 NEW supervision group starts 16 January
Karyn Prentice, Executive accredited Coach, accredited Coach Supervisor (CSA), CSA, Senior Teaching/Tutoring Team.
Join us for a small supervision group meeting lunchtime in the City of London. There will be an opportunity for individual time as well as plenary discussion to enhance the learning for all. This can also be a space to co-create the topics of greatest interest as well as trying out different tools and techniques. Please call for more information. The session will last for 2 hours £50 per person with a group of 4 people. Call 07721 312 377 karyn@fletcherprentice.com (www.fletcherprentice.com)
Cultivating mindfulness is essential now
Cultivating mindfulness is essential now. Margaret Chapman writes:
‘Looking at the apparent speed by which mindfulness is crossing over from the clinical into the organisational field, it appears that being mindful is now the new yardstick by which pioneering organisations and their leaders are being judged. Today’s leaders not only have to be emotionally intelligent, but also mindful. An emotionally intelligent mindful leader is one who, in an age of austerity, can concurrently inspire employees to achieve more with less; is concerned about employee wellbeing and behaves with greater care and compassion.’
I am noticing in my work that many of us – coaches, mentors and supervisors – are dealing with increased amounts of stress, fear and uncertainty in our clients. Since we are all connected at many levels, these feelings affect us too. It’s also true that some of us are dealing with the effects of cancelled contracts, as well as being in the situation of working with clients who are similarly challenged. It is unusual that in a profession that actively promotes optimism and has many practices to wing our clients to the land of bigger/better/ best, we are hitting the barriers to growth and change, earlier than might normally be expected. Typically, people tighten up, when things get tough. Our clients – and ourselves.
So this blog is a plea for us to self-care more than ever before, to become centred as never before and to find within, the values, practices and resources that are sustaining in difficult times.
If we look at the context in which many coaches are working, it is clear that the system as a whole, is under strain. It is impossible to ignore the relentless media discussions about a possible financial precipice in the West – and beyond. On and on the politicians and commentators talk – so many ‘facts’, so many opinions, so many popping eyes. Energetically, the collective distress is magnified as we pour words into the closed circle of the old paradigm. That old paradigm is taking quite a hit now, supported as it was by consumerism, capitalism and a (strange) belief that there would always be plenty to go round even if population increase continued apace – and even if we collectively ignored the increasing gulf between the few who get ‘fat’ and the many who ‘starve’. Coaches are working right across the social and economic strata and so we experience the hinterland where clients of all types, register their responses to the undercurrents of this time. I hear of clients who are breaking down, of others who are handling dangerous levels of stress and of many who are carrying workloads that lead directly to illness.
I am aware these days of Yeats’ poem. ‘The Second Coming’ and the oft quoted line ‘the centre cannot hold’. What’s important now is that our ‘centre’ holds as we work with those who are struggling. The great thing is that we can return to ‘centre’ anytime. It’s always there, always available. We have many names for it and many ways of getting there. Having a strong, healthy ‘centre’ involves practising mindfulness, operating from heart values and it requires that we stay in touch with joy. The decision to do this requires a ‘high degree of motivation and commitment’. (M Chapman)
‘Mindfulness is moving from the marginal to the mainstream because it speaks to the challenges of our time, which are to build our own, employees’ and organisational resilience. Mindfulness practice provides, as Wendy Harvey, observes: ‘individuals with new ways of responding to life’s experience and cultivating a deeper sense of health and wellbeing.’
Margaret Chapman is a chartered psychologist, chartered scientist and chartered F. CIPD. She is an ei coach and supervisor and a partner in ei coaching and consulting, and a member of the CIPD coaching and mentoring faculty. mc@eicoaching.co.uk
Edna Murdoch 2011
The Heart of our Work
‘Who you are is how you coach’….yes, I know that you have heard this before! I know that because I keep bleating on about it. This sentence popped out of my mouth many years ago in conversation with my good friend and colleague, Aboodi Shabi. We were on our fourth cup of coffee and were excitedly sharing our experiences of this new thing called ‘coaching’. Tools, models and techniques were springing up each new morning – they still do. This level of creativity in coaching has not stopped; we are fortunate to be in a profession that promotes new thinking and allows for some stunning synthesising.
Coaching has absorbed thinking and practices from many fields that shed light on how coaches’ personal development, energy and intentions influence their work. Currently, for example, our profession is harnessing the new work in neurosciences to support our understanding of how to promote changes in thinking, experiencing and behaviour and the ‘who we are’ piece is illuminated from this perspective.
Neuro-cardiologists get very excited about how much the heart and the brain work together. For example, the National Institute of Health tells us that,
“Somewhere between 60 and 65 % of all the cells in you heart are actually neurons exactly like those in your brain. There exist intensive, unmediated neural connections between the emotional limbic region of the brain and the heart such that “ tremendous interaction occurs between the heart and the emotional brain”.
Gary Schwarz and his colleagues at the University of Arizona conduct research into how the heart influences empathy and learning. They have discovered that,
“the heart is a sensory organ and acts as a sophisticated information encoding and processing center that enables it to learn, remember, and make independent functional decisions that do not involve the cerebral cortex. Additionally, numerous experiments have demonstrated that patterns of cardiac afferent neurological input to the brain not only affect autonomic regulatory centers, but also influence higher brain centers involved in perception and emotional processing”.
HearthMath researchers put it this way:
“The neural cells in the heart communicate with each other through the same neural transmitters, the same type of dendrites and axons as they do in the brain’. The heart is beginning to be perceived as the ‘fifth brain’. (See www.heartmath.org)
John Selby says:
“Leading with the heart in out present moment encounters is the only wise way to approach life, because the heart as a present-moment sensing organ is our very best system for knowing the truth about a situation.” See John Selby ‘Quiet the Mind’ (very readable)
These quotations are little tasters. What is interesting is to consider what they signify for us as coaches, mentors and supervisors:
Edna Murdoch 2011
Living fields…….living spaces
In coaching, we are rightly concerned with our personal development, our self-observational skills and our in-the-moment monitoring of our body/mind/spirit as we work with others. Indeed, this practice is evidence that we have got beyond the early stages of professional development and the attachment to our models. We can now notice who and how we are in our work, so that we can manage ourselves to serve the client better. We are able to work with the space inside ourselves, as it is impacted, and altered, by the conversation that we are having with our client. Otto Sharmer even says that: ‘the success of an intervention is dependent upon the inner condition of the intervener’ – a great observation; wish I had thought of it in such an elegant way!
But, there is more available to our awareness than information about ourselves – or our client. The cutting-edge physicists, biologists, and neuro-cardiologists inform us of the way we understand our connection with others and the energy that is in the space between us. We are far less separated than we thought we were and we coaches need to keep track of this new knowledge, for it can give a subtle but powerful edge to our work.
Lynne Mc Taggart – of ‘Living the Field’ fame – writes:
“Between the smallest particles of our being, between our body and our environment, between ourselves and all of the people with whom we are in contact, between every member of every societal cluster, there is a Bond – a connection so integral and profound that there is no longer a clear demarcation between the end of one thing and the beginning of another. The world essentially operates, not through the activity of individual things, but in the connection between them – in a sense, in the space between things ……….all living things succeed and prosper only when they see themselves as part of a greater whole.” (my italics).
So, enquiring into what goes on in the space between you and your client, between them and the system they are in and between that system/organisation and the wider political/economic/societal field, can help us become more intelligent, elegant and efficient in our work. I sometimes ask supervisees :
This is relational enquiry – enquiry into the energetic connection that Mc Taggart writes about.
These enquiries provoke exploration of the spaces between people, organizations and ‘things’. They begin to open up information about field conditions, which can affect the success of our coaching conversations. For example, if the energy between a client and myself is ‘sticky’, I want to pause and focus on that together. Then, there is the possibility of unblocking what might otherwise impede the coaching conversation and we can re-join the ‘flow’. This ‘field’, these ‘spaces’, carry our words, feelings and intentions. I invite you to hone your awareness of connectedness, of the ‘spaces between’ self , other and system. When I do this in my work, things that I had not even seen or imagined, open up for the client – and for me.
Edna Murdoch 2011
Silences, mindful presence and pausing for breath
Right on cue, Amanda Ridings, CSA graduate, has sent in this piece. I hope that you find it useful and that it might whet your appetite to read ‘Pause for Breath’ her recent, excellent book on dialogue . Edna Murdoch
——————————————————————————————————————————————————— See how nature – trees, flowers, grass -grows in silence;
See the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence
We need silence to be able to touch souls
Mother Theresa
Alongside my development as an executive coach (and more recently as a coach supervisor), I have been exploring two complementary disciplines. The first is the martial art of T’ai Chi Chuan, which begins as a physical practice and evolves to include training the mind and spirit. The second is the art of dialogue, or ‘thinking together’[i], an approach to conversations that begins with the mind but becomes an embodied experience as we bring our whole self into presence. In this article I offer a perspective on the links between dialogue and coaching supervision, with a little influence from martial arts.
There are many definitions of dialogue and the one I am exploring has its roots in the work of quantum physicist David Bohm[ii] who identified deep seated and habitual ‘pathologies of thought’ that limit collective intelligence and our ability to genuinely ‘think together’. The discipline of dialogue offers theories and practices that enable us to recognise and transcend unhelpful patterns of thought, at least for a moment! This feels relevant to our work as coach supervisors where, with a fellow coach, we seek to pool our resources in service to the coach-in-supervision and their client and client system.
One of the building blocks of dialogue is to distinguish between advocacy and inquiry in our habits of speech. Advocacy means speaking for a point of view, taking a stand. It has direction and clarity of purpose. It can feel certain – sometimes too certain! On the other hand, inquiry seeks to understand what we do not yet know, or to discover how another person perceives a situation. It is exploratory and open. It encompasses uncertainty and can feel vague. One definition of dialogue is a conversation in which advocacy and inquiry are in balance (Argyris). In the context of coaching supervision, we might ask what being ‘in balance’ means. My view is that, as coach supervisors we lean towards inquiry, with a sprinkling of advocacy, and this is what is required to balance the point of view, or advocacy, as the coach-in-supervision tells their story.
Advocacy and inquiry have equivalents in martial arts. The physical act of entering into a situation resonates with advocacy and is described as a triangular energy, like the bow of a boat cutting through water. The physical act of blending with an incoming energy resonates with inquiry and is described as a circular energy, receiving and joining. In martial arts, there is a third energy shape, the square, which represents a moment of ‘emptiness’, of potential, where all things are possible before making a choice and taking action. Working with bringing dialogue practices, I began to wonder about the role of this third energy.
Then in early 2009, in a coaching supervision seminar, Edna Murdoch suggested that to ‘make silence’ is an option for intervention in coaching supervision. I quickly associated this with square energy, the moment of ‘pause’ or potential before we speak or take action. I saw that deliberately making silence is a powerful choice in purposeful conversations.
One of my personal inquiries in dialogue practice has been into the quality of silence. Silence is often experienced as uncomfortable, and tends to be quickly filled with a comment or a joke. I draw attention to this in my practice groups and invite inquiry into silence. How might we perceive silence differently? Personally I value silence, and when I coach or supervise, I calibrate the quality of my questions by the length of the silence that follows them. A conventional question will evoke a quick response – a recycled thought or ‘one I prepared earlier’. A probing question will evoke silence, in which a search is being made; a response will come slowly, perhaps hesitantly, as new awareness or insight is voiced for the first time.
In conversations, silence is often interpreted as assent, though the intent may more often be dissent or opposition. Silence can be tense, it can be relaxed, it can be accusatory, it can be potent and rich with wonder, it can be withdrawal. There is always a risk that silence, as an absence of talk, goes unnoticed, which is why the quality of our presence matters so much. Leaders tell me that when they speak less whilst in a centred, open and curious state, their silence is acknowledged by a remark, an inquiry or a change in energy as colleagues become more thoughtful. Silence can convey many qualities and can be eloquent – so how do we use silence skilfully in coaching supervision?
My sense of making a silence is that as a considered and skilful act, it is grounded in the practice of pausing and centring. This ensures that the quality of a silence is open and connected to others and so cannot be mistaken for agreement or disagreement. The intent of skilful silence is mindful presence: it creates the opportunity to experience things as they are, without preference. This supports both coach supervisor and the coach-In-supervision to be discerning in their choice of what to say next.
Energetically, making silence creates space for awareness, individually and collectively. This allows both coach supervisor and coach-in-supervision to reach for, and surface, deeper wisdom. Embodying skilful silence creates the potential for new insights to unfold. Making silence creates roominess and a space for truly listening to self and to others. It slows down a conversation, enabling thinking to emerge and interrupting any tendency to perpetually recycle habitual thoughts. Skilful silence creates the conditions for collective presence and this offers the potential for genuinely thinking together.
[i] Dialogue and the art of thinking together, William Isaacs, Doubleday 1999
[ii] On Dialogue, David Bohm, Routledge 1996
Amanda Ridings 2011 www.originate.org.uk
The Bishop of London re-contracts.
A much needed skill in these key moments of negotiation/ contracting, is the capacity to speak one’s truth in such a way that each person is invited further into the conversation, and new possibilities are named as they emerge. No blame, no power-over, no ego. Just a commitment to joining the conversation so that the best outcome for all is achieved. So, well done Bishop of London.
Mindfulness explored
There is much discussion in coaching, at the moment, about mindfulness. Fiona Adamson, who helped to establish CSA and currently supervises some of our students, writes the superb piece below. It sets out clearly, the benefits of a mindfulness approach in coaching. Although it is written for coach supervisors, it applies just as well to the coaching process. I hope that you enjoy it!
From “Supervision as Transformation’ Ed R Shohet Chapter 5.
“Mindfulness and its contribution to transformational learning
Mindfulness is pre-reflexive in that it describes a way of thinking about and attending to a supervision conversation. The kind of mindset that this engenders is a meta skill that can be learnt and that can create a space within which to reflect on thinking as well as feeling. It generates an atmosphere in which we can explore our awareness of mental models, of assumptive worlds and of feeling states.
Langer, (The Power of Mindful Learning 1997) describes five components of mindfulness as:
In my experience, these components all support the development of conditions that facilitate reflexivity in the spirit of appreciation of what is happening in the present moment. Mindfulness supports us to hold the intention to attend to hr moment-by-moment experience of the supervision conversation with compassion and curiosity and with suspension of judgement.
A mindfulness approach is by definition a process that appears to slow time down and create a spaciousness within which trust can develop and consciousness can expand. In supervision, we take time out from the business of our coaching and enter a different place between us, a liminal space, a space of contemplation and of enquiry as a prelude to taking away a fresh perspective that can lead to new kinds of action. Coaches become witnesses to their own and their client’s process and learn to do so with out judgment. They are enabled to bring to their clients the perspective that comes from their intelligent heart, When critical incidents occur, as they do, coaches can turn their attention inwards and access a place of calm and acceptance of what is happening, without the need to change what is being experienced. A mindfulness approach in supervision enables them to reflect from a place where their confidence can be restored and they can learn from the experience.” Fiona Adamson.
Edna Murdoch 2011