 ‘A good coach can change a game. A great coach can change a life.’ (John Wooden) This week’s participants at an Advanced Coaching training programme joined from Pakistan, Rwanda and the UK. One of the areas we looked at was the relationship between personal capabilities (a person’s resources, including their abilities and potential) and contextual conversion factors (critical influences on a person’s opportunities to use and fulfil them). We sometimes see indications of the latter if a person says, e.g. ‘I’m too busy to do coaching’; ‘My line manager makes all the decisions’; ‘People are promoted according to who they know, not what they know’; ‘There are no career paths here that match my talents and career goals.’ If these constraints are real, they are likely to pose significant challenges. One participant commented that a person may face conversion-related issues in their inner landscape too (see, for instance, Timothy Gallwey’s ‘The Inner Game’). If they are anxious, stressed or exhausted, it will have an inhibiting effect on their ability to perform well or reach their potential. Learning to navigate conditions for success can make all the difference.
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 ‘A virtuous cycle is a self-reinforcing loop in which a series of positive actions and outcomes continually strengthen each other.’ (Marc Wilson & Donnée MacDougall) I hardly slept on Saturday night then, yesterday evening, I spent time with friends in Germany. As it got late they offered me a lift in their car back to the apartment where I’m staying and, to their surprise, I declined. ‘Why not?’ they asked. ‘You’re very tired, it’s a 30 minutes’ walk and it’s freezing cold outside.’ ‘It’s OK. I'll walk.’ ‘But why?’, they persisted. ‘Because I don’t feel like walking.’ They looked at me completely puzzled now. Had something got lost in translation? ‘The last thing I feel like doing at the moment, when I’m tired and it’s so cold, is to walk back. Therefore, I’m choosing to walk back.’ It opened a curious discussion about self-discipline as a way to strengthen character, personal agency and resilience. It’s as if each time we make such a decision and act on it, it reinforces or changes something within us. Some philosophers argue that who we are and become is a cumulative consequence of such decisions and actions. Now don’t get me wrong. Even the best principles can get a bit crazy when pushed to extremes. Yet picture this. A person is feeling lethargic, demotivated, anxious or depressed and says they don’t feel like getting up in the morning; eating or drinking healthily; going outside for exercise, fresh air and open sky; meeting up with other people; doing something (e.g. as a volunteer) that creates a sense of achievement or makes a positive difference for others – so they don’t do it. The decision and action of not doing it, because in that moment it’s the last thing they feel like doing, actually reinforces their experience of lethargy, demotivation, anxiety or depression. It’s a vicious spiral. The solution, known in psychology as a virtuous cycle, is to do the exact opposite thing – whether we feel like it or not. In the moment, it will feel counterintuitive and we may need support from others to help break an old, fixed pattern and create a sustainable new one. Do you want to re-create your future? Get in touch!  ‘The map is not the territory.’ (Alfred Korzybski) Coaching is often concerned with helping a person to explore and navigate their landscape. This landscape could be, for instance, the person’s reality, situation or circumstances. A coach may ask, ‘What’s the key challenge you’re facing at work?’ then, perhaps, ‘Who could support your success or, conversely, make it harder for you to succeed?’ or ‘What resources will you need to achieve this?’ Such questions typically help a person grow in awareness of the features of their external context in order to help them take them into account, draw on them or address them. Today, I ran an advanced-level workshop for experienced coaching practitioners in Burundi, Kenya, Pakistan, Rwanda and the UK. On this occasion, we focused primarily on a person’s inner landscape, recognising that the inner landscape is often shaped or influenced by external factors too, including key relationships and culture. The inner landscape is the swirling pool of a person’s thoughts, feelings, motivations and preferences, along with subconscious influences such as introjected beliefs and values or the enduring emotional impact of past experiences. We touched on Timothy Gallwey’s core insight, expressed in the formula P=P-I, where the first P stands for Performance, the second for Potential and the I for Interference. The interference that can affect our wellbeing or achievement often arises from whatever floats to the surface in that pool; for instance untested limiting assumptions, performance anxiety or a fear of negative evaluation by others. In view of this and the essentially subjective nature of such experiences, we explored how to address such issues with a person using a phenomenological approach. In practice this could entail, for instance: Explore the person’s world as they see, experience and feel within it (e.g. ‘What’s it like for you when you’re in that situation?); Explore cultural influences on the person’s beliefs, values and behaviour (e.g. ‘What messages from your family or community influence the choices you make?); Explore the person’s individual preferences and norms (e.g. ‘How do you prefer to make decisions?’). It enables a person to map their total landscape with greater clarity, colour and texture and, from there, to find their own way forward.  ‘Lord, heal me of this malady of lust…but not yet.’ (Saint Augustine) The Stanford Marshmallow Test was a famous experiment to help understand people’s ability to hold out against temptation. In its original form, it was particularly interested in the notion of delayed gratification and its impacts. For instance, if a person were able effectively to resist short term gratification in pursuit of a longer-term goal, would that improve their chances of success in life? The outcomes are still being studied today. The initial results appeared to show that, yes, a person’s ability to exercise self-control had a correspondingly positive effect in life as a whole. If, for instance, I were able to avoid spending money on trivial items in order to save up for something that’s more important to me, I’m more likely to achieve that goal. I can see it in my own life. I worked hard and saved every penny to buy a motorcycle for my 16th birthday – and I achieved it. In later years, further refined versions of the same Test showed that people are more likely to be disciplined in exercising self-control if (a) they engage with positive distractions from the immediate sources of temptation and (b) they believe their longer-term goal has a realistic chance of success. The latter is particularly significant because it points beyond individual self-control to the critical influence of a wider enabling environment. So, if I have a compelling goal, a hope, an aspiration in mind and believe that, if I am willing to hold out and stay focused on it and do whatever it takes (within my means and, for me, with the help of God) to achieve it, I am more likely to achieve it. If for whatever reason, however, I believe my circumstances dictate that I have little realistic prospect of achieving it, my ability to persist in the face of temptation will be far more difficult. In view of this, in relation to personal agency, ‘The opportunity to make effective personal choices is highly unequal.’ (Robert A. Dahl). If a person is struggling with self-control, it could be they lack sufficiently-motivating vision or values that would make the effort of self-control worthwhile; they don't have effective life distractions or networks of support; or they just can’t believe (perhaps justifiably) their goal is genuinely possible. Are you struggling to achieve your goals? Curious to discover how I can help you? Get in touch!  ‘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!  ‘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!  ‘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.  ‘Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.’ (Margaret Atwood) Today I received my first ever ‘digital credential’. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what it was at first. I had imagined receiving an embossed paper certificate through the post that I could laminate and put in my neatly-labelled qualifications folder. Turns out I’m old school, still catching up. I now know a credential of this type is designed as a “secure, verifiable online record of a person's qualifications or achievements.” (You can tell I Googled that). Saves on paper too, I guess. It got me thinking about this idea of credentials and how the word itself has the same linguistic root as credibility. To all intents and purposes, it’s about influencing what other people believe about us. It can have an impact on what we believe about ourselves too. After running over 100 Action Learning training and facilitation events for Action Learning Associates, I decided for congruence’s sake it was time to put myself through the same paces I put others through. I also did a postgraduate diploma in Coaching Psychology. I remember vividly how I had three critical reasons for doing it and for driving myself to achieve a distinction grade: to make a difference in clients’ lives and work by becoming the best psychological coach I could be; to honour the Christian INGO that had generously sponsored me; to prove to myself in my more insecure coaching moments that I must know something of what I’m doing and talking about. So, in my mind, confidence (what we believe about ourselves), competence (what we’re actually capable of doing) and credibility (what others believe about us) are very closely linked. Credentials are like symbols, badges, visas in passports that can open doors, make something possible, remind us of something important whilst also demonstrating it to others. For me, the most significant 'credentials' question is how to be what God values most. How about for you? [If you'd like to hear more about Action Learning and how it could benefit you, get in touch!]  ‘Words have memories, a history of their own.’ (Vivek Shanbhag) I speak some German as well as my own native language, English. I noticed yesterday that, when recalling a vivid memory of an event in the German-Austrian alps, I found myself translating that account into English to explain it to an English friend. If you’ve ever had that or a similar experience, I’ll share some insights here as to why it happens: 1. Memory is context-dependent When we experience something in a foreign country and speak the local language, our brain stores that memory with the linguistic, emotional and sensory context of the moment, including the language we are speaking. So, when we recall that memory, our brain tries to reconstruct it as it was encoded, which includes the foreign language. 2. Language is part of the memory trace Language isn't just a tool for describing memories. It’s actually embedded in the memory itself. The words we used, heard or thought during the experience are part of the memory’s structure. So, when we retrieve the memory, our brain pulls it up with the original language attached, as if replaying a recording. 3. Reconstructing vs retranslating When we try to recount the story in our native language, we aren’t simply replaying. We’re actively translating because our brain is accessing the memory as it originally occurred. That means we first get the thought or sentence in the foreign language, then we convert it to our native language in real time. That’s why it feels like we’re translating. 4. Cognitive switching between linguistic systems If we’re bilingual or speak multiple languages, our brain keeps those linguistic systems semi-separate and switching between them takes effort. Recalling a memory stored in Language B while speaking in Language A triggers a language switch, which can feel like mental translation in the moment. 5. Emotional and cultural encoding Sometimes, the meaning of what we experienced is tied closely to the culture or emotional tone of the foreign language. Certain concepts, expressions or nuances don’t map perfectly onto our native language, making the translation feel less immediate or intuitive and further reinforcing our sense of translating. Have you had these or similar experiences? I’d love to hear from you!  ‘When all of our idols are taken away, all our securities and defence mechanisms, we find out who we really are. We’re so little, so poor, so empty and a shock to ourselves. Then we find out who we really are and who God is for us.’ (Aaron Lines) Have you noticed that, when under pressure or stress, some people project their anxieties or frustrations outwards – blaming others for what they’re experiencing – whereas others tend to introject instead – taking too much responsibility onto themselves for whatever is happening? These are examples of aggressive and passive responses. The former (‘I’m OK, you’re not OK’ – ‘It’s all about you’) is a common example of a psychological defence mechanism, a way by which someone may aim to protect themself if, perhaps, they are feeling insecure or under threat. As a behaviour, it could well be experienced by others as unfair, an avoidance of taking personal responsibility, or bullying. The latter (‘I’m not OK, you’re OK’ – ‘It’s all about me’) is often a learned behaviour from early childhood, a way of making sense of a world of experience that has resulted in cognitive distortions. It too can be a defence mechanism, an attempt to protect oneself from, say, a painful, traumatic belief that a 'caregiver' was or is neglectful or abusive. If these are habitual responses, it can take awareness, effort and practice to develop a different way of being in relationships. Awareness often entails an openness to reflect and invite honest feedback; effort, a determination to work on changing oneself; practice, trying more assertive behaviours. It’s hard on your own. A coach alongside can help. Curious to discover how I can help you? Get in touch. |
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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