What do we really know about the client as they enter the room? In Part Two of this blog series about the “7 eyed Model” for coaching reflection and supervision, I’d like to share my personal reflections about looking through the first ‘eye’: The Client System.

We could be forgiven when reading some coaching text books for thinking that a coaching client will turn up for coaching, clearly state what they want to work on, that the coach will work their “magic”, the client then commits to action which when they leave the session they achieve. Yeah right ! How many times does that happen?? In reality, what we meet when the client enters the room is both their “here and now” thinking and needs along with “everything else in their life” that has gone before them. Or as a colleague (Thanks Alison!) once said – “their whole messy self” enters the room. This is what eye 1 of the model – “The Client System” is about.

Let’s take for example a client of mine who felt overwhelmed by their workload and whose manager suggested they received coaching on their time management. In our first session we uncovered that he already knew about the “important vs urgent” prioritisation matrix – so why on earth wasn’t he doing it then? We explored what success could look like. We explored what he thought was getting in his way. I questioned how he approached things in practice ….every line of enquiry seemed to meet a complex set of “excuses”… hmmm…..I was getting nowhere fast! And, might I add, I was beginning to feel some level of sympathy for his line manager!

In our second session (and after some reflection) I realised that I needed to find out more about how he “ticked”. This is particularly what Eye 1 is about. So this time my line of enquiry was about what he knew about his personality and how that might have been affecting his ability to manage his time. Through this discussion we uncovered that he had reflective tendencies. So he suffered from that all too common experience, of only realising what he “should have said” after the conversation had ended! This is often a characteristic of introverts and so I also enquired how comfortable he was approaching people – he wasn’t. So, when a conversation had ended he didn’t feel able to “go back” and re-engage. We also discovered a tendency to put other people first. So when one of his team was busy and looking stressed, he felt it more important to get them sorted out even if that meant he had to stay late to catch up. This was gold dust for me!

It clarified that if we were to see a difference in his time management I needed to help him change some fundamental behaviours. First to get others to appreciate he would need some time to consider what was “do-able”, and to “get back to them”, rather than making a commitment during a conversation. Secondly, to help him be more aware that in addition to thinking about how he could help others at work , he could balance that with how he could help himself and his family at home. This actually shifted the emphasis of the coaching away from time management to a much deeper discussion around his values and beliefs about what was required of him in the organisation, his expectations of himself and his consequent perception of his responsibilities both at work and at home.

So the moral of this particular story is that when I don’t feel like I’m connecting with a client, it can be helpful to go back to basics and consider if I have properly understood their fundamental individual characteristics. In this example I considered their personality profile, and there are at least two other things to consider. Firstly, their learning style – are they an Activist, a Theorist, a Reflector or a Pragmatist? (if you would like to know more about this look up Honey & Mumford Learning Styles). Secondly, what is their representational system? If you have done any NLP training you will know that some people are Visual, some are Auditory and some more Kinesthetic.

I think people have hidden depths and all kinds of things can bubble up as part of a coaching exploration. There’s often a whole lot more under the surface than you at first imagine. Eye 1 encourages me to get into the water and explore what lies beneath.

If you like the 7-eyed model, it would be great to hear some of your experiences that will bring this first “eye” of the model to life for others. I look forward to hearing your comments!

I remember when I was training as a coach that I held a belief that for every coaching situation there would be one intervention that was “perfect” for the matter in hand. And yet there were so many questions that I could ask or not ask – and so many avenues to explore once a conversation started – which one should I choose?

I was also very aware that once a question was asked I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t “un-say” it! I would always have influenced what happens next. In those early days I found this almost paralysing …. What if I say the “wrong” thing?

Many years later, I’ve become much more comfortable with the fact that no matter how experienced I become as a coach there will always be more “happening” in a session than it’s possible to deal with at the time. I’m now much more fascinated with considering what I do or don’t see. What was it that informed my choices ? And what was it that prompted me go in one direction or another? Whilst some of those choices will be conscious, at other times the choices I make could be the result of my unconscious or because of the dynamics in my client relationship. No wonder my head spins sometimes!

In truth it wasn’t until I trained as a supervisor myself that I became aware of something called the seven-eyed model, and once I got over the challenge of remembering what each of the 7 eyes were …. I found I loved it!

In my experience the structure provided by the 7-eyed model helps me un-pick what might have been happening in the session both at conscious and unconscious levels. Quite simply, each eye offers a different perspective from which to explore what might be happening. Sometimes I use it to review my work independently, sometimes it is still all rather confusing and I need to talk it through with another professional coach or my coach supervisor.

With practice I have become more aware of the choices I make “in the moment” when working with a client. However, the sheer complexity of the coaching relationship means that I have yet to feel that I am making the “perfect” intervention that I dreamed of finding in when I was training!

In this series of blogs I wanted to bring the 7-eyed model to life. Below you’ll find my own “pictogram” of the model - as to be frank I couldn’t understand the original! In the subsequent blogs I’ll offer you my understanding of how each of the “eyes” work in practice. Trust me, it’s really not as scary as it may first appear.

Diagram taken from Hawkins & Smith (2006) and adapted by Michelle Lucas

Is there a particular ‘eye’ that you find most valuable to reflect on and why? I’d love to hear your comments!

Looking at your coaching technique reveals more that you might think. In Part Three of this blog series about the “7 eyed Model” for coaching reflection and supervision, I’d like to share my experiences of looking at my work through the second ‘eye’ of Supervision: The Intervention which is effectively the tools, techniques or questions used.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has left a “busy” coaching session and then asked myself “What exactly did I do?” and did it work or not ?? I find that sometimes I have clear inspiration that using a tool or technique that I have used before might be valuable, sometimes I feel like I need to create something specific for the client in front of me …. And of course sometimes I get stuck and don’t know what to do to be of any use !! When this happens I often feel that it would be helpful to talk to another coach and ask “What would you have done?”. Interestingly, whilst seeking support when I get stuck seems like a sensible approach, it hasn’t always occurred to me to review “why” I chose a particular approach that did work well. Through supervision and using this second eye of the model – it’s possible to slow things down and consider what influenced my decision to use a particular approach or line of enquiry.

Let’s take a recent example when I almost surprised myself with the technique I used ! My client was an independent consultant. Most of her work came from one big organisation – but they had frozen the budget and so suddenly her income took a massive dip. She was also experiencing some personal difficulties with her daughter. As she started the session a bundle of different emotions and issues tumbled out and I found I could not keep track of what she was saying. I decided to use the gestalt technique of deconstructing the issue into the separate components. Normally I would give the client post it notes to label up – but I didn’t have any! So we used some paper napkins to write on, then used whatever else we had in the room – water bottles, coasters, pens, notepads to represent different issues in the system. This really helped to slow her down and literally “see” the issues laid out. But the more interesting question is what drew me to use this technique? It was quite a creative solution – and as a coach I know I can tend to be quite “safe and rational”.

So, what prompted me to take this more creative approach? Firstly, we were working in the office of a “funky” social enterprise / business start-up hub – so perhaps the creative environment prompted a different flavour to the work. I also remember feeling tired that day and I had noticed that I was beginning to “work quite hard” - I felt like she was looking to me to make sense of things. So I wanted a technique that clearly put responsibility back to her for sorting things out. Finally, as she had done some coach training herself, I thought she might be familiar with the technique (I checked and discovered that she was). This was actually useful on two fronts, at a practical level it meant it was easier for us to use the technique, plus it also gave her a sense of confidence, it grounded her as here was at least one area where she “knew what to do”.

Diagram taken from Hawkins & Smith (2006) and adapted by Michelle Lucas

What I’ve discovered is that although it might sound like this eye is one that works in isolation – as with many of the other eyes it is actually influenced by the coach, the client and the context. Inevitably, when we start out we have a limited number of techniques to pull upon, whereas with experience you will have more or you can co-create something with the client. The kind of technique chosen might also reflect the characteristics of the client – for example some will like a rational structured dialogue and would balk at the idea of doing something creative. Others relish the opportunity to work differently and will experiment by working with metaphor or exploring things through creating pictures or sculpture.

Our technique is also influenced by our philosophy as a coach if you favour more psychological approaches you are more likely to “dive deep” than those coaches who prefer more action oriented approaches. Moreover, the context in which the coaching is done can also influence the techniques – for example I’ve noticed that some organisations train their internal coaches in a specific approach which by definition will limit the diversity of techniques used. Similarly as an independent coach if you work as an associate, you will sometimes be required to using psychometrics or 360 as part of the “package”.

So, I hope this illustrates that there’s no such thing as a simple “choice” of technique! This second eye brings fuller consideration of what really prompted you to do what you did? I know that at times I can be a “creature of habit” – so when I reach for one of my favourite techniques, this eye acts as my “jiminy cricket” and causes me to stop for a split second and think – “how else could I support the client right now?”

I wonder what has this blog prompted you to think about the techniques that you have used recently? It would be great to hear your experiences of what you think influences the techniques you use a lot or a little?

This fifth eye suggests that the relationship between the supervisor and supervisee can hold useful information regarding what was happening in the original coaching session. Essentially, the supervisor can use the dynamics of their relationship in “the here and now” to gain clues about what might be happening in the coach:client relationship. This is what is known as the parallel process. I’ve noticed that the longer I work with a supervisee, the stronger my sense is of our own unique supervision relationship dynamic. And as can be seen from this story, it can be really helpful for the coaching client too.

I was supervising a coach who was relatively new to the world of coaching – she was a creative writer before. In our previous sessions I had been struck by how articulate she was and how mature her thinking was regarding her clients. We had only ever worked by phone, however, I felt I knew her quite well. She brought a client case where she felt stuck. We talked through what she had tried so far and what was happening – this all seemed very appropriate and yet she didn’t feel like it was working. When I asked her to explore her “stuckness” she really struggled – she was hesitant and clunky. I noticed that I was beginning to feel stuck too – I moved my attention to what was going on between us. When I thought about my supervisee it felt as though she wasn’t telling me the whole story. I couldn’t seem to “join the dots” from what she was saying. Although I couldn’t see her, I imagined that if she had been in the room with me, she would be averting her eyes from my gaze. This felt like a different person to the one I was used to supervising, for that reason, I wondered if a parallel process was in play. I shared this with her and explained that I felt I wasn’t hearing the whole story and asked if that might be how she felt when she was working the client. It was an “OMG” moment – yes she said, it really felt like her client was “holding out” on her. Through further discussion, she remembered a passing “niggle” early on in their coaching relationship. Something said about a prior relationship that the coach had noticed, not been able to make sense of and which had passed by. For some reason she started to connect the two things. A penny seemed to drop, and the coach said… “perhaps we’re not having the right conversation …. If I get stuck again, I’ll ask her that question … something tells me it’s all tied up with her ability to trust”.

So how do I know as the supervisor, that what I am experiencing is a parallel process?! Well of course I don’t always. A fundamental requirement for a supervisor is to have a high level of self-awareness so that they can identify any personal interference. I shall say more about this in my next blog about Eye 6. However, when I think about an established supervisor: supervisee relationship, I have a general sense of the coach’s coaching model, their typical style, their repertoire of techniques and their development areas. I also have a strong sense of “how” they are when we work together. As a supervisor therefore, I am always looking out for any changes in this dynamic which might hold clues about something that is “just beyond” the coach’s current awareness. Helpfully, my separateness from the actual coaching situation that gives me a wider perspective. Whilst the parallel process can be a powerful phenomenon, as the supervisor, when it occurs I am less “in the grip” of it than the coach is. Together we can think through how our current experience relates to the client experience, gradually bringing something that was just beyond reach to come into view.

When have you experienced of this kind of thing with your supervisor? When I’m training coaches they often ask “how does this happen”? And I have yet to find an eloquent answer! I have suggested that the supervisor has developed some kind of systemic empathy. How would you explain and describe what happens when you experience the parallel process? I’ll be intrigued to hear your thoughts.

In Part four of this blog series about the “7 eyed Model” for coaching reflection and supervision, I’d like to share my experiences of looking at my work through the third ‘eye’: which is all about the relationship as it develops between coach and client.

In most cases, it is probably true that there is some sense of connection or rapport between client and coach – otherwise the coaching programme would not have got off the ground! However, there is general acceptance that the quality of the coaching relationship will determine the quality of the coaching that takes place. Indeed if you have ever worked with someone who has been “sent” to coaching, or who has had no choice in which coach they work with, you’ll know what it is like when that natural rapport is missing!! So, it is Eye 3 of the model that encourages us to explore what’s happening in the dynamic between coach and client and then to consider how this might be influencing the coaching dialogue.

If you are familiar with the psychodynamic school of thought – then you will have heard about the notions of ‘transference’ (when the client sees in you, characteristics that are actually borrowed from other people in their lives) or ‘counter-transference’ (when the coach starts to absorb characteristics of the client, for themselves). This is why a classic supervision question is “Who does this client remind you of?” the question is testing whether we could be responding to the client as though they are someone else who we have experience of. What I find interesting is that with some clients my relationship feels consistent, with others it can feel different from session to session. Such differences can often signal that something of interest is going on, but as in my example below even when the relationship is relatively consistent it can still be helpful to “watch” what is happening to that relationship in each session.

Sometimes you meet a client where there is just a natural chemistry – and you just “know” that this is going to be a fun assignment. Last year I met a client for a chemistry session and within the first ten minutes he said “I just knew you’d be right for me when I read your profile”. We have been working together for over 6 months now and our relationship has really matured. He is a natural relationship builder anyway, he is “hungry” for development and keen to learn and remarkably self-aware and humble. As a result I find I can respond to him from many different frames – I find I bring my “whole self” to the relationship. Coach, mentor, educator, sounding board, provocateur. Interestingly he is really open about his family activities and although I normally share limited amounts of personal information with clients – I found myself swapping strategies about managing in-laws at Xmas! So how has this affected the quality of the coaching work? Interestingly a good relationship can be a double edged sword. Definitely there is a sense of trust between us – which means I can stretch his thinking beyond what might be completely comfortable for him. However, I also noticed that occasionally I am in danger of getting “too close”. In one session I was about to make a strong challenge, and I hesitated as I felt a “tug” of worry about denting the relationship, almost as I would worry, if I were to challenge a friend. A loud warning bell sounded in my head…thankfully, I knew I had to voice this hesitation …. and then make the challenge anyway.

So I think it is always worth considering what’s happening in the relationship with my clients. I quite naturally “worry” when something doesn’t seem quite right and take this to supervision. But as this example illustrates, it’s also fruitful to inspect what’s happening with those clients who you get on really well with. It strikes me that whilst we all do our best to create good rapport, there is always the potential for things to get a bit too cosy??

So it is Eye 3 that reminds me to “check in” and to do a temperature check on my client relationship. Too cool and perhaps we wont get to the heart of the matter. Too warm and I need to be vigilant for potential collusion. So some good questions I ask myself are – how is this person making me feel about me? How do I respond to them as a result? Or I consider how long have we’ve been working together. I ask myself, do I still feel like I must be on my “best behaviour”? or am I prepared to take a few risks and to experiment?

What kind of “checks and balances” do you put in place to determine whether you have the optimal level of rapport for an effective working relationship? What happens when you can’t seem to get close enough or conversely when you feel that you might be getting too close to be objective? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Do you have regular supervision arrangements, or do you tend to operate on an “as needed” basis? I’ve noticed that some coaches say that they don’t always have something pressing to bring to supervision. My sense is that perhaps they see supervision as something they do “when they get stuck”. However, in reality I think supervision – especially Group Supervision can be much more useful than just getting “unstuck”! Here are 7 reasons why I see reflecting on your work (the good bits as well as the tricky bits) in group supervision, as a team activity

1. Connecting as a community: Coaching can be a lonely profession. Regularly meeting with a group of fellow coaches provides reassurance when you discover that your personal coaching challenges are shared by others.
2. Keeping your coaching muscle “toned”: When your coaching activity reduces it is easy to lose confidence about your work and to lose a sense of connection with coaching more generally. Hearing about other’s work may re-invigorate your energy for coaching, and prompt you to seek out more opportunities for coaching yourself.
3. Jogging your memory: Listening and contributing to other people’s “cases” often gets you thinking more deeply about your own work. Whilst you might arrive at the group feeling as though “I’ve got nothing to bring” it’s common for something you’d almost forgotten about to be prompted by the group and to have a rich and lively discussion about it.
4. Creating collective intelligence: Coaching is complex! Rarely is there one definitive “right” question or interpretation or approach. Nowhere is this clearer than in group supervision. You can almost guarantee that everyone will see something different in the client case presented, and everyone will have their own sense of what they would “do”. Clearly each coach will want to develop their own authentic response – however, together we can generate a diversity of ideas that individually would have escaped us.
5. Deepening your repertoire by osmosis: For the most part supervision groups will include coaches from a variety of contexts and experience. Some of the situations that your peers will bring for exploration you may not have come across before. This can be fantastic preparation for your own practice. No two situations are ever the same, but by participating in the supervision discussion, you will be better prepared when something similar does occur.
6. Keeping humble: As we deepen our experience as coaches we become increasingly comfortable about how we work with a range of clients and topics. However, it’s entirely possible to get “a bit too comfortable” and to use our go-to responses when faced with what appears to be a familiar situation. When listening to other people’s work or sharing our own, it’s fascinating what our peers see that we don’t.
7. Being a resource for others: When we participate in group supervision we will naturally be thinking about the personal benefit. However, even if there is nothing that we want for ourselves we have the chance to take a more altruistic stance. When group members bring a topic to the group they are depending on us, as colleagues to help them think things through, to share experiences and to “be there” to provide affirmation, challenge or support. It’s this combination of personal benefit and benevolence to others that gives the sense of “team” to a group.

So that’s why I think group supervision is a “team sport”. It may well be that you feel you have nothing to bring. However if the group works as a team then whether or not you feel you have something “pressing” is not really the point! The point is that you are there for your colleagues, to help them think, to share your experiences in service of them resolving their challenges and to continue to deepen your connection with the group and the coaching community at large.

I’m not entirely sure what kind of team sport group supervision would be – maybe cricket when 9 of 11 people in a team are not on the field of play? What kind of sports team would be a good metaphor for your group supervision experiences? And importantly, what kind of supervision team player do you want to be?

The first trigger is something akin to performance anxiety –rather than paying attention to my client, my attention shifts to myself. A recurrent question is “am I doing okay?” Perhaps the client is going around in circles, or I just offered a clunky question or I simply feel out of my depth.

The second trigger is when something in my client’s story resonates with my own, and I get flipped back to those past memories. When this happens, it’s likely that my own experience will filter what I do or don’t notice within my client’s story.

Let’s take a look an example of the second trigger – when I have a subjective reaction to my client’s story.

My client had been in their organisation for just 18 months, she was hugely frustrated that she had been brought in as a “change agent” but now that she was in the organisation, she was expected to play by the rules with the existing (outdated) processes slowing her down almost to a standstill, she was significantly behind budget and feeling “lost”.

As a naturally forthright individual, she was finding that common sense wasn’t prevailing. We talked through how else she might approach things and got into a discussion of how to manage the politics. I offered a stakeholder analysis as a way of working out how to handle things more “subtly”. Her reaction to this was interesting, she seemed split as whilst her words reflected the logic of the approach, it felt unlikely that she would actually alter her working style.

As I watched her ambivalence at the prospect of having to work differently, I was reminded me of how torn I felt in a similar corporate experience. I commented that observing her I got the sense that whilst she knew “it made sense” there was an underlying question of “but why should I have to work in that way?! That’s not me”. It was spot on, she laughed and this provoked further discussion. However, after a while I became aware that her perspective was now very much about what “they needed to do differently”.

Inadvertently I had colluded with her. I paused and gathered my thoughts, I knew I needed to get some objectivity back. I commented that they really did seem a tricky bunch, but that I was only coaching her, not them. I enquired who she thought she could influence a little (and inwardly I was thinking, let’s rate these stakeholders and divide and conquer – oops! That’s what I did, who knows what she will want to do?).

However, quite matter of factly, she said “none of them….” Ok I said with a smile, so I guess that just leaves you? “It certainly looks that way” she said with an exhausted smile. So tell me, I asked… what’s the shift that needs to happen in you, that will cause the shift you want to see in them? Her response was quick “deliver the numbers… regardless… until I do that, no-one is going to pay any attention to me at all”.

The rest of the session had a completely different focus – her wider stakeholders were forgotten in favour of her own team and how she could galvanise them to turn things around. Her positive energy had returned.

I hope this illustrates how whilst empathy is generally a good thing, and we can bring our own experience into the room to offer insight… there is also a dark side to this connectivity! Has this ever happened for you? And if so, how did you feel about it? And how did you manage to get yourself back on track? I’d love to hear your stories.

Since my first session in February 2012 I have always been reminded of the introduction of supervision as presented in one of my first coaching books, Career Counselling(1). In the latter Robert Nathan and Linda Hill report that supervision would often be seen as having a threefold function labelled by Proctor (1988) as 'formative', 'restorative' and 'normative'(2).

With regards to the 'formative' aspect, I have no doubt that discussing with my peers some actual instances/situations evaluated in the context of some coaching practices that I may not have been familiar with has been invaluable to my development as a coach. I have also benefited from the positive and critical evaluations from the coaches and the supervisor when sharing a particular issue that I had brought on the call.

In addition to the opportunity to contribute to my assessment and development of my competences as a coach I have experienced how much the sense of community has supported me in the role of independent coach in which I can feel at times “isolated”. I have also on some instances been able to bring difficult issues to a place that I trusted to be safe and gain confidence in my practice and competences as a result of the feedback that I received. These have been my most significant experiences of the 'restorative' element inherent to supervision. For the 'normative' dimension of supervision I appreciate that the sharing of cases and the relevant discussions with my peers and the supervisors have given me an awareness and understanding of shared professional standards way beyond the textbooks I have read or the actual distinct coaching techniques or theories brought by the coaches. This is also true of the acquisition of a shared pragmatic interpretation of the ethical guidelines promoted by the Association for Coaching UK as these were either implicitly or explicitly part of the issues discussed on the call under the facilitation of a trained supervisor.

In conclusion I am grateful that as an independent coach, I have greatly benefited from the ACGSE calls as a support and reflective mechanism. In the confines of a safe supervision, the sharing of experiences with like-minded practitioners has taken me at times to an uncomfortable zone where the magic happens.

Jean-Charles Gentilly, Chartered MCIPD Career & Leadership Coach

Notes: (1) Nathan, R. and Hill, L. (2006) Career Counselling. London: SAGE. (2) Proctor, B. (1988) Supervision: A Working Alliance (Videotape Training Manual). St Leonards on Sea: Alexia