Humanistic Life Coaching

Unedited copy of an article to be published by the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners in September 2008

For some Humanistic practitioners in psychotherapy and counselling, life coaching might seem like some juvenile upstart in the helping industry with pretensions to professional competence and an awful lot of hype. Some might secretly feel that Life Coaching has captured some of the market that might belong to them. There’ll be others though who are already thinking of how they can offer life coaching as another arm of their practice. For others too, coaching is the direction they are choosing from the outset and the interest might be in for example widening the models they draw upon. So, how might humanistic practitioners use their humanistic understandings within life coaching and what can a humanistic approach bring to the work?

Writing as one who has trained extensively with humanistic psychotherapists, I have always felt that there was excellent scope to work humanistically in the coaching field and the purpose of this article will be to explore this briefly.

So first, as a Life Coach what are we talking about? If one can see beyond the very strong and overt marketing of quite a few life coaches and some training organisations, a life coach will typically offer coaching in a wide range of life issues. One website I have just looked at offers help with “career change, lifestyle change, addiction recovery, increasing happiness, fighting depression, interpersonal relationships”, as well as coaching for business people. Life Coaches might be distinguished from say a business or executive coach and may offer their services to the general public rather than through a corporate sponsor, although in practice a lot do both. Life Coaches will vary in the level and extent of their interventions, so that making a clear distinction is not easy. I always remember Malcolm Parlett, the Gestalt psychotherapist, in saying he also did executive coaching remarking that for him it was a bit like therapy. However, I don’t think every coach would agree.

As coaches they will probably adhere to at least one of the many definitions of coaching, such as that of Sir John Whitmore who calls coaching, “high quality interaction that promotes clarity of purpose, fast and accurate recognition of situations and of possible ways forward, and commitment to the chosen actions steps”. For him, “coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them” (see his book Coaching for Performance, 1992). Others describe life coaching as “a collaborative solution-focused, results-orientated and systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of work performance, life experience, self-directed learning and personal growth of the coachee." (a definition used by the Association for Coaching, derived from Anthony Grant, University of Sydney, 2000). Coaching draws a lot from the skills and understandings of counselling and psychotherapy and while one might debate the difference and see lots of overlaps, personally I’d see coaching as working more at the surface of people’s challenges than therapy, with people that don’t have such deep-seated issues, and with a strong focus on goals and taking action. Having said that, as a humanistic practitioner, I use a psychological approach as described for example in the Gestaltist Peter Bluckert’s book, “Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching”. I tend to probe into the psychological aspects in order to make interventions that generally facilitate fairly rapid awareness and choosing. I would also have a strong awareness of when to refer on, and this has been the great benefit of that training, including the DSM4! For humanistic practitioners, their psychological training would therefore have a lot to offer in coaching. What is however important is to keep a clear boundary between coaching and therapy.

Life Coaching has strong links with the self-help industry and if you research the websites of life coaches you will see references to this. In fact life coaches have written such books themselves. It has also arisen from a much broader growth of coaching from its sports origin. For example, a leading earlier exponent of sports coaching wrote a formative book in the 1970’s called the “Inner Game of Tennis”, in which the author Tim Gallwey showed how it was the work with the sportsperson’s inner process that was so crucial to their performance: “the opponent within one’s own head is more formidable than the one the other side of the net”. Other connections for coaching lie in training and development, hence the big emphasis on learning described above.

So where does the humanistic bit come in, you may be wondering? Already some of you may have already seen it or deduced it, from references to human potential, the implications for personal responsibility and choice, the invitation to work on oneself. To me, this has been one of the great contributions of humanistic thinking in psychology to the wider world. These terms have become axiomatic in for example the business world. So too have Carl Rogers’ Core Conditions, congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding. However there are other areas worth pointing out.

To begin with, I would suggest that the coaching field has a strong dominance of cognitive-behavioural orientations, although not necessarily described as such, with varying doses of NLP. Not surprisingly this might be encouraged by the strong inclination towards action. However, if by by chance you are starting to feel uncomfortable, do not let this put you off! This is just where a humanistic approach is so important and where I would argue coaches would benefit from widening their models for interventions. I have often been struck by how many coaches I have met have a reluctance to touch the deeper areas with their clients. It can seem like a blind spot. I think this may in part be due to a lack of personal development in the coach, in not having explored theses areas in themselves. Also, for humanistic practitioners, there is a major part to be played in terms of working with sensing and awareness, which is where many people fear to go. In fact Sir John Whitmore quoted above, a leading coach and husband of transpersonal coach, trainer and psychotherapist Diana Whitmore, has argued that many coaches need to give more time to facilitating awareness before they use the familiar coaching model GROW (Goals, Reality, Options, Will). Of course, working with awareness opens up a whole field. I would think for example of working with a client’s ongoing process in the present moment and how, as a Gestaltist I would use dialogue and the dialogic relationship as key. The coaching industry often describes “powerful dialogue” (Laura Berman Fortgang) as a key aspect of the work. A humanistic approach can raise this to another, even more powerful level.

Probably quite a few coaches would use some of these approaches, again not necessarily overtly. For example, Transactional Analysis has become widely used, as for example with ego states and the parent, adult, child model. In effect coaches that work at a deeper level are probably quite eclectic in their approach, and are inclusive in terms of models. It would not be surprising to find coaches valuing for example: respect for diversity, non-judgementalism, emotional intelligence, authenticity, integrity, autonomy, acceptance, exploring the real self, or a belief in a person’s fundamental goodness, worth and value. The great value of a humanistic training is the focus of these core aspects of working with people. What I think can often distinguish coaches is the level and extent that they have explored, worked upon and integrated these into their coaching, and indeed into their beingness.

As a transpersonal practitioner, I may draw upon transpersonal understandings where it is relevant. Humanistic practitioners will range across a wide area of understandings, as should be apparent from any read of the AHPP website. For the transpersonal, I might work to facilitate a client in his/her awareness and understanding of the meanings they make of their experience, what is meaningful about their life, what creates purpose for them, how they create their reality, what they most want, what is significant for them at a spiritual level and how does that manifest in areas of their lives that we are discussing.

Anybody thinking of working humanistically in coaching, in my view, would need not only a good grounding in humanistic approaches, and not just a weekend, supported by personal development, since the humanistic practitioner brings her or his own self to the encounter. “Know thyself” is as every bit relevant here as to the Delphic oracle. They should I believe, also undertake a course in coaching so as to be able to understand the discipline from the inside, and again not a weekend, and be able to work as would be recognisable in coaching and as would fit what a client might expect. Today, people are expecting a qualification in the area in which one practices, as would not surprise those who have witnessed the on-set of regulation in therapy.

To bring a psychological model to one’s work is to me a great extension to the skills of coaching and will help one differentiate oneself from the growing mass of coaches. Coaching is a lively and exciting industry but one which is growing in its professionalism and needs people with a strong professional approach. For me, above all humanistic practice puts the esteem for the self at the heart of the work, and I know not a better value than that.

(c) John Gloster-Smith, 2008