Rudy Vandamme

ph.d.

Rudy Vandamme ph.d.

CoaChing handbook for Professionals

powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

self-guidance

project

identity

co

nteXt

greater whole

Rudy Vandamme Ph.d.

CoaChing handbook for Professionals

Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

Rudy VandammeCoaching Handbook for Professionals

© Rudy Vandamme, 2015First Edition, published by Coaching&co, 2015

ISBN: 9789490384081 NUR: 130

Author: Rudy VandammeBook design: Prezns, Marco BolsenbroekIllustrations: Prezns, Marco Bolsenbroek

Copyright © 2015 Rudy VandammeAll Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, re-cording or otherwise – without prior written permission.

Publisher: Coaching&Co bvbaPaul Fredericqstraat 65B-9000 GentBelgium (Europe)

www.coachingforprofessionals.netemail: info@coachingforprofessionals.net

webshop: www.coachingbooks.net

‘ Making intentional choices about how you help others through con-versations will significantly increase your role in making the world a better place.’(C.J. Hayden, 50 ways coaches can change the world)

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Content

Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Two characteristics of any coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Upgrade to a development-oriented approach to coaching . . . . . . . . . 20A case to illustrate the development-oriented approach . . . . . . . . . . . 26Who am I? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30The underlying worldview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32A new definition of development through the life span . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Who is this book for? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Study guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 1 Raise awareness through dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 1. Collaborative inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 2. A zone of proximal development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3. An authentic encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter 2Overview of the Fork Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 1. The model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 2. Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3. Self-guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 4. Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 5. Greater whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 6. The recipe for development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7. Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 8. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

8 Content

Chapter 3Achieving result through a project-based approach . . . . . . 109 1. The project-based approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 2. Seven steps for structuring a goal-oriented plan . . . . . . 114 3. Project types and their contributions to development . . 133 4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Chapter 4Improving self-guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 1. The concept of self-guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 2. A five level competency model of self-guidance . . . . . . 149 3. Six ways for assessing the skill of self-guidance during a conversation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 4. Methods to improve self-guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 5. The link between self-guidance and identity . . . . . . . . . 185 6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Chapter 5Defining identity development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 1. The concept of identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 2. Six methods for structuring identity development . . . . 197 3. Connecting identity construction to other tracks of development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Chapter 6Participating in greater wholes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 1. The concept of the greater whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 2. Eleven ways to define the greater whole . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 3. Two steps in activating ownership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 4. Envision the development process of the greater whole . 269 5. Four ways to give form to participative identity . . . . . . . 274 6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

9Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

Chapter 7Putting into practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 1. Coaching agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 2. Intake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 3. Three types of coaching trajectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 4. Four guidelines for expert professionals . . . . . . . . . . . . 302

Exit: the Fork Model for the professional coaches . . . . . . . . . . . 315

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321Appendix 1: questions for each track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321Appendix 2: Accelerated by the Fork Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324Appendix 3: As a coach, are you working in

a development-oriented way? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325Appendix 4: am I approaching life in

a development-oriented way? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329Appendix 5: what is your mission as a coach? . . . . . . . . . . . . 330Appendix 6: What is the historical significance

of coaching? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

10 Content

11Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

results

problem

solution

development

development-oriented coaching

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Introduction

Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

18 Introduction

A fter more than twenty years of development, coaching has tak-en many forms1 . It ranges from a friendly way of advising to a highly sophisticated guidance . In the latter case one has to be qualified, in the former anybody can call himself a coach . In between there are helping professionals who are adding some coaching skills and a coaching attitude into their work . There are also specialisations like sales coaching, executive coaching, life coaching, ADHD coaching, etc . Sometimes these speciali-sations are based on approaches like appreciative inquiry, so-lution focused, gestalt or NLP .

In this whole spectrum I was looking for a way of coaching that combines different elements I value. I was inspired by the American idea of being creative and goal-oriented. But, due to my European roots and my background in humanistic psychol-ogy, I am also drawn to looking to my clients’ search for mean-ing. Identity, personal values and life stories are important elements to make the work more rounded. Over the last ten years I have also wanted to add the importance of the bigger picture, the ecological and the religious dimension of being hu-man. Individual clients are embedded in a context, a society and a world. We are all, consciously or subconsciously, part of a his-torical and cultural development. As a philosopher and anthro-pologist, I reflect on what kind of coaching is worth promoting.

1 Brock, V. (2012). Sourcebook of Coaching History. Brock Publisher. Wildflower, L. (2013). The hidden history of coaching (Coaching in practice). Berkshire: The Open University Press.

19Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

Over the years, I have joined all those jigsaw pieces togeth-er and turned them into an approach, which I call a develop-ment-oriented approach’ in guiding others. I call it short ‘development-oriented coaching’. Please remember when I write ‘development-oriented coaching’ that I indicate a devel-opment-oriented approach to a form of guiding others. The patterns and ambition of being development-oriented can be used by any professional, leader, teacher, heath care profes-sional, and so on. You even don’t have to call yourself a coach. I am concerned about those development-oriented patterns we all can start using when we help others through conversations. Therefore being ‘development-oriented’ can be the adjective to characterise a professional activity, like ‘development-oriented outplacement’, ‘development-oriented healthcare’, etc.

Applied to coaching, I don’t see ‘development-oriented coach-ing’ as a specialism, but rather as an upgrade of existing ways of how we conceive coaching. Coaching is still the umbrella under which I want to situate this approach because the idea behind coaching fits very well with the focus on development, namely its creative, formative quality. In the next section I will explain the two main characteristics of any coaching approach.

Two characteristics of any coaching

Firstly, coaching is goal-oriented. It is based in the idea that hu-mans are not only problem solvers. Humans have the capacity to dream and to formulate goals. That capacity is quite recent in evolutionary history. Many people are still conditioned to ap-proach life issues as if these are problems. Only special types of persons are more inclined to work with a creative attitude: artists, entrepreneurs, designers, writers, athletes and students. They are not motivated to get rid of a problem; they are attract-ed to building new realities.

20 Introduction

The fact that coaching entered our society is a sign that many people want to be more goal-oriented, creative, and innovative. In the beginning of the twentieth century coaching was applied in the English tutoring system in order to succeed in exams, then it was applied in sport. In the last two decades it has been applied to all aspects of life. Embracing coaching is accepting that life is not a problem to be fixed, but an opportunity to create.

Secondly, coaching works within a frame of self-responsibil-ity. Coaching is all about sustaining the capacity of the client to think and guide himself. A coach stands at the sidelines. He is not taking over the responsibility to achieve something or to solve a problem. The coach has a conversation with the client in order to support him and help him to deal with his issue or to reach a goal.

This idea implies that the client has a limited capacity to guide or manage himself. The coach provides the art of giving that extra support in order for the client to reach his goal. He is not taking it over, like many specialists and therapists do or have to do. When counsellors, therapists, or advisors add coaching, it is because they want the client to participate.

Because of these two characteristics coaching belongs to the same family as its siblings: tutoring, mentoring, consulting and guiding rather than the family of counselling, psychotherapy or psychiatry. Coaching becomes more and more a general idea of support in a warm atmosphere, dealing with the client’s issues in a constructive goal-oriented educative way.

Upgrade to a development-oriented approach to coaching

The professional working in a development-oriented frame-work shares the basic intention of coaching but takes it a step further.

21Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

First and foremost, the development-oriented coach uses a spe-cial kind of dialogue. In contrast to merely listening or boldly advising, this professional knows how to pace and lead in order to stimulate progress and development. He creates what Vygot-sky2 calls a zone of proximal development. It is a safe space in which a leap of progress can occur. The coach not only helps the client, he also adds elements like co-creation, awareness-raising ideas about life, and reciprocity. By doing so, this kind of coach fulfils his own mission: his emancipatory role in how people view their challenges. In chapter 1 I will elaborate on this kind of dialogue.

Secondly, a development-oriented coach will frame issues and goals within the bigger scope of a person’s identity, his life nar-rative, as well as in the greater wholes in which he participates. Issues are put in perspective. Happiness, a sense of purpose, self-development, and belonging are as important as achiev-ing success or solving problems. Human activities have to be meaningful to contribute to lasting progress. The greatest sat-isfaction for a development-oriented coach is to see that results of goal-oriented behaviour contribute to inner peace and a deeper sense of harmony with oneself and one’s environment. That’s why I often call this approach ‘development-friendly’. It is kind to life. What the development-oriented approach adds to coaching is exactly the way progress is conceived.

To make this approach tangible I designed a model, the Fork Model. This model helps to situate an issue or goal-oriented project in different layers of existence. Chapter 2 will give an overview of the Fork model and the next four chapters will be dealing with the four different tracks.

2 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind and Society. The development of higher psychological processes. London: Harvard University Press.

22 Introduction

Let’s resume the argument. Coaching is often understood as as-sisting a person to achieve a result. Coaching then is guiding somebody along the pathway towards a goal. Coaching tends to become a conversation about actions, brainstorming of actions, reflection on actions, and activating resources like the GROW3 model explains. Many coaches understand already that it is not possible to coach somebody if that person’s values, beliefs and identity are not involved. Moreover, more recently profession-als started to see that a person has to be put into his context. A person’s desires and experiences are part of a greater whole to which that person belongs and by which he is influenced.

I support the idea that any goal only finds its meaning if it is situated in identity development. The basic tenet of the devel-opment-oriented approach is that everything that happens to a client is part of a process of becoming a whole person aligned with greater wholes. If people want meaningful and lasting progress we need to place goal-oriented project and problem solving actions within the framework of this larger existential phenomenon of unfolding identity. Boldly said, the develop-

3 Whitmore, J. (2009). Coaching for performance: GROWing human potential and purpose: the principles and practice of coaching and leadership. People skills for professionals. Boston: Nicholas Brealey.

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23Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

ment-oriented approach in guidance situates goal-oriented ac-tion and problem solving into the bigger frame of contextual situated identity development.

I reject the interpretation that talking about your inner psycho-dynamics is counselling or therapy. The difference between coaching and these professions is the severity of the issue and the inability of the client to cope with it. From the moment a client demonstrates a sound level of self-guidance in his life, a professional can choose to coach that person. Coaching in this case means collaborating with the client, dialoguing, and treat-ing him as a competent adult who can use your expert knowl-edge in order to deal with problems or to heal himself. We all have to learn to see life issues as a chance for development. De-velopment through the lifespan and our contextual embedded-ness is part of life, in the same way that we eat and drink every day.

A big part of my passion for the development-oriented ap-proach is to deproblematise life issues. Life is an opportunity and life events are nourishment for development.

I also reject the interpretation that talking about the greater whole is only suitable for clients with existential crises, religious people, or social activists – those who want to put the world to rights. We all have our wholes in which we play a systemic role. Moreover, society urgently needs individuals who take respon-sibility for the well-being of the world. This approach is suited to professionals who agree that society is not something out-side the practice, but an aspect of each individual life. The client is in fact seen as a cultural creative4, someone who has the po-tential to contribute to a change in society by changing his own life style.

4 Ray, P. & Anderson, S. (2001). Cultural Creatives. NY: Three River Press.

24 Introduction

Finally I reject the idea that if you are a healthcare professional, teacher, or consultant, you have to stick to your expertise. Ex-pertise doesn’t have to be discarded though. On the contrary. The point is that applying expert knowledge becomes more efficient within the context of developing the whole person. Moreover, by integrating identity development, self-guidance, and participation into your framework, your work becomes more meaningful. Satisfying clients becomes part of a bigger endeavour to contribute with your professional work to the de-velopment of the wholes to which your clients belong.

Ultimately my passion for the development-oriented approach is to see our clients as well as ourselves as cultural creatives who have the power to change the structure and culture in which we live. Issues and requests for help may initially prompt the encounter but then serve as a stepping stone to adventure into personal and societal change.

During years of practice I navigated between all the pitfalls of helping patterns, be it the passive client-centred listening atti-tude, the teacher-like ‘this is how it should be done’, labelling clients, taking over responsibility, therapeutising the inner life, hoping to solve something, working in a too action-oriented way, or helping too much. At the intersection of all these pat-terns emerges a new kind of guidance. It is still helping some-body but it is enriched with an educative role, a reciprocal encounter, empowering, emancipation, and awareness-raising questions. They all lead to powerful conversations, which are transformative.

The new paradigm for helping people by means of conversa-tions, is a combination of many elements borrowed from dif-ferent fields such as teaching, spiritual awakening, therapeutic methods and social change. This approach seems sophisticated, but so are our lives and so is our world. I followed Einstein’s ada-gio to make a problem ‘as simple as possible, but not simpler’.

25Coaching Handbook for Professionals | Powerful conversations to structure meaningful progress

I realise that it is nothing more than a paradigm shift in how we conceive helping other people.

To conclude, I would define the development-oriented ap-proach to coaching as follows:

A development-oriented way of guiding people is using a safe but challenging dialogue to stimulate progression in all aspects of development, namely goal-oriented action, enhanced skills of self-guidance, identity development through the life span, and participation in greater wholes.

This definition is translated throughout the book into two core competencies of the development-oriented coach: a stimulat-ing dialogue and structuring progression with the Fork Model.

The development-oriented approach can be the core com-petence of a coach, but it can also be added to any profession: teachers, healthcare professionals, consultants, advisors, lead-ers, and so on. In that case your expert knowledge and in-terventions are a contribution to the holistic and inclusive development of your client.

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