I coached a client today.
And while this is not unusual, as I am a coach after all, what is eerily unusual, and becoming more and more usual, is that this was not the first time this year I had to create and hold space in a coaching session for one of my leadership coaching clients to help them in processing not just their feelings, but aspects of their very beingness, in response to the societal violence directed at the communities they represent, serve and/or identify with. In fact, I’ve had to do it 5 times so far this year as coaching sessions coincided with these incidents across the nation – whether state sanctioned police shootings of unarmed African Americans in their community or a mass shooting of our LGBT brothers and sisters at a nightclub in Orlando. There is no doing my work effectively with my clients of color without creating and holding space for them in all of this – even as I, admittedly, struggle to do so for myself.
It may not seem like these social issues would be part of the kind of coaching one would do for leadership coaching clients. However, as a holistic coach I am committed to coaching the whole person. I recognize my clients as whole people (not just titles or positions), as well as the full lives they lead, are responsible for and represent. As such, I explicitly invite and encourage my clients to bring their whole selves to their coaching. Therefore, I must be prepared to go in the coaching session where the client (most) needs me to go with them – no matter how challenging, painful or seemingly unrelated it may be to why they came to me for coaching in the first place. Because in the end, we always find all of it is all of us and, therefore, it’s all related – all of it, always.
I learned this from my very first coach.
It was September 2005 and we were scheduled for our monthly coaching session. Hurricane Katrina had come and gone; the levees failed New Orleans; the government failed its citizens; communities were destroyed; and all those souls were lost due to government indifference, inaction and incompetence. By the day of our coaching call, I was feeling particularly numb; just going through the motions as I felt like I didn’t know this country I lived in anymore. How could the great United States of America let parts of a major city just drown like that? How could they just let all those people die and all those people suffer for so long in the aftermath – all those people who looked like me? How do you sit in a staff meeting after that? How do you find the meaning in your work after that? How do you have mundane, meaningless chit-chat with colleagues too nervous to verbally acknowledge what was going on in the country but all the while looking at you like they were waiting for you to do something – break? lose it? scream? what?! You spent 8 hours per day working with folks for years, but there was no one to ask you simply, “How are you doing?” No one to be, or offer you, a safe space to let go and process. But everyone was clearly nervous…around you. It was as if they were hoping you would keep it together for the sole purpose of keeping them feeling okay to be around you. Witnessing Katrina, the levee failure, the government failure, the aftermath, and the constant televised images of African American people’s pain, anguish and death was painful and exhausting enough (nothing, of course, compared to having to go through it all directly), but to have to navigate other people and their feelings about how you might be feeling, all the while as they hope that how you’re feeling won’t make them feel bad about how they’re feeling (or not feeling) …
So that was where I was that day as I entered my monthly executive coaching call for the year-long international leadership program I was a part of. Now I can tell you, as the client at the time, I can recall neither what we worked on during that coaching session nor anything else from the 60 minutes dedicated to it – absolutely nothing. But what I do recall, and will never forget, is what happened during the additional 10-20 minutes my coach extended the call for as he opened up the space to ask the question, and invite me to answer, “How are you doing with what is happening in New Orleans?” and to discuss and process everything that would follow. An office of 80+ people most U.S. citizens, all U.S. residents at the time, and not one ever asked or offered that question. Yet, this white, Afrikaaner man from Cape Town, South Africa – a culture, an ocean, a personal history, and a continent away – he did. And I can tell you it felt like I breathed for the first time; if not on that call, certainly since I had arrived to the office that morning, and maybe even the first time in a few days. Those last 10-20 minutes were the most real, honest, raw, emotional, supportive, encouraging, meaningful, and fulfilling moments of being heard, seen and held that I most needed at the time and that I will always remember and love my first coach for.
It takes courage, skill, intention, and a certain spirit and selflessness, for a coach to open up and hold that kind of space for a client. And doing so was absolutely relevant and essential to my leadership growth and development – because in my wholeness, it is all me and, therefore, it is all related, relevant and essential. So, as my coach did for me then, I have been doing for my clients this year. And to a client, opening up that space for them takes the coaching to levels deeper, more meaningful, more impactful, more trusting, and more powerful, in ways that ultimately both serve and up-level their personal and professional growth.
This nation is in crisis, and violently so.
Many of us feel this reality in personal, familial, communal, and generational ways. It is a part of us and we not only feel it, we carry it with us in all the roles we play as women, organizational leaders, executives, community leaders, men, mothers, fathers, business owners, emerging leaders, etc. Therefore, we need ways, opportunities and safe spaces in which we can discuss, process, connect-the-dots, release, be held, and be seen in compassion and understanding – to help us cope and determine how we want to move forward/what changes we want to make/what actions we want to take. As coaches, we are called upon to create and hold such safe space in service of our clients, for their growth and their development – both personally and professionally. However, there are times when the greatest service we can offer our clients as coaches is to not just be skillful in holding them in spaces they explicitly indicate that they want to go, but to be skillful in both identifying and opening up certain spaces that are meaningful for them and nurturingly invite the client in. If you are a coach and you are currently coaching clients of color in the U.S. in these times, I encourage you not to forgo important, meaningful opportunities to open up space for discussions on these issues with your clients. Resist the urge to leave whether or not you go there with your client up to whether or not they explicitly go there first. These times call for us coaches to be more intuitively proactive than that in order to more effectively serve our clients’ needs.
Listen for your client’s need in the tone and tenor of how they speak.
Listen for it in their energy, or lack thereof.
Listen for their need in between the words they speak and in the words they do not speak.
Be skillful in your listening.
Be unafraid of what you hear – in words spoken and unspoken.
Be bold in opening up the spaces your clients need, whether they do so for themselves or not – especially if they do not.
Be courageous and skillful in holding your clients in those spaces in service of their growth and their development in all the roles with which they identify.
We do these things as coaches not because it is easy or comfortable for us, but because it recognizes and serves the wholeness of our clients, in ways they need and may not get anywhere else. We do these things to fully serve our clients. We do these things because it is what our clients need from us as their coach, whether or not they explicitly express that need with words. So, if it’s eleven years on and your client remembers nothing from that coaching session but the skillful effort you made to open up and hold them in safe space so that they could effectively release, deepen their awareness and understanding, and consequently grow as a person and/or as a leader in a moment of national crisis, then that would be a memory for your client well worth the courage it took for you to do so.
REMEMBER…
Every day the sun shines its nurturing, bright light upon us … never does it wait to be asked before doing so. In these times of national crisis, be that proactive, guiding and nurturing light in service of the wholeness of your clients.