What is Psychological coaching?
Empowering individuals to bring awareness to their hidden resources and surpass their limitations to fulfil their goals.
How does Psychodynamic coaching work?
Most coaching approaches are classified as goal or solution focused. The client is guided to identify their goals and pursue them in a linear fashion. Whilst this may have some benefit, it doesn’t consider the complex environments and situations the client experience daily. This approach restricts their ability to explore, understand and redefine their strategy as emotional issues emerge.
As children we thought and acted on our emotional impulses, however, as we grew older, we were taught to act rationally. Emotions were consigned as distractions that impeded our development and progress. Traditional coaching approaches operate on a conscious level disregarding our genetic survival instinct, the flight or fight response state, an emotional reaction.
As a psychodynamic coach I recognise the importance of emotions and their significant influence on our thoughts and actions.
The key to this is the unconscious, where we store the collective history of all our experiences. When we encounter challenges, our response will be dictated by our past experiences. If the experience was negative and traumatic, our response would be more emotionally charged and irrational. Conversely, if positive and euphoric, then our action would be rational and logical. We call this a learned behaviour.
Psychodynamic coaching has proved highly effective, operating directly in the unconscious mind, enabling an individual to personally transform, and/or, professionally transition to their desired goals.
How do you measure the success of coaching?
Coaching is an invaluable tool for personal development that facilitates different thinking in the client, in order to enhance current or acquire new skills. However, one major question that emerges early in my conversation with prospective clients is “How will I know that it is working?”.
There is no definitive answer, apart from the personal feedback from those who have received coaching, such as improvement in performance and leadership, confidence in speaking etc.
This is not surprising given, as coaches, we are dealing with unique personalities intertwined with socio-economic influences. I’ve intentionally excluded from this mix the impact of the coach as a person, with their own histories and experiences. Peeling back the layers of complexity, the strength of the coach-client relationship becomes a powerful contributor in helping the client reach their goals.
Once a strong relationship is established, other factors start gaining greater momentum:
- coach's skill and experience in creating an unconscious shift
- client’s recognition and willingness to change
- the client’s motivation towards high impact goals
Coach-Client Relationship
Whether traditional or psychodynamic coaching, having a strong coach-client relationship determines the trust and openness of any dialogue. This ultimately determines the effectiveness of the coaching.
The nature of the relationship is tempered by who initially engaged with the coach i.e. personally by the client or the client’s employer. Although both have their unique set of advantages and disadvantages.
| Individually selected | Company appointed | |
|---|---|---|
| Objectives | The total focus is on the client and their defined agenda - issues that have a major long-term impact on their personal and professional life. | Focus is on increasing the client’s effectiveness and productivity at work, to benefit the organisation. Issues affecting the client’s personal life are often side-lined. |
| Business expertise | Potentially brings deep experience and knowledge from a broad range of business sectors. | Strength and knowledge is tied to the organisation and business sector. |
| Choice of coaching approach | Client has choice to select a coach experienced on Traditional, Psychodynamic or both approaches. | Choice limited to coaches offering Traditional approach. |
| Cost per coaching session | Funded by the client. Cost high relative to organisationally appointed coach. | Funded by the organisation. Often cheaper relative to external equivalent. |
| Confidentiality | Client can be open and honest, assured of confidentiality in their conversations. | Client tends to be guarded in their conversations. Potential conflict on whether the coaching is undertaken at arms-length to avoid affecting client appraisal and promotion. |
| Issues addressed | Professional and personal issues affecting the client. | Focused on clients performance at work. |
| Coach’s expertise | Usually trained in the latest models and approaches, traditional or psychodynamic. | May not be formally trained as a coach, potentially unaware of latest models. May be a senior manager or HR representative. Danger of divergence from coaching into a mentoring or 1-to-1 training. |