Last Stop: Coaching

As I continue the process of creating my book on applied sociolinguistics (the study of how language shapes culture and can be used to solve the world’s problems), I will be publishing short excerpts from some of the “shitty” first draft. Here is one such excerpt from a much longer piece on coaching and specifically why it is an elevated type of conversation and peer relationship. I hope you enjoy the read and very much look forward to your feedback as I continue this book creation journey. – Marie

Just because you have a mouth doesn’t mean you’re responsible and mindful of how you use it. Having a mouth doesn’t make you a coach anymore than having a body makes you a yogi. And yes, once in a while, by accident, we might stumble upon a moment of enlightenment. But the coaches I know are intentional. It’s not by chance that they’re engaged in thoughtful listening, reflecting what they hear in the world around them, offering bottom lines and challenging with powerful questions. Honing the way that you listen is a craft and it’s a rare thing. And I know it’s a rare thing not just because I’ve spent so long learning how to do it myself and teaching others what that looks like in practice, but also because with every new client I speak to, I ask them. I ask them if they can tell me the distinction between a coaching conversation, a therapy conversation, and a consulting conversation. And it’s in that space of interrogating their own understanding that most realize they understand very little at all.³

Don’t get me wrong, I abhor certifications. Credentials, degrees, licenses often serve as a gatekeeper to the things that everyone should be able to access and to receive. But again, just because you know how to eat doesn’t mean you’re a nutritionist. There are schools that you go to for that and standards to be upheld. There has to be some common thread/set of competencies that holds them together, that distinguishes the art from the pedestrian. That’s in coaching, but I would assert, that’s in everything. As a business coach I remind my clients that the only difference between a lay person and a “professional” is one is billing for their knowledge, while the other gives it away for free. But, in coaching it’s not the invoice that makes you a pro, but rather the substance of the conversation that you provide. Truly we are talking caliber here. You can be a professional (paid) coach and be of low caliber, just like you can be a good friend with a solid high caliber ear for listening, without committing your life to hanging up a coaching shingle.

There are some governing bodies that have emerged as the go-tos for the discipline. I think currently the International Coaching Federation (ICF) is one such body of relatively wide renown. And it’s stupendously imperfect. Part of that is because it’s 100% volunteer run, and when we rely on the bandwidths of uncompensated humans, things get a little wonky in terms of resources allocation (money, knowledge and power being the specific resources of note).

The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in the thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal professional potential. I take it one step further. Inspiration is not enough. People can be inspired, but that doesn’t mean they always take action. Kind of like a motivational speaker, the impact of inspiration is fleeting, and that cheapens it. The thing that actually drives action is not inspiration, or momentary emotionalism, but rather curiosity. And there’s an innocence in curiosity that inspiration lacks. In fact, inspiration can often feel braggadocious, self- righteous, and ignorantly bold. I define coaching as a conversation-based relationship. It’s a relationship conversation. A conversationship⁴ . And it is driven by asking questions and leading with curiosity from a position that presumes each person is whole, complete, and fully capable as they are. Coaching exists outside of the realm of judgment. It’s a place where everyone is perfect in their imperfection, and everything unfolds just as it is supposed to. It requires trust of self, of the other and the trust of the relationship. And for that, it’s usually a very uncomfortable place for those unfamiliar with playing there.

Me? I love it.

One thing I do appreciate about the ICF is that a core element in coach certification and coach training programs is being able to converse with clients about the distinctions. Every coach must, at a minimum, be able to make it clear that a coaching conversation is not therapy, and it’s not consulting. People should, and need to, know exactly what kind of dialogue/relationship they’re about to engage in, because by design it’s meant to feel different, and do something different, and leave you differently than other speaking modalities. You already know this. If you have ever vented⁵ to a friend and had them ask you “who do you want me to be in this conversation?” you two have spent time distinguishing what kind of conversation you are in. Problem solving is not commiserating, it is not being a sounding board. And when we can tell people what we need from them in a conversation we avoid the resentment that shows up when we aren’t receiving what we desire to in order to be fulfilled⁶.

In the workplace, there are all sorts of conversations that have been deemed as supportive to employee growth and performance; mentoring, manager 1:1s, sponsorship. And those aren’t coaching either. Not necessarily. All three roles may incorporate some coaching into their relationship, but it’s usually not the focus.

Specifically, a manager in a workplace setting is a person who is tasked with getting work done through others in a way that it serves them, the team and/or the organization simultaneously. They do have some responsibility for your ongoing development but usually within the confines of organizational goals. Their goal is to do what’s best for the company. In this way a manager cannot be a pure fiduciary of your professional potential. The dual relationship intrinsic in your growth, and a steadfast loyalty to steward the company’s best interests, are not always so harmoniously aligned.

Managing: This is when someone is overseeing your performance and seeks to provide you with the resources necessary to meet the goals of the group (team/org). “I need you to succeed and am being held accountable to the way your success impacts the larger group.”

With mentorship, there’s the benefit of someone who’s been where you want to go offering you insights about your life, usually based on their own. They share advice based on their perspective and offer a safe place for you to bounce ideas off of to leverage their past in order to help you to shape your future. Sometimes a manager can also be your mentor, but mentors are not necessarily driven by organizational goals. That’s right: you could meet a mentor out in the real world, within your family, friends or other personal networks.

Mentoring: This is when someone provides you advice and guidance based on their lived experience that aligns with your personal/professional goals. “I’ve been where you want to go, let me suggest. . .”

And then there are sponsors. Now your manager could be your sponsor. Your mentor could be a sponsor. But usually a sponsor’s role extends beyond offering advice. A sponsor is in a position of power and access that you do not possess. They are able to leverage their own social capital, influence, and resources to help you get where you want to go. A sponsor speaks for your goals even when you’re not in the room, and they take actions that’ll allow you to get there faster.

Sponsor: I see where you are aiming, and will actively lend my resources (time, energetic, and social capital) to advocate on your behalf. “I know what you are after and am willing to support your goals with my words and deeds, especially when you are not in the room.”

In the months following the murder of George Floyd, a lot of companies were very interested in creating sponsorship programs, looking for ways to lend resources to BIPOC⁷ employees and I was aghast by how many told me they had created the sponsorship programs, but it was devoid of content. (Like can you say you have a program when there is no programming? Idk, people be doing a lot of weird stuff to save face). They made a declaration that they had not yet figured out how to fulfill which is only more hilarious because so much of the work we do in coaching is standing for people to fulfill their declarations. But I digress.

It was this work with organizations building out sponsorship programs that helped me articulate the distinctions in these other supportive linguistic modalities (relationship conversations) as I’ve just shared with you here. Notice that each of them are relationships with nuance in their aims and formats. And each has the recipient respond to a different question:

Managing – what do you need to perform?

Mentoring – what wisdom can you glean?

Sponsoring – what resources do you need?

Therapy – what needs to be healed?

Consulting – what can someone else do for you?

Coaching – who do you need to be?

Notice all of them are also specific types of conversations. And within one conversation you may have multiple intersections of these relationships and dialogues present in order to serve the needs of the humans involved.

Also notice that save for therapy, all of these roles and conversations can play out with your coworkers, colleagues, managers and direct reports. And even if we aren’t offering explicit therapy in the workplace, that does not exempt our workplace conversations from being either therapeutic or (ahem) triggering, not to mention all of the emotional labor that goes with that. There’s a lot of healing yet to be done, even when that’s not what we are talking about in the moment.

The one element of the workplace that can truly impede these conversations is the element of power and authority present. One person has something that the other desires (experience, access, authority). It is this power differential that can put the receiver of support in a position that feels disempowered – as though they are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, how to do it, or grant them the opportunity/permission to actualize their desires.

This is also a fundamental difference in coaching. In a coaching relationship, the coach and the coachee relate to each other as equally capable and empowered. This is why in coaching the dialogue is far more socratic than didactic. The goal then becomes not to instruct or direct, but instead, to ask so many questions that the receiver has no choice but to find and voice their own answers.

Two qualities make coaching special. The first is non judgment. The absence of judgment in a relationship empowers this. Coaching is a more creative relationship because when you’re not being judged, it allows curiosity to run rampant. You can explore from a place that is truly safe for you to do so (without fear of retribution or penalty, where you can write a story and no one will tell you that it’s wrong. And you can ask a question and it will always be perfect, never dumb or inappropriate. The other key component of coaching is that there’s accountability present. It’s not just being inspired to take action towards that which you desire. Coaching is designed so that someone is actually standing up for the thing that you said you wanted, continuing to interrogate you to refine what that is, but also to actualize it in your reality. It’s a way to explore who you desire to be, who you could . . . be and then make it so.

I remember when I used to be on social media and thought it was a good place for community. A woman in a womens’ entrepreneurial Facebook group asked about going into coaching and she was wondering if a major in psychology would best prepare her for the role. After a very lengthy response, what I intimated to her was that philosophy is much more aligned with coaching than psychology. If you want to be a therapist, absolutely you should take psychology but coaches deal with ontology, which is the study of being. It’s the study of how we choose to move through the world and what we believe about life.

Coaching is about mastering Socratic dialogue. It is entirely Socratic. Merriam Webster⁸ defines the Socratic Method as the method of inquiry and instruction employed by Socrates especially as represented in the dialogues of Plato and consisting of a series of questionings, the object of which is to elicit a clear and consistent expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings. See? Philosophy.

Coaching is asking someone questions until they explicitly say what they implicitly know to be true . . . about any and everything. No answers. All questions.

So if you are a coach, you probably have a tiny (or a huge) bit of a philosopher living inside you.

My work is all about how communication is the key to unlocking our communal power. When people ask me what are my credentials or background or studies that led me to this work I let them know that I majored in English and Am Lit. Like many 17-year-olds, I picked that major because it was the one subject that I thought I could stand to take 20 courses in⁹ . But the gift of an English major is that nearly my entire undergraduate coursework was focused on literary critical theory and analysis. With every book I read, I was looking at how to read it from at least seven different angles: a socialist lens, a queer lens, a feminist lens, and so when I went to coach training school and discovered this thing called ontology, it became very clear to me that I was already very familiar with this practice. So now when people ask me about how I happened upon this niche of inclusive leadership and communication, I let them know that I went to school to learn how to read books, but now as a coach I spend my time reading people. I spend my time looking for all the different angles and all of the “hidden” context in which someone could experience their own life.

Coaches listen for the implicit belief systems that inform each and every individual’s experience and bring shape to the particular lens through which one views the world, and therefore experiences everything. It’s nuanced. And it’s always intersectional, which is what makes it so beautiful and so unique. And so in a coaching conversation I’m always listening for the context, and then I’m getting really curious about it. And then I am asking as many questions as I can fit into an hour, poking at it. And if I do my job right, by the “end”¹⁰ my clients can articulate explicitly what it is they believe implicitly. And from there, the next question is always, “And what do you want to do about that?” Not because they have been waiting for my permission, but because it is the process of the conversation that reminds them that the permission they seek is from themselves.

Coaching is about reading another person’s unspoken context and asking them to interrogate themselves completely, and then articulate what it means to them fully, and then commit to what they want to do with that explicit knowing in accordance with their own desires for their life.

In this way, coaching is like reading a good book, except it’s more of a Choose Your Own Adventure, based on the questions. The coach is following the client based on how they respond. And the story unfolds, and it’s always the author’s choice. Have you ever thought about that? Choose your own adventure books? You’re participating as the reader, but the author is the only one who knows all of the endings. In coaching, the client is the reader and the author. Which leaves the coach to be the container for the story. The coach is just a blank book serving a creative mind. And that space – that’s what allows a person’s story to unfold, as they write it.

READ: There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk, Quotes from Poem by Portia Nelson

³ “The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing” – Socrates

⁴ This is a word of my own invention inspired by the “situationship” coined by Jada Pinkett Smith in her polyamory exploration. A conversationship is a relationship that is grounded in a distinct type of conversation or narrative style. Examples include coaching, consulting therapy, mentorship and others. Remember, people create words, and then we store them in the dictionary, not vice versa.

⁵This phrasing is brilliant by the way. The idea of giving air to something that you have been holding is brilliant. Sometimes you just need a challenge to breathe so that you can look at it with refreshed energy.

⁶ More on unmet needs coming in later chapters

⁷ This acronym stands for Black, Indigenous and other People of Color it is meant to capture those who identify with ethnicities and races other than white. It may be used interchangeably in his book with PGM, an acronym standing for People of the Global Majority as represented by global statistics about the ethnic makeup of the world population.

⁸ Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Socratic method. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved June 14, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Socratic%20method

⁹ Let’s be real. Most 17-18 year olds have no means to evaluate or decide to what they want to dedicate the rest of their lives

¹⁰ Conversations never truly end as the nature of dialogue is call and response regardless of how long it takes for the response to arrive. In this way every workshop, conversation, or chat always occurs in the middle and is left in the middle, always to be resumed and responded to by different parties at different points in time across human experience.