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Basic Principles

“Remember that existence consists solely in its possibility for relationships.”

—Medard Boss

What is a Human Being?

The heart of my coaching with Bob could be summarized by the quote that opens this chapter. He had to develop new relationships in order to be promoted. The first relationship that had to be addressed was, of course, Bob’s relationship with himself. He had to discover the degree of congruence between the relationship he was having with himself and the relationship others were having with him at work. Lack of congruence here would lead him either to feelings of grandiosity in which he felt superior to everyone and beyond the power of their opinion to affect him, or to feelings that he was inept and unworthy and that anything positive said to him was just people trying to be nice. Clearly, either possibility would not lead to what we were intending in Bob’s coaching.

Besides the relationship with himself, Bob also had to address his relationship with the people who worked around him, especially those who had a say about his promotion. By attending to these relationships, I don’t mean creating a nice warm feeling; rather I mean he had to deeply comprehend the individuals involved, and from that form a profound trust that would almost inevitably lead to his promotion.

In order to understand people, we must begin with some parameters about what a person is. What are we hoping to understand when we say we are trying to do that? Coaching almost always includes an uncoiling and a reconstruction of the client’s notions about being human. In this chapter we begin to take on these topics.

Coaches live in a very different world than other people who are working on improving situations. For example, an auto mechanic who works on Volvos really does not have to be concerned with the individuality of a car that shows up at his garage. Knowing that it will be a 1993 850 Turbo with 37,000 miles is all he really needs to know. Of course, working with human beings is much different. There is not even agreement about what does show up to be coached. Should coaches consider their potential clients to be biocomputers that they need to program, or are they stimulus–response machines that merely need the correct stimulus? Or are they products of historical, political, and economic courses? Or maybe they are a single unit from a complex familial system, or creatures of their own emotional history. If coaches cannot answer the question of what kind of being is showing up to be coached, I wonder how they can prepare themselves. How could the Volvo mechanic in our example prepare if he did not know whether what was going to arrive was a giant clam or a redwood tree or a Trinitron television? That is why it is important to take on the topic of this chapter and make explicit what understanding of human beings is at the basis of our work.

This chapter takes on topics that other texts may not bring up. From my reading it seems that other authors assume that we share a common understanding of these topics or that they’re not worth discussing. My view is that we have to have an explicit theory about human beings since they are the focus, center, and subject of coaching. It’s as if we are attempting to build an edifice without understanding the tensile strength of the steel employed or the insulating properties of the roofing material. Probably we would not place much faith in an architect or building contractor who could not give us the facts about the materials he was working with. It seems to me that there is an exactly parallel situation in coaching. We must understand the essential constitutive particulars of human beings before we can begin to coach. What I’m presenting here is firmly rooted in academic and philosophical traditions and has been proven to be practically useful in application over the last dozen years. The academic references appear at the end of this chapter. This chapter closely follows the work of Medard Boss’s Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology (1983).

The criteria in coaching have been stated several times and I will briefly summarize them here. The answer must be one that allows for people to change, to become more competent, and to become excellent at performance. Any explanation that doesn’t allow for this is by definition excluded, for example, notions that people are fully and finally determined by genetic makeup or by early social influences. Since these notions would make coaching impossible, they are to be rejected out of hand.

The Truth

The American pragmatists James and Dewey have already done a good job of this, as did Rorty in his book Consequences of Pragmatism (1982). My presentation closely follows Rorty. To summarize briefly, people have tried for 3,000 years or so in the West and no one has come up with a universally accepted notion of what is “true.” For those of you who think science has, I refer you to the work of Karl Popper. How could one tell if what one had discovered was true unless one already had an idea of what one was looking for and the criteria for verification? This is a very abbreviated and simplified version of one of Heidegger’s arguments around the issue.

Another difficulty is that the (supposed) answers that have been presented throughout history have so very often increased human suffering, for example, Christian vs. Moslem in the Crusades, the Church vs. heretics in the Inquisition, capitalism vs. communism in the Cold War. It seems through observation that there is no formula, process, procedure, authority, or leader that can wholly solve human concerns or ensure positive outcomes. No doubt you’ve noticed this. Yet we keep looking for it and despair that we haven’t found it, or alternately envy those who supposedly have found it.

How then are we to determine what to do or how to live? My recommendation is that we determine the worth of something based upon its power to alleviate human concern, lessen human suffering, improve how we live together, and free people to take action. When I say human concern and human suffering, this is a shorthand way of saying the concerns that are part of living with and within all the living systems on the planet. Even if we came to a consensus that this is how to determine the worth of something, it still would take a lot of open, respectful conversation in order to determine in each case the course of action to take. With all that as a background, the criteria for answering the question “What is a human being?” in coaching will perhaps make more sense.

As coaches, then, we don’t have to deal with “The Truth,” we can deal with ways of speaking that fulfill the project of coaching. What follows is a way of speaking about human beings that takes all of this into account. The job is not so much to talk about how human beings become what we are, but to be able to speak about how we are now in a way that allows for coaching to occur. The ideas presented are not in order of importance. Human beings are a whole, and no part is dispensable without changing the whole. It’s not possible, though, to say everything at once, so while you read this I suggest that you keep the whole in mind. The quote that began this chapter is the shortest summary of the ideas that follow.

Human Beings as the Possibility for Relating

This section is meant to present an alternative to the usual way we think of people—as a means to an end and/or a collection of fixed properties with desire attached. It’s also my suggestion on how a coach can think about relating to human beings. The mistakes in other books about coaching originate here. The authors don’t explain what they understand a person to be and completely ignore our biological aspects. What are the consequences of this for coaching? Here are some: the more fundamental the distinctions we address, the more radical, creative, and transforming can be the actions we take or design. For example, if we understand how the eye, pigment, and light come together in our seeing of a painting, then we can take quite different actions than if we only understand how to select a frame to fit a particular room. We can go further and question, “What is painting?” and “What is art?” The works of DuChamp, Neuman, Pollack, Picasso, and so on follow such questions. This leads to different possible actions and designs than asking, “How can I paint the face of my patron on the body of St. Jerome in this painting?” See much of the art in European museums for endless examples of what follows from this type of questioning. In your coaching, are you merely putting a frame on what’s been presented to you, having your clients fit in or find a place where they won’t disturb many people? Or are you asking and then acting/designing from fundamental principles?

Another way to approach the question “What is a human being?” is to decide if it is an ontological or epistemological issue. That is to say, are humans a being like any other in the world, differentiated from chairs, stars, or frogs only by properties such as chemical makeup, weight, height, and so on that constitute each? Or do humans exist in a way unique to them—a way that cannot be comprehended by a listing of properties, however long the list? Can a listing of properties add up to human existence and account for all that is experienced and created by human beings? Along with Heidegger and many others, I’ve decided that humans exist in a different way from other phenomena. This section sets forth an ontological view of people that, it seems to me, captures more of our human experience and opens up more possibilities for coaching. Perhaps you come down on the other side and consider the question an epistemological one (e.g., humans are like chairs except that they have X property). Are you confident of your list of properties? Where did it come from? What consequences will result from considering others and yourself in this way? Who gets to add or subtract from the list of properties? And what consequences does that have ethically and politically?

If you’re asking where is the empirical research to verify all of this, the answer is that there is none. The more profound questions are perhaps “Why do you claim that empirical research, based upon the formulations of Bacon, Descartes, and Newton, has something useful to say about the individual human being in front of you?” and “Are humans the kind of being that follows the laws of science, developed by studying objects?” If we look at people as subject to the same laws as objects, what do we see? Does what we see further or inhibit coaching? Can we escape by using empirical methods, building a relationship, and knowing our client well? I say no, although some U.S. physicians have tried. Can we learn about general patterns of orientation, stages of maturation, and generalized symptoms of distress by systematically studying large numbers of people? I say we can. What have you discovered?

Human beings enter into relationships with everything that we encounter. We don’t have a choice about this. Any phenomenon that we meet in our world appears to us as “something.” We relate immediately with this something. We prereflexively interact with the phenomenon, even if the way we interact is to ignore it. All this is said in a different way in the next section on language. What I’m attempting to say here is that our capacity for relating is a constitutive part to the kind of being that we are. Clearly, some of us are more open than others and some people have been so physically or emotionally damaged that the capacity for relating is nearly extinct. We do consider these people to be human beings, however, and many times we continue to speak with them as if their capacity to relate is undiminished. Once someone’s capacity to be open is fully diminished, we often call this person a “vegetable.” This way of being with other humans is our way of showing our understanding of what a human being is. Probably what we are most open to is being with other human beings. In fact, it’s probably impossible for there to be any such phenomenon as a single human being; that is to say, that it’s only by being raised in a human community that we become human beings. The many stories in literature about babies being raised by wolves or monkeys attest to this.

Each of us, having been raised in a human community, is by two years of age already a member of the language community. We already are able to make distinctions that separate something from everything else. We can do this before we are able to speak. This relating with language, once it begins, is always with us; even our thoughts are part of the horizon of possibilities that language provides for us. As a member of the language community, we also learn how to relate to other human beings, what’s important, and how to act.

Language and Time

Once we are in the language community, we are also immediately in time. It’s always the case that we are fulfilling what was begun in the past by taking action in the present to bring about an outcome in the future. In a way, this may be unique to human beings; we exist simultaneously in these three openings in time. Perhaps you’ve noticed that different cultures seem to emphasize different openings: in some cases, the emphasis is on tradition, in other cases, the emphasis is on the progress that is a valued part of the future. Each of us in our own way exists more in one of these openings than the others. But once we speak a language that has the possibility of past, present, and future, we cannot escape existing in some way in all three openings.

This may seem like an obvious point, but it’s a vital one in coaching, because a coach is never able to begin coaching at the real beginning. The coach always begins in the middle. And the outcomes specified in any coaching program are, in some sense, arbitrary, because once something begins it always exists in some form. As human beings, we will always relate to something once we have encountered it.

Language is also what allows us to move through these openings in time, emphasizing one opening at one moment and another at another moment, but still including other people in our world. Including others is a funny way of saying it, because our world is never void of other people, even when they’re not physically present. The effect of our relationships always shapes the way we see our world and the actions we take. Anyone who has traveled or been separated from his family knows that physical distance does not necessarily diminish the presence of people who are always close to us. This capacity for being close to human beings and other phenomena, regardless of physical distance, is also important for coaches to remember in learning to understand clients.

Mood

At any given moment, we are not only open, we are open in a particular way. The way that we are open is called mood. For most of us, mood means something like the emotion a person is feeling. I mean something that includes this, but also goes beyond. Mood describes what we are open to encountering, our view of the future, and the distance we put between ourselves and the other people, events, and circumstances in our life. We can see this most readily, for example, when people are “in love,” probably one of the most intoxicating moods. A person who is in love is close to his beloved even when in the midst of other activities, at a great distance from the beloved, or in a crowd of other people. A mood of resentment is, in a way, the opposite, because it keeps at a distance everything we encounter, even when it is in close physical proximity.

Perhaps the most important element of any coaching program is the extent to which the program affects the mood of the client. Initially, of course, the coach must find a way of speaking to the client so that she is open to coaching. In order to accomplish this, the coach has to take into account the mood of the client—that is, to discern what the client is open to, what she is closed to, what the client is holding close, and what she is keeping at a distance. Studying the circumstances will not tell us this; we can only tell this by studying the client and speaking with the client.

The Human Body

We have not yet spoken about the most obvious component of human beings, and that is that every human being has a human body. I’ve been assuming in all this discussion that a person has a body that functions well enough so that he is able to interact with the phenomena that he encounters with the full range of human possibilities. A body must have an intact nervous system in order for this to happen. As Helen Keller, Stephen Hawking, and Christy Brown have shown us, with a nervous system intact, almost all other human activities are possible in some way.

Our body, though, is not only a collection of chemicals arranged into a sophisticated system. Our body is also the way we are in the world, and our body will at each moment tell us how open or closed we are and what is the real nature of our concern. Sometimes we try to deny this or ignore it, as when we are meeting someone who is very important to us and our body is responding with a racing heart, while we are pretending to be cool or distant. At other times, our body will be tired and heavy in a way that we cannot explain at first, but upon reflection we discover that we have lost touch with someone important to us or have lost out on a chance to make something important to us happen.

Our body doesn’t, in a sense, end at the end of our skin, because, as I said earlier, what is close to us is not necessarily what is next to us physically. So our body extends to wherever and to whenever our concern exists. If you’ve ever been with a homesick child or someone who is missing his beloved, you will have noticed the effect this has on his body. Physicians who attempt to cure people as if their bodies were only collections of bones, muscles, and chemicals often have a very difficult time healing them. You may have noticed this in your own experience with doctors, when it seems as if they are speaking about your body or a part of your body as if it were a separate and distinct object existing outside of your life. No real healing can occur in this way of understanding the body.

Many therapeutic modalities have focused on the human body as a locus of transformation. Here is a representative listing. Hatha yoga is the most ancient of these (Iyengar, 1966). Postures and breathing exercises have brought strength, balance, and serenity to practitioners for centuries. Yoga can frequently be a useful adjunct to coaching programs, especially for clients who are experientially distant from their body and emotions. The work of William Reich was directed at including the body as both a symbolic representation and container of neurotic patterns. Alexander Lowen brought Reich’s work to a wider, nonprofessional audience through his writing and teaching (see Bibliography). Ida Rolf established a school of bodyworkers who assist clients to greater physical and emotional ease through a series of sessions in which the body is realigned in gravity and patterns of chronic holding are released. A coach’s familiarity with these and other methods will be of great assistance in designing coaching programs that can include referring a client to the appropriate practitioners. Reading the texts cited will give the coach a better idea of when such a referral makes sense.

Death

Clearly, this discussion could go on and on. However, there is only one more topic that I will address at this point, and that is our relationship with death. Once we find out about death, which we usually do within the first five years of our life, we always thereafter have a relationship with death. Death is the certain ending of the form of relationships we have now. None of us escape, although many of us live as if we will. In fact, many of us lead lives designed to keep us distracted from death. Even our customs of dealing with dead people—for example, putting makeup and new clothing on dead bodies so that they look alive, and sending people to the hospital to die—are ways of attempting to deny, avoid, or keep distracted from this inevitable outcome.

The point in honestly confronting death is not that we become depressed or resigned, rather it’s only in such an authentic encounter that we have a chance to really prioritize life. It’s only in looking at our lives from the end that we can begin to determine what’s really important for us and what is only distraction or waste. The sooner we begin to see life in this light, the better, because at the end of your life it will be too late. There is probably nothing more painful than being with people as they experience remorse, guilt, and regret at the end of their lives because of what they did not fulfill as they encountered it. The illusions that we will “get to it later,” or that we’re “only doing this for a brief time,” or our various other distraction strategies keep us from fulfilling the relationships that present themselves to us in our world.

As I said in the beginning, it’s only by taking all of this as a whole that my response to the chapter’s question can be made sensible. All of what I have said above are fundamental aspects of what it is to be a human being; none of them can be excluded. By keeping all of this in mind, we are able to successfully coach people and work with them beyond the short-term fix or the clever technique.

As you read this you may have caught on to the fact that asking the question “What is a human being?” is equivalent to asking the question “Who am I?” In what ways are you open to what is being said here? In what ways are you open to life? By asking these questions, we can keep ourselves awake as coaches and can avoid the hindrances to coaching that were spoken about in the section “What Is Coaching?”

In applying what has been said in this chapter to Bob’s situation, there are several preliminary points. First of all, he had to embrace a pragmatic approach to his situation, which implied that he had to let go of his perfectionist tendencies that led to his dismissing others and denigrating himself. Second, he had to catch on to and live from the notion that the principles of relating were going to determine what was possible at his job. Third, by remembering his own mortality, Bob could bring some perspective to his work so that issues could take on their proper level of importance.

Of course, it is one thing to list these aspects and it is quite another matter to live from them in a moment-to-moment, day-to-day, year-to-year way. That’s where coaching comes in and that is its job. The next section of the book presents some of the distinctions that Bob used in order to get to work on some of the insights he was having from our conversations about relationship. The topics are presented here in a more rigorous way than I did in speaking with Bob, so that you can adapt them to your own individual circumstances.

Language, Observation, and Assessment

Language

Given that some of the best philosophical minds of the twentieth century— Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Habermas, Gadamer, and Searle among others—have written extensively about language and have not produced a consensus among their readers, it may sound presumptuous for me to address the same topic. Nonetheless, language is an essential part of coaching and, in fact, it could be said that the essential job of the coach is to provide a new language for the client. Consequently, I will attempt here to provide enough background about what I mean when I say “language” to both make it easier for you to coach and to allow you to make greater sense of what follows.

Many people consider language to be a tool that they use in order to get things done. This seems to me to be too narrow an understanding of language. Isn’t it language, existing before any of us, that provides what it is possible to do, what is worth doing, how we can observe whether we did something, and so on? So, along with Heidegger, I would say that language uses us, in the sense that language provides for us the horizon of possible actions, experiences, relationships, and meanings. Those of you who speak languages other than English know that each language provides all of these possibilities in a way that is unique to that language. By thinking about this for a while, you may be able to see the importance of language in coaching: if language provides the horizons described above, then the biggest new possibility that a coach can provide for a client is in language.

Many times when people think about language, they only consider public, verbal communication. Clearly this is only half of the story, since speaking without listening is not only nonsensical but also impossible, because even as speakers we are always listening. Many of the points that I’m making here may raise objections; however, if you will stop and study your own relationship with language for a while within the distinctions we’ve already made, no doubt you will observe what I have been speaking about.

Since this is not a book about the philosophy of language, I want to narrow the focus and make a few particular points about language and coaching. Language is an orientation to our common world. Watch how mothers interact with their infant children. They name many of the objects and people that the child is close to and, by nearly endless repetition and the maturation of the child’s nervous system, eventually the child is oriented to the world that is made by the language the mother speaks. The same thing happens to us as adults when we visit a foreign country or take a job in an industry that is unfamiliar to us. We become oriented, that is, we become able to act effectively within that country or industry, when we learn the language particular to that place. In addition, language is what allows us to coordinate our actions with others. I don’t know how it would be possible to meet someone for lunch at a particular place at a particular time unless we were able to make requests or promises. This is so pervasive in our everyday life that many times we forget that our competence in coordinating actions essentially has to do with our competence in speaking and listening.

The authors mentioned earlier do not even agree on a definition of language—many of them would claim that there is no possibility of a definition, or of defining any single word. What then are we talking about when we say “language”? Martin Heidegger (1971) said that the best he could do was point to a path that might be the way to language. Searle (1969) works hard to take the mystery out, but does he work deep enough to adequately address Heidegger? Many professional philosophers say no (Kockelmans, 1972). Others claim that his views are useless and irrelevant.

What can the nonprofessional philosopher make of all this and why should we care? Well, it seems to me that Wittgenstein (1953) got it right when he said that language exists as a type of game that exists and makes sense only in the context of the world created by speakers of the language. This seems self-evident to me. French speakers, for example, construct and inhabit a world that I cannot enter until I speak French. The worlds of science, computers, and mathematics are similarly constructed by speakers of particular languages. If you accept what I’m proposing here, then much can follow in terms of being a student of language as a way to comprehend and design our world. In terms of coaching, here are some questions that a student of language might ask: “What is revealed or concealed to my client in the language she speaks?” “What possibilities or experiences are unavailable to my client in the language world he lives in, and what can I do about that?” Coaches only speak to clients. Even when a coach is silently demonstrating an action, she is making distinctions that are only possible because of the shared language world of client and coach. Imagine a piano teacher demonstrating an intricate fingering pattern in the air to an eager, experienced student. The student can observe the patterns and progressions and perhaps even hear the music, because she is a speaker of musical language. A nonspeaker of musical language might observe the same finger movements and see them as imaginary keys being struck on a typewriter, and try to figure out what words are being spelled, or as an unusually complicated way to dry nails wet with polish.

Upon reflection, it seems impossible to escape the conclusion that we observe in and only because of language. Provide new language, plus the chance by practice to have the language become part of us, and new observations, new actions, and a new world will inevitably follow. That’s the importance of language to coaching.

Two other aspects of language are essential for coaching. First is that language allows us to design our world. Yes, it’s a fact that each of us is born at a particular historical moment into a particular culture and family. At the same time it is possible for us to not only bring a different meaning to the circumstances into which we were born but also to bring about a different set of activities, relationships, and outcomes by our capacity to skillfully deal with language.

This is the key to dealing with a sense of powerlessness in both personal and political realms. For example, probably the best way to coach someone who is in a mood of resentment is to teach him how to make effective requests. A corollary is that, in language, we can establish a public identity that may be different from the one that accrues to us from historic circumstance. Probably the clearest examples of this are in the work of artists who, by being able to say something more cogently than their contemporaries, were able to influence the future course of their discipline even though historic circumstances did not give them a prestigious place in their society (e.g., Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and James Joyce).

Observation

Language forms the basis for observation and it is, in fact, not possible to make any observations outside of language. If the purpose of coaching is to change behavior, then the coach’s mission is to find what affects behavior in a way that will bring about the desired change. Figure 1.3 shows that behavior follows from the structure of interpretation of the client. This means that the way we see the world at a particular moment determines the actions we take. This is such an obvious point that many times it’s invisible to us. We walk into a building that we recognize as a restaurant and we immediately do the series of routine actions that we consider to be consistent with being in a restaurant. We discern whether to seat ourselves or wait to be seated, we look for someone to give our food order to, and so on. We wouldn’t take any of these actions if the same structure appeared to us to be a hardware store, ballet studio, gymnasium, or tennis court.

My point is that it’s not only the physical surroundings that lead us to take the actions that we do, it’s also the meaning that we bring to those surroundings. Even in the restaurant example, we would take different actions if we were employees of the restaurant or vendors selling supplies. The structure of interpretation as shown above then includes the commitments, projects, and relationships that make up the world of the observer, as well as the environment in which the observer finds himself.

To recapitulate an earlier point, a coach is able to alter the structure of interpretation of the client by providing new distinctions and practices that become permanently part of the client’s structure of interpretation, for example, interns learning the symptoms for appendicitis, drivers learning to look left before driving through an intersection. Thus it is that the client, after being coached, takes new action because she is able to observe something that she was not able to observe before. Once this observation becomes part of the structure of interpretation of the client, the client is able to be independent of the coach and is able to respond to all similar situations in the future without need for the coach.

Another way of saying this is that a coach has to be able to make the client’s own structure of interpretation explicit and accessible to the client, or at least that part of the structure that will allow for the client to make observations that will lead to the successful completion of the coaching program. To do this, the coach has to be able to observe the way that the client observes and be able to articulate this so that it can be observed by the client. This is what makes a coach distinct from a good performer only. This is also why coaches themselves don’t have to be able to perform the action being observed.

A point that may be obvious already from this discussion, but that I want to point out anyway, is that observation is always according to someone, that is, it’s not just a reporting of “what’s really there.” We find this out every day when we ask people the simple question, “What happened?” and hear different reports from people who are speaking about the same event, and even hear different reports from the same person about the same event when they’re speaking about it at a different moment.

What makes one observation better than another, at least in terms of coaching, is that by observing it in a particular way, that is, in the particular way that we are presenting it as the coach, the client is freed to take action. Many times our coaching efforts fail when, instead, the client makes observations as a result of our coaching that lead to explanations that make action impossible. Sometimes, for example, in explaining the intricacies of a piece of Chopin music, the coach may so intimidate the would-be pianist that he never even attempts to play the piece, or never begins a practice that will enable him to play it in the future. Maybe the coach does this to impress the client with how much the coach knows, but this approach very often fails even though the coach was accurate, truthful, and comprehensive in her observation.

Assessment

While it is the case that observation is always according to someone, in coaching observations are always made within a tradition that provides distinctions and standards. It’s at this point that observation can begin to be spoken about as assessment. In coaching, assessment must precede the formal coaching process, because the coach’s providing of distinctions and practices must be suitable for the individual client. Although beginners must learn the basics, for example, how to play scales or how to shoot free throws, excellence in coaching always comes from an adaptation of standard procedures and practices to suit the individual client.

The initial, largest, and most challenging part of assessment is the coach’s attempt to understand the structure of interpretation of the client. Sometimes this appears as such a gigantic project that people dismiss it as undoable, or use it as a reason not to start coaching at all. This is the wrong way to understand assessment in coaching, because it leads to no action. It’s the same as the piano teacher explaining the extreme complexity of the Chopin piece. Instead of trying to recreate the whole world of a person on one’s first outing as a coach, it’s probably better to determine what part of the structure of interpretation of the client is relevant to the coaching effort and to focus on that. Being coached ourselves by experienced people and the use of relevant models is essential in these initial coaching endeavors. As the coach becomes more experienced, it is possible to understand the client in more and more dimensions, therefore leading to more sophisticated, subtle, and customized coaching programs. A chapter on assessment and assessment models follows (see Chapter 6).

The other aspect of assessment has to do with assessing the level of competence or, in some cases, the presence of a quality in a client. This, like all assessments, is based upon observation of the client either as the client goes through normal routines or in specially designed exercises that reveal levels of competence. A good example of this kind of exercise is when, during the first meeting with a tennis or golf coach, the coach asks to play a game of tennis or a round of golf with the new client.

Probably the most difficult part of assessment is the verification of its validity. How do we know that the assessment is more than just our own prejudices or projections on the client? The way to verify assessment is ultimately, of course, in the success of the coaching program itself, but before that there are some tests that the coach can apply (some of this is a summary of what’s already been said):

• Is the assessment being made with distinctions that are part of a tradition?
• Is the assessment based upon observations that can be made by any competent observer, and is the coach able to cite particular instances of the observation?
• Can the coach accurately predict future action the client will take based upon the current assessment, or can the coach say what action the client is taking in other unobserved domains based upon the assessment?
• Does the assessment show life to the client in a way that the client wasn’table to see it before?
• Does the assessment allow both the client and the coach to synthesize many of the observations of the coach and to make sense of many of the actions of the client?
• Does the assessment free the client to take action — that is, does it do more than merely describe something?

By now, you probably understand why language, observation, and assessment are being addressed simultaneously. They are inseparable; none ever occurs without the others. Whenever we make an observation or even use a particular word, there is always some level of assessment as part of its meaning. The coach has to be very rigorous in the use of language; that is, he has to be precise, consistent, and grounded in the way he speaks and listens to the client. This is the essential competence in coaching and it is what will allow coaching to occur.

My coaching program with Bob had two main parts. Part one was our one-to-one conversations and the part two was the work that Bob did on his own. The latter work was obviously more important because that is what would continue after our coaching ended. In order to work with himself and realize the products of coaching, Bob had to become a more acute observer and a more grounded assessor, which meant he had to learn a language that would allow him to make new observations and assessments. Practically, it meant that I sent Bob out at the end of each of our sessions together with a self-observation exercise.

A self-observation exercise is a precisely defined set of observations that a client performs over a period of time. The point of the exercise is to free up the client to take up new action, provide grounded assessments for decision making, and provide some power in intervening with recurring patterns of behavior. Many examples of self-observations appear at the end of this book.

Suggested Reading

The listed books are challenging, so be patient as you read. After studying several of them you’ll likely appreciate the topic of language and its relevance to coaching in a deeper way.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Translated by David E. Linge, ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976.

A student of Heidegger explains, clarifies, and expands many themes of his teacher’s work. Sheds much light on how we understand each other and our world.

Gergen, Kenneth J. Realities and Relationships. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

A gateway book to a powerful generative discourse—social constructionism. The astounding author shows the philosophical foundations, answers objections and demonstrates the amazing power of narrative. Strongest recommendation.

Heidegger, Martin. On the Way to Language. Translated by Peter D. Hertz. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1971.

Heidegger’s poetic and metaphysical essays on the nature of language. Very rigorous. Somehow opens the reader up to the possibility of what language is without defining or limitation. A book of wonder and mystery. Worth many readings.

Johnson, Mark, and George Lakoff. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Change the metaphor and change forever the worldview; for example, what if time weren’t really money?

Kockelmans, Joseph J. On Heidegger and Language. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

A collection of essays exploring the impact of Heidegger’s work on many aspects of contemporary thought. More accessible than Heidegger’s own books.

Lakoff, George. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

The way language provides what’s possible for us to be, to feel, and to do.

Lakoff, George. Moral Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Reveals through rigorous writing and though the linguistic cognitive foundations for U.S. ethics, politics, values, religion, and child rearing. Resolves paradoxes. Dispatches enigmas. Forever shifts the way one observes U.S. culture. Seminal.

Rosenberg, Ph. D., Marshall B. Nonviolent Communication. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press, 2003.

Miraculously blends realism, courage, and compassion into a fully developed method for conducting conversations that respects everyone involved without compromising authenticity or integrity. Shifts the reader with every chapter.

Scott, Susan. Fierce Conversations. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 2002.

Encouraging, pragmatic structures for conducting essential conversations. Engaging, full of stories and examples.

Searle, John R. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

A presentation (in a fairly dense philosophical style) of the basic moves possible in language.

Sieler, Alan. Coaching to the Human Soul. Blackburn, Victoria, Australia: Newfield Australia, 2003.

Not a religious or spiritual take on coaching but the first published version of speech act theory that Fernando Flores (a student of Searle and Maturana) brought to the world. Many references to the roots of the philosophy of language. Useful reference text.

Stone, Douglas, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. Difficult Conversations. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

A thorough presentation of the obstacles that so often make conversations challenging. And a proved methodology for preparing ourselves and guiding the conversation to mutually satisfying conclusions.