photo credit: Artotem

One of the aspects of narrative work that has most fascinated me over the years has been what do with all of the shadow stories that don’t quite fit into the larger and more convenient stories about our past or present. So much of the work in narrative coaching is about helping clients to befriend, mature and embody parts of themselves that have been held back for any number of reasons.

Little change is possible without the reincorporation or adaption of our stories to provide a stronger foundation for the changes we want to make in our life. For a recent client, it was about recognising that she had been pretending to be a flamingo—making others in her swamp at work quite uneasy in the process — and needed to make more space for her nature as an ‘eagle’. [I sense a career change is in the works for her . . .]

At a time when our economies are in great flux and we participate in ever-increasing networks, we need to find ways to express more and more of ourselves — even those parts of ourselves which we may have previously not used or not used well.

Given that this is not often an easy task, it helps to have others who can guide us in doing so. In this context, we can see the value of the other connotation of the word ‘shadow’ as skillfully observing someone. In coaching, this relates to our ability to provide real-time, in-the-moment feedback and inquiry for our clients.

New Workshop!

I am excited to announce that I will be co-facilitating an extraordinary three-day workshop with my dear friend and colleague Donna Karlin called “Stories, Shadows & Self-Discovery” on April 12th-14th in Toronto.

For the first time ever, the founder of narrative coaching and the founder of shadow coaching are offering a workshop together! It will be a highly experiential session, designed to transform how coaching practitioners view and deliver their work. For more information and to register, visit the special page on Donna’s website or here.

Please share the news with others you know in the region. Thanks.

photo credit: ginnerobot

One of the trends I’ve noticed with my clients and in other organizations is a need for a greater integration of coaching skills and conversations within teams. The reasons include:

1. the recalibration of the spend on external coaches and how they are used
2. the growing need for more agile and conscious decision making
3. the increasing capabilities of internal staff to facilitate and coach issues in real-time
4. the recognition that the sources of many challenging behaviors are environmental

For example, I am working with one client, a large professional services firm, to develop a team-centered coaching model to enable hundreds of teams to use a common, team-centered approach to address the real business issues they face. The work is part of a broader effort to (1) reframe some of the internal narratives about what it means to be a ‘good’ team through research on exemplar teams, unpacking how they work, and sharing their stories with others; and to (2) instill greater accountability at the personal and team level for learning, development, and performance. In a conversation the other day, a team leader asked me how to help his team become more ready for these types of conversations. I immediately thought of a simple metaphor to use in answering his question and coupled it with familiar model to describe the evolution of a team:

Growing a team is like making a cupcake

Storming: The first phase is getting the group together to decide what they are going to make, assemble the ingredients they will need, and stir the batter.

Norming: The second phase is about confirming they still want to make cupcakes, deciding what size and shape they want, and what is important to them about the final products.

Forming: The third phase is finding the right pan in which to cook them and lining the pan for a smooth outcome, turning on the oven to the right temperature, pouring in right amount of batter, and placing the pain in the oven.

Performing: The fourth phase involves taking them out of the oven at the right time (often a true test for the bakers), letting them cool (again, a call for good judgment), taking them out of the pan, and then decorating them (often an occasion for friction as preferences emerge about beauty versus efficacy, for example).

Transforming: The final phase is an important one in that the true purpose of this process is not just good performance but to use the result to achieve a higher purpose — in this case serving them to others for their enjoyment. While teams often provide valuable experience for people at many levels, they are perhaps more of a means rather than the end themselves. It comes down to, “what do you want to accomplish with this team?”

Part of the value of working metaphorically and narratively with clients is being able to use their everyday experiences rather than lots of complex models and long lists to help them achieve their goals. As far as I know, no team in history has every been transformed by bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. It comes down to getting in the ‘kitchen’, rolling up your sleeves and having meaningful, authentic conversations about things that matter.

Narrative Identity

A distinguishing feature of a narrative approach to coaching is its emphasis on the critical role of situated (e.g., somatic, relational, contextual, and adaptive) identity in understanding and supporting coachees’ development and performance. It exemplifies a shift in thinking of identity as a set of static properties to a reflection of dynamic and relational action — and from seeing it as a fixed object to an adaptive performance. There is an intimate connection between the ways in which we construe ourselves and the ways in which we are likely to behave.

Coaching Applications

1. Provide both an interpersonal structure and a narrative structure in which coachees can safely and fully engage and explore their stories. In doing so, appreciate the centrality of “place” in creating a generative space for the conversation and in helping coachees’ ground their stories (past, present or future).
2. Realize that people tell stories to make, confirm or experiment with a way of being in the world/being seen by the world. Therefore, ask yourself, “What is this person trying to achieve through telling these stories, particularly at an emotional level, and how are their current narration strategies working for them?”
3. Draw on Bakan’s (1966) assertion that there are two primary drivers of human behavior—agency and communion—in observing coachees’ unique narration patterns and supporting the growth of their cognitive and behavioral repertoire.
4. Recognize that if you want people to adopt new behaviors or attain new results, you must help them build an identity, through an alternative narrative.  To sustain that new identity, people need to enact new behaviors—and the stories that go with them.
5. Realize that people can only see as far as their stories will take them; they can only act as far as their stories will back them (before and/or after they act). As such, it is important to help people to connect their personal stories with the social contexts from which they came and to which they will return in new ways.

photo credit: Eddi 07

I often get asked, ” So, what is narrative coaching, anyway?” I had occasion recently to put the essence of it on one slide for a client. I found this process very helpful, particularly because so much of what I have done and taught since I midwifed narrative coaching is so experiential. In putting this together, I realised that narrative coaching is as much a philosophy as it is a set of practices, and it is as much about spiritual development as it is about practical change. In some important ways, it is a way of Being more than acts of Doing. I offer these to you, not as the definitive scripture, but rather as an invitation to a conversation.

Narrative coaching is:

1. A sacramental approach to holding space and working with the relational field as it emerges

2. A non-directive, real-time attention to the experience and narration, focused largely on the other person

3. A dynamic use of narrative material as the primary source and narrative pattern recognition as the primary skill

4. An appreciation of identity as situated in communities and embodied in discourse in supporting sustainable shifts in behaviors

5. A commitment to deep, generative listening based in understanding narrative structure, neuroscience, psychology and practice

6. A  process of raising awareness, focusing attention, taking new actions and increasing accountability in yourself and others

7. A methodology for helping people, individually or in groups, to make shifts in their lives one story at a time and with increased agency

I look forward to you comments and your views on what you think narrative coaching is all about!

photo credit: valentin.d

I’ve been away on holiday as the new year has begun. Even with the gift of a new American president, I find it hard not to wonder how we will fare in the coming year. One of the approaches I have been taking with clients is to return to some  classic mythological motifs as a way of understanding the broader narrative patterns at play in organizations and in the lives of its people. In doing so, I am increasingly drawn to my work on liminality and the role of ‘in-between’ spaces in development. In the Western world, the Grail legends provide a powerful set of stories about these spaces as part of the human quest for knowledge and growth. It is important to remember here that the Grail is about who we become not an object we obtain.

In her magnificent book on the centrality of language in understanding the Grail stories, Linda Sussman writes, ”The person seeking initiation at the end of the twentieth century is called not just to connect with the tribe(s) of the past but also to prepare the way for the ‘tribe’ of the future. Obviously, this tribe will be very different from the ones our ancestors knew. . . .  We are the tribe of the ‘in-between.’ ” It seems to me that history is marked by certain periods in which humanity’s choices become even more pronounced. I believe we are in one of those periods.

We can no longer take for granted that the technologies of the future will save us from the unintended consequences of our present lives, but must instead be more accountable to previous generations in terms of what it means to be ‘sustainable.’ We can no longer take for granted the historical notions of continuous progress, but must instead factor in the future generations in terms of what it means to ‘succeed.’ For many of my clients, it is about recognizing that we are moving into new territories in which new approaches to leadership are required. We are leaving behind one era but are only beginning to discern the contours of a new one. As Sussman writes, ”In the process, one has quite often to give up a favorite storyline to gain access to a larger context.”

Three tips on living an in-between life

1. Recognize that there is no ‘normal’ to which to return. Much of what has enabled us to get this far may have to be set aside to make more room for what has yet to be imagined. What you are being asked to leave behind in order to take your next steps? In my own professional life, it has involved letting go of the need to “fit in’ in order to make more room for my own vision and leadership.
2. Recognize that we each must enter the ‘forest’ where it is darkest for us (as it was for those who sought the Grail). This darkness is about aspects of ourselves that remain hidden within and/or from us, but that hold the key to the next stages in our development. Only when we move out from the safety of what we know and who we once were can we see what else is possible. I saw this in a recent workshop in which a new leader came to face her fears around claiming her Voice in relating to her boss (by moving beyond waiting for him to grant it to her). 
3. Recognize that the greatest opportunities for growth are found in-between what was and what is not yet. It is in these spaces that we can most clearly see what is being asked of us now. To be successful, seek out new allies, draw on new resources within yourself, lead with strong resolve and true humility. I saw this in a coaching client who was willing to forego the comforts of a familiar place in one leadership team in order to discover a new role (in a new organization) that challenged him to grow in some profound ways.

Those who have gone before us and those who will come after us—in our families, our communities and our organizations—are calling on us to rise to the occasion as part of the ‘tribe of the in-between’. What is your Grail?

photo credit: sbblackley

The title for today’s post honors the recent death of Richard Wright, founding member of the legendary rock band Pink Floyd. In my work with clients, we often focus on creating the ‘container’ in which they can feel safe enough to openly and honestly engage in the stories they’ve long told themselves. It is from this place that they can be courageous enough to explore what else is possible. It is as if they are asked to make new choices about whether they want to add the next ‘brick’ (a story about an experience) to an existing wall or to a new path (the larger narratives we tell and live).

Are you a security guard or a seeker?

One is about security and one is about seeking. While both are important at the right time in coaching and in life, the former is often informed by our fears while the latter is generally informed by our hopes. As Ira Chernus recently wrote, “Whenever people shelter behind walls for protection, they reinforce the fears that sent them behind those walls in the first place.” While the recent economic events in the U.S. have caused many people, myself included, to pay a new kind of attention to issues of real security, I can’t help but see a need to retain our commitment to seek new paths from this place we are in.

Which story are you going to reinforce?

Narrative coaches help their clients to increase their ability to notice the “brick” in their hand and be mindful and courageous about the chocies they make in the moment as to which story they are going to reinforce. This image fits well with what we know neurologically in terms of how habits are formed through the reinforcement of certain neural constellations.

There are certainly times when we all need a healthy and reassuring dose of stability and security, particularly in times of duress and change. However, there is a great need in these times of extraordinary flux to equip clients to fully step onto the pathes in front of them—even those that are not fully formed yet.

Where are you putting your “bricks” today as you think about your most significant experiences and contacts? Are you adding to the walls around yourself and/or others — or are you using them to extend the paths toward what is possible?