Dispelling a Myth about Coaching and Psychotherapy
Coaches often say that psychotherapy looks back at the past while coaching stays in the present and looks forward. Wrong on both counts.
Sure, some forms of psychotherapy involve a lot of storytelling and recognizing patterns from the past. Cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, is very present and future focused, and discounts insight into the past in favor of experimenting with new behaviors now and in the futre. In fact, I would almost say that coaching as a discipline has its intellectual roots in this kind of pychotherapy! In addition, there are forms of group psychotherapy that are completely grounded in the here and now and allow no storytelling about anything going on outside the group.
Conversely, it’s simply a fact that very often coaching clients reflect on past patterns and find the roots for the patterns that hold them back professionally in stories from their childhood. One of my coaching clients was struggling with assertive communication with men on her team. Sharing her experience of being bullied as a child was essential for the coaching process; there was just no way to move forward without touching on those past events. I’m sure many other coaches have the similar stories to tell. We fail coaches-in-training if we teach them to ignore the past.
Similarly, in organizations, unfinished business from the past often exerts an influence on the dynamics of the team. One client of min lost a promotion to a peer who then becomes her supervisor. She ruminated on it for decades, and it had a negative influence on her ability to do her best work. Until this was named and claimed, she was not able to move on. We are storytelling creatures, and the stories we tell about our past have a direct impact on our mindset and attitude today.
In the words of Fred Rogers:
Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.
In psychotherapy and in coaching, I practice deep listening with my clients, and I track them where they need to go, whether into the present, the past, or the future.
Team Coaching and Group Psychotherapy, Differences and Similarities
Just as psychotherapists and coaches don’t always see eye to eye, and have some misunderstandings about one another’s disciplines, the same is true for group psychotherapy and team coaching. As a group psychotherapist and a team coach, I have respect for both disciplines. Here’s my understanding of the similarities and differences between the two approaches:
Differences
Group Psychotherapy is a clinical treatment for mental health disorders, although it may be of use to people who are just wanting to invest in their personal development. Team Coaching works best with people that are already high functioning.
Group Psychotherapy is focused on helping each member feel better and reach their individual goals. Team Coaching helps the team as a whole work together better to achieve the organization’s goals.
Group Psychotherapy typically uses the same method or procedure at each session. Team Coaching can use a variety of methods as the work progresses to better help the group.
Both Group Psychotherapy and Team Coaching Require:
A willingness to change
Honesty and transparency, and the co-creation of a trustworthy environment.
A willingness to address difficult issues.
A willingness to become more aware of one’s self and treat others with respect.
Oh! You're a Team Leader? Congratulations! You're a Psychologist!
Well, you’ve made it to a place in your career where you’re counted on, not just for your own work, but for the results you get through others.
How will you be going about that? You won’t be programming your people like robots or operating them like machines. Of course, you could pretend that you actually control your people. You can bark orders at them as if they were Siri, and had only to hear to obey. But I suspect if you’re tuning into this station, you already know that strategy is only going to backfire.
No, as a team leader, your main way of getting results from people is by the way that you communicate with them. You’ll be communicating with them through words, either directly spoken or written to them via emails. And you’ll be communicating to them nonverbally, through your facial expressions and body language, in person or on video conference.
Congratulations, you’re a psychologist! You are now in the business of influencing people, and to do that effectively, you’re going to need to know something about what makes people tick: what motivates them, what distresses them, what they hope for, and what they fear. Indeed, you’ll ultimately be on a journey to discover what matters most to them, what gives work its deepest meaning, so that the messages you choose can help to bring out the very best in your people. It’s a lifelong challenge. It can be maddening, and it can be richly rewarding.
In the next few posts, we’ll be examining some of the most important dimensions that leaders must consider in choosing their words and actions in order to get the work done, done well, and done in a sustainable way. But for now, let this sink in: if you are a team leader, the core of your work is the influence you have on others, and that makes you a psychologist.
Let’s discuss!
How does thinking about yourself as a psychologist change the way you think about your role as a team leader?
No Easy Answers
We’re in the process of adapting to a new reality. Organizational leaders have important roles in this transition. Unfortunately, many leaders will adopt the wrong paradigm for understanding this role. They may feel they need to make the right assessment of the situation and then to make the right decision. But there is no right assessment, and there is no right decision. Instead, it’s a good time for leaders to consider Heifetz’ paradigm of adaptive leadership, as spelled out in his book Leadership Without Easy Answers.
Entering the Neutral Zone
In William and Susan Bridges’ transition model, we find ourselves in what they call The Neutral Zone. The trappings and confinements of COVID are (largely) gone, but that doesn’t mean that we really know what the new normal looks like. A space has opened up for us to again redefine our work, our roles, and our relationships, but we haven’t grown into it yet. It’s a disorienting time, and anxiety provoking; one teacher described it to me as “turbulence at the boundary of the unknown”. We meet a new person; will we shake their hand, or will some new greeting of respect and friendship take its place?
Our culture doesn’t prepare us well for The Neutral Zone. We tend to value the determined over the tentative, decisions over ambiguity, and making things happen over letting things unfold. But in the neutral zone, we can serve ourselves and our people best by reversing these priorities, and asking ourselves these questions from the Tao Te Ching:
“Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?”
Revisioning Work
This is the fourth in a series of articles about what many are calling "The Great Reopening." To find the rest, keep scrolling!
Bloomberg reports that a May survey of 1,000 U.S. adults showed that 39% would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work. Some familie that switched to home schooling during the pandemic aren’t going back. The pandemic brought with it looming questions of life and death, and those questions tend to clarify our values and priorities. In the post-pandemic world, professional ambition may never return to its former stature. If you’re interested in getting some help with your career, call me. I use a strengths-based approach to helping you create opportunities where you can shine. It’s a fun process of exploration to find the best intersection between what you have to offer and what the world needs.
The Re-Emergence of Buried Conflict
This is the third in a series of articles about what many are calling The Great Reopening. To see the others, keep scrolling!
A fully virtual workplace both inflames conflict and also makes it easier to avoid. When you’re in physical proximity with your team on a daily basis, you send and receive a lot of nonverbal cues to your colleagues that communicate a sense of safety and trust. When you go to a perfunctory birthday celebration for a colleague that you don’t even know or like that much, this ritual performance still communicates to you and others that you are all on the same team. These everyday ritual signals that communicate trust and belonging are much more scarce in a virtual work environment. As a result, you may have noticed that your thoughts and feelings about your colleagues are not as kind, charitable, or trusting as they once were. That’s a natural consequence of remote work.
At the same time, it’s easier to avoid dealing with these conflicts when working remotely. Avoiding conflict is a common human tendency under the best of circumstances. When you rarely are in circumstances where you have to look the other person in the eye, and where it's much easier to just send an email, conflict avoidance is that much more convenient and available as a strategy.
So, as people return to the office, I predict that many of these buried conflicts will come to the surface. It’s not a bad time to develop your conflict management skills, such as empathic listening, assertive communication, and negotiation towards win/win solutions. If you need help, I’m just a phone call away!
The Plight of Introverts
This is the 2nd in a series of posts about what many are calling The Great Reopening
Introverts had an unexpected heyday during COVID and are now watching sadly as the world reverts to its natural extraverted form. If you’re an introvert, you experienced a period in which it was ok, even mandatory, to make choices that suited your natural style. Now that social calendars are filling again, what choices do you want to make to engage with others in a rhythm that is comfortable for you? You may need to practice assertive communication in order to protect the space and time that is precious to you.
Previous Posts in the Series:
Even Happy Transitions Involve Goodbyes
This is the first in a series of messages about what more and more people are calling The Great Reopening.
We’ve all worked very hard to get to this point. We’ve long looked forward to going to restaurants and cookouts without fearing for our lives. Now that time has, for all practical purposes, arrived (at least here in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where we now go several days in a row without any new cases of COVID being reported). Yet there are things we will miss. Many of us will miss the spaciousness of our social calendars, the ease with which we could create space for solitude and reflection. Even with the most positive changes in our lives, there is a process of letting go that can be hard. It is ok to feel sad about some of the things about lockdown that you will miss. It is not wrong to have complicated thoughts and feelings about the good news of the end of the pandemic. Acknowledging the losses and grieving them will help you flow through the transition more easily.
Green River Coaching and Consulting in the News!
Green River Coaching and Consulting is featured in this month’s Berkshire Trade & Commerce! Click on the image to view the pdf version of the page.
Affecting and Effective: Emotional Expression in Leaders
Don't Check Them at the Door: The Business Value of Emotions in the Workplace
When my clients talk about their emotions in the workplace, particularly negative ones, they typically do so in a tone of heroic dismissal. In this essay, I describe some of the important sources of value that emotions bring to the workplace. When they are acknowledged and handled appropriately, emotions can lead to a more engaged workforce and better customer service.
Trauma-Informed Leadership During the COVID Pandemic
Psychotherapists and other health care providers have long known that their work must be trauma-informed; that is, they must approach their work in a way that acknowledges the fact that many of their clients are impacted by trauma. Today, especially because of the COVID pandemic, practically all of us need to know how to be trauma-informed in our work. This has special implications for leaders. Fortunately there are some concrete steps leaders can take to respond appropriately to the trauma of their people.
5 Tips for Improving Your Team's Collective Emotional Intelligence
Just as there is a collective intelligence that emerges when team members put their heads together to analyze data, develop strategies, and innovate, so there is a collective emotional intelligence that emerges from a group's ability to be resilient in times of stress, manage disruptive emotions, and build constructive relationships with important groups of stakeholders. Here are five tips you can use to increase the collective emotional intelligence of your team.