My publishter, New Harbinger, sends out a very interesting monthly newsletter. The following is from their onboard promo for David Skibbins’ book Becoming a Life Coach: A Complete Workbook for Therapists and it is very sage advice – especially for Energy Coaches in training…or at any level of their practice.
As we are studying ethics shortly in the Certified Energy Coach Program, this advice becomes particularly poignant. And those coming into coaching out of any kind of therapy background, do read this book posthaste for it highlights among other subjects, very important shifts in worldframe that therapists must make to be successful as coaches and what our rigorous training prepares us beautifully to coach around.
A "bravo" and two thumbs up to my colleague David Skibbins, PhD, CPCC for a wonderful book and job well done. Highly recommended for Energy Coaches and anyone transiting from any form of therapy or healing work into coaching.
Maryam Webster
writing as Director, The Energy Coach Institute
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From Chapter 1:
CONTRASTING THERAPY & COACHING: DIFFERENT LEVELS OF AUTHORITY
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Experts Can’t Be Trusted
Many mentally healthy clients distrust therapists. And not unreasonably—all our training in psychology has warped our point of view. We are experts in the assessment and treatment of psychopathology. And so we tend to see it everywhere: everyone is neurotic, corporations are dysfunctional, the government is addicted to power and control. Most people are mentally healthy. Until you wrap your mind around that fact you’ll be re-creating your clinical practice wherever you go. You’ll be unconsciously disempowering your clients by finding problems they need to solve. They’ll sense that you don’t completely trust them, that you regard them as patients. You may get compliance or you may get rebellion—both of which are expressions of dissatisfaction
The Wrong Tool for the Job
It’s inappropriate to apply a therapeutic perspective to most real-life situations, especially work settings. Therapeutic perspectives are well-honed tools that are invaluable in assisting dysfunctional clients to become functional, but they are simply inadequate for addressing the dynamics of already functional environments. Of course, this hasn’t stopped psychodynamic and psychologically based systems theorists from analyzing the workplace. Indeed, these ideas have been elegantly applied to the workplace for years—with no apparent impact on work environments whatsoever. Pointing out the narcissistic qualities of leadership, analyzing top-down communication fl ow patterns, and discoursing on parentifi ed employer-employee relationships have all fallen on deaf ears. Having twenty-three names for snow doesn’t help you much in a jungle—and all that accurate clinical terminology doesn’t translate very well to corporate America. That’s because people at work have work to do and don’t have time for psychological mumbo jumbo. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job.
Functioning companies are intelligent, responsive, complex living systems. To superimpose a paradigm that evolved out of personal, psychological clinical work onto the richness of the minute-to-minute challenges and choices that face a growing corporate entity is absurd. The concepts of an outside expert—especially a clinically trained one—are going to have very little impact on that environment.
The Special Bonus of Therapy: We Know How to Control Ourselves
Therapists are particularly well suited to an egalitarian approach because of our training in self-management. The intensive interpersonal training we’ve gone through also serves to make us outstanding empowerment coaches. We’ve already learned how to moderate our responses in the service of the client’s needs. Other coaches-in-training also have to struggle with selfidentification as a helper and the habit of giving advice, but few of them have gone through the deep, insight-oriented inner work required of a psychotherapist. Thanks to our training as therapists, when we realize the negative impact controlling behavior can have on a client, we can modify our responses to better coach our clients. Once therapists stop trying to sneak therapy into coaching, therapists become outstanding empowerment coaches—primarily because of our self-awareness and our self-management abilities.
GIVING UP AUTHORITY
However, just reading a few paragraphs about authority may not be enough to persuade you to give up years of feeling in charge. So let’s see exactly what’s at stake here:
- What do I enjoy the most about feeling competent and in control as a therapist?
- Where else in my life do I think I need to be the one in charge?
- What might I get from letting go of my authority role when I coach?
Now that you understand how different coaching is from therapy—and why it should be—here’s an exercise to help you fully step into this new perspective:
You can read the rest of this article here.
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