 ‘Christianism: A crude political ideology and the triumph of empty symbolism.’ (Ben Ryan)
The UK has spent decades sleepwalking toward secularism, where faith has been driven relentlessly into the personal-private sphere. Now we're waking up to something very different. A muscular version of Christianity is re-emerging, not as a spiritual faith but as a political identity. It’s a re‑branding of national belonging where being 'British' feels increasingly identified with being ‘Christian’. I'm not talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ or about spiritual renewal here. This is about identity politics. It’s about casting Christianity as a default badge of belonging and using that badge to redraw the boundaries of who counts as ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Anxiety and frustration are fuelling that shift in the face of mass migration, cultural disruption and a fear that who ‘we’ are is slipping away. ‘Christian’ is being used increasingly as a political brand. Once any religion becomes a marker of national or cultural identity, it becomes a de facto test of belonging. Tests always leave people, the ‘others’, outside. It chips away at the humility and compassion that are, for followers of Jesus, core to their lives. Religion becomes less about conscience or community and more about raw power. For Christians who believe authentic faith should question power, who see gospel values as both universal and counter‑cultural, the appropriation of Christianity into nationalism feels like a dangerous distortion. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies’ (which suggests there are those we may rightly regard as enemies). True faith lays in reaching out in love – not in alienation or conquest.
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 ‘Coaching is taking a player where they can't take themselves.’ (Jose Mourinho) ‘Why is it so difficult to coach myself?’ Good question. We often need another person because coaching isn’t just about having the right tools. It’s about creating a presence and reflective space we can’t generate alone. A coach can help provide perspective, emotional grounding, accountability and cognitive support that our brain literally can’t offer itself in real time. People have persistent cognitive blind spots, including the self-serving bias, where we sometimes attribute success to internal factors and failure to external ones (a phenomenon known as the bias blind spot). It means we can’t see our own assumptions clearly. A coach can offer external perspective to surface or challenge distorted narratives or hidden patterns. Emotion regulation, especially under stress, is more effective with social support from another. Neuroscience has shown that, for instance, holding someone’s hand reduces neural responses to threat. Self-coaching during emotional turmoil is like trying to fix a car while it’s on fire. A coach can help co-regulate our emotional state, helping us access rational thinking. We sometimes interpret our own actions based on circumstances but interpret others’ actions as revealing their character (a distinction known as the actor-observer bias). When you're in your own story, it's hard to gain distance or objectivity. A coach helps you become an observer of your own created narrative – something that’s almost impossible to do from the inside. Solving complex problems requires juggling competing thoughts and emotions. The working memory has limited capacity for simultaneous processing. Coaching requires meta-cognition: that is, thinking about our own thinking. It’s cognitively taxing to both reflect and reframe at once. A coach can help offload some of this mental burden, enabling deeper insight. Finally, behavioural change is more likely when someone else is involved, especially someone who provides non-judgmental accountability. Implementation intentions (plans to change behaviour) are significantly more effective when made public. When working with a coach, our intentions are less likely to stay in our head and more likely to be outworked in practice. Are you curious to work with a coach? Get in touch!  ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.’ (Rumi) When training Action Learning facilitators, I’ve noticed that new facilitators are often fearful of facing silence. It’s as if they are construing silence in a group as a problem or a challenge they must somehow find a way to overcome. In doing so, they may be missing a golden opportunity for reflection, awareness and sense-making that could shift a group and individuals in it from transactional to transformational outcomes. As an Action Learning facilitator, I find it useful to consider what happens in a set through three distinct and inter-related lenses: inner world; interpersonal space and systemic context. The first looks at what individuals bring into the set; the second at how individuals in that space interact, communicate and co-create meaning; the third at broader social, cultural and structural dynamics that shape what happens in the set. Through an inner world lens, silence may indicate e.g. a person is thinking deeply; uncertain; emotionally activated; afraid to speak; having an insight; resisting or withdrawing. Through an interpersonal space lens, it may indicate e.g. waiting for permission or leadership; avoiding a hot spot; power dynamics are at play; trust is low or fragile; someone is dominating (others pull back); the group is sensing the emotional tone. Through a systemic context lens, it may indicate e.g. cultural norms about hierarchy or deference to perceived authority; organisational fear; learned habits of not questioning leadership or peers; a team or group climate where people do not feel safe; socialised patterns of who speaks first and who holds back. If we are curious about these possibilities, silence can form part of the set’s work, not be an interruption of it. In enabling silence, I contract with groups around its potential benefits, e.g. a space for deeper reflection; room for less dominant voices to speak; a pause that helps a group move from advocacy to inquiry; time for emotional processing; a shift from fast thinking to slower thinking. In the moment, I may let the silence breathe; invite the set to name what they’re experiencing; ask a process question; explore what may be going on. When working with silence, the pattern, timing, length and who is involved all matter. Prolonged silence after a bold question could indicate, say, deep thinking; after conflict, tension; after a dominant voice, caution; after a vulnerable moment, empathy; during ideation, stuck-ness; before a decision, uncertainty. Ask in an open spirit and tentative tone: ‘I’m noticing some silence. What is it telling us?’ Let the silence speak.  ‘Learn your theories as well as you can but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.’ (Carl Jung) The past 3 months has been an exciting time, developing and running new foundational and advanced coaching courses for an international Christian non-governmental organisation. The former was for people new to coaching and the latter for those with more training and experience. The goal was to enhance the transformational capacity and impact of the organisation by investing in an internal coaching pool, in enabling ‘sacred encounters’. People took part in these programmes from 12+ countries which ensured a fascinating and enriching cross-cultural dimension and experience. Standard coaching is so often embedded in Western cultural assumptions such as individual autonomy or flat hierarchies. These groups of participants helped us to deconstruct and reconstruct diverse culturally and contextually appropriate approaches that could prove far more effective in their own environments. The foundational programme covered: What is coaching; When is it useful and how; Coaching and mentoring; Psychological safety and trust; Presence and listening; Asking good questions; Coaching in the Bible; The GROW model; A co-active approach; Guiding principles; Support and challenge; Going deeper with GROW; Coaching as a manager; Troubleshooting; and Action planning. It was fascinating to experiment with adapting GROW to a collectivist culture. The advanced programme covered: Psychological coaching; Coaching vs counselling; Diverse psychological approaches; Phenomenological approach; Psychological safety and trust; Sinful-wonderful paradox; Christian pastoral coaching; Renewing of the mind; Webs of our own creation; Jumping to confusions; Cognitive distortions; Reflexive coaching; Risks of self-deception; Unlocking fresh thinking. It was designed to dive deeper in the coaching pool. It also included: Blind spots and hot spots; Capabilities vs conversion factors; Developing personal agency; Expanding range of options; Exploration to action; Troubleshooting; and Action planning. I was impressed and inspired by the active engagement of participants who shared their own experiences, questions and ideas throughout. We ended with pointers towards further resources and an opportunity for participants to choose their own next steps. Are you keen to develop your coaching insights and skills? Get in touch!  ‘The longest journey you will ever take is from your head to your heart.’ (Thich Nhat Hanh) I was co-training a group of managers this week in practical coaching techniques. The workshop included skills practice where one participant would coach another with a third acting as observer, followed by a review of discoveries. One of the things we reflected on was the power of reframing a question from, say, ‘Where are you at in your thinking now?’ to ‘What’s your gut feeling?’; or ‘How realistic do you think that is?’ to ‘How realistic does that feel?’ This kind of framing invites a person to pay attention to their intuition and emotion as potential sources of awareness and energy. It taps into something deep, beyond rationality, and can help make the shift from thinking about an issue or a solution to exercising agency in relation to that issue or solution. Tony Stoltzfus draws on this principle in ending coaching conversations: ‘What could you do?’ ‘Is that a step you want to take?’ ‘Hand on heart, what will you do?’  ‘If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.’ (Erica Jong) I ran a vision and team development day yesterday for a group of inspiring Christian leaders. Their chosen venue was a football stadium (a new experience) that looked quite breathtaking for someone like me who doesn’t know the first thing about the sport. We grounded the day in a specific spiritual account, then used Appreciative Inquiry to discover, dream, design and decide in relation to it. One of the themes that emerged was, in a social and geopolitical context marked by increasing anxiety, how to avoid manifesting an anxious presence too. After all, the leaders in the group are working in the same contexts and subject to some of the same stresses and dynamics as people living in their wider communities. I was reminded of BANI – brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible. I glanced out of the window and noticed emblazoned above the stands, ‘Our Loving Devotion Guides our Livelong Dream’ and, beneath that, four short banners that repeated one simple message: 'Fear Nothing. Fear Nothing. Fear Nothing. Fear Nothing.' Love is an antidote to fear. One participant said: ‘What am I willing to do, that others may know they are loved by God?’ That's a courageous question.  ‘We will have to apologise in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.’ (Martin Luther King) At 30, I had a job interview for a UK-wide Christian social action organisation. As part of the process I met with the CEO and, during our conversation, I challenged him candidly on various points. As I left his office, the recruiting Director looked horrified and remarked pointedly, ‘Don’t address the CEO as ‘mate’.’ Yet the visionary CEO saw something of potential in this rough and unpolished diamond and, on being offered the job, he took me under his wing as his mentee. He appreciated my honesty and often called me into his office to ask my opinion on important organisational matters that were way above my pay grade. I will never forget his trust in me. This experience came to mind today when I was reading an account in the life of Jesus where representatives of the establishment (who opposed him bitterly) said, ‘We know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.’ It was a back-handed swipe at Jesus’ lack of deference to those in authority, yet it also revealed something important. We can’t be effective change agents if we make ourselves subservient to whomever is in power out of a desire to promote our own self-interests or to avoid the risks of punitive consequences. Reinhold Niebuhr, the former American theologian, ethicist and commentator on politics and public affairs, once warned of something similar: ‘It’s wonderful what a simple White House invitation will do to dull the critical faculties.’ Brennan Manning, author and priest, added to this sobering reflection: ‘Niebuhr’s admonition must be weighed. The privilege of preaching to the President is so vaunted that most people use the opportunity to repay the compliment. In an atmosphere of mutual admiration, spiritual teaching dissolves into verbal Alka-Seltzer and speaking truth becomes impossible.’ Tough love here: don’t sacrifice integrity for expediency.  ‘You are stronger than you think.’ (Lori Gottlieb) In How to Master Anxiety, Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell identify several common indicators that people may be experiencing anxiety or depression. When describing situations they face, individuals often fall into what the authors call the ‘3 Ps’: personalising (“It’s all my fault”), pervasiveness (“This will affect everything”) or permanence (“This will go on forever”). Although these beliefs are essentially assumptions or hypotheses, they can feel absolutely real in the moment. They also reinforce themselves, intensifying the person’s stress or distress. Therapist Todd Schmenk has noted that anxiety often arises as a psychological response to something imagined or anticipated in the future, while depression frequently stems from how a person interprets or evaluates events in the past. This idea of temporal perception matters because it provides a way to explore the assumptions or predictions people make about what may lie ahead, as well as the beliefs and meanings they attach to what has already happened. Both perspectives can shape profoundly how a person experiences the present. When feeling anxious, threatened or stressed, people often exhibit a predictable set of behavioural responses. Walter Cannon (and later Pete Walker) described these as the ‘4 Fs’: fight (confronting the threat), flight (avoiding it), freeze (becoming immobilised) or fawn (appeasing to reduce tension). These reactions operate largely subconsciously as protective strategies designed to minimise harm. While they may serve an immediate survival need, they can gradually become limiting or counter-productive if relied upon too rigidly or too often. One of the skills of psychological coaching is to help people recognise and understand these automatic patterns, whether they stem from the 3 Ps or the 4 Fs, and to explore them. Through guided reflection and supportive challenge, the coach offers a person a way to test unhelpful assumptions, develop new behavioural choices and build greater emotional flexibility. This can not only reduce the intensity of anxiety or low mood but also strengthen their capacity to respond to life and work pressures with greater clarity, resourcefulness and resilience. Are you curious to work with a psychological coach? Get in touch!  ‘Reflexivity is our own self-reflection in the meaning-making process.’ (Margaret Kovach) It’s a bit like looking in a mirror. When I look at any situation and myself in relation to it (e.g. who or what I’m focusing on (and not); how I’m feeling; the stance I’m taking), what could it reveal about me?’ If I grow in awareness by responding honestly to such questions, it could enable me to grow in authenticity and open up fresh insights and ideas for action. Example: ‘My team colleague is under-performing and I’m frustrated with her laziness. It annoys me that I have to do extra work to make sure we don’t miss deadlines.’ On the face of it, it sounds like a simple description of my colleague’s behaviour and impact. Yet what reflexive insights could this reveal about me (and, perhaps, my broader cultural environment too)? Let's think. It could, for instance, say something implicitly about my own beliefs; assumptions; values; filters; expectations; hopes; preferences; fears; norms or needs. (I could, critically, substitute ‘own’ with ‘cultural’ in that list – it’s about me, but it’s not only about me.) By coaching a person to work reflexively in this way, they can choose afresh how to respond.  ‘Reflective thinking turns experience into insight.’ (John C. Maxwell) In his short booklet, Coach the Person Not the Problem, Chad Hall distinguishes helpfully between different focus points in coaching relationships and conversations. He observes that new coaches often focus, along with the client, on the issue or problem the client hopes to address and resolve. In doing so, they enter into something like an alliance, seeking to solve the challenge together. The coach risks, however, falling into diagnostic problem-solving mode or getting lost with the client in the client’s own perspective on and experience of the issue. Hall contrasts this consulting-type approach with that of a more experienced coach who holds their attention on the client, while the client focuses on their issue. In this scenario, the coach aims to enables the client to explore, make sense of and resolve the challenge for themselves with the coach acting as facilitator for the client. The coach may pose questions that enable the client to explore the issue more deeply or broadly, perhaps by focusing on goals, realities in the client’s situation, what their options are and, in view of that, what they will choose to do. Hall contrasts this reflective-type approach with that of a psychologically-oriented coach who may invite the client to focus on themselves, with the issue they are raising acting like a mirror. It’s a reflexive approach that, in Hall’s view, can move a client beyond immediate problem-solving to personal transformation. The coach may invite the client to notice, for instance, what they are focusing on (and not), to reflect on how they are framing an issue or situation, or to explore what that reveals in terms of personal beliefs and values (a bit like in supervision). I would add 2 further dimensions, the first of which could entail focusing for a moment on the dynamic taking place between the coach and the client and exploring tentatively if that could represent a parallel process, a relational re-enactment of what is taking place between the client and a key person with whom they are engaging in their situation. The second could be to focus critically on what, potentially, the client’s perspectives, feelings and responses could reveal about cultural, contextual or systemic influences that may well be impacting on them. |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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