In the media and networks related to coaching, professionals are often invited to say what is the most important question of coaching.
I don't know if the most, but one of the most, for me, is silence. Here my article could end.
But since it is a matter of writing one a little longer, I intend to make some reflections not so much about the questions or about silence but about the relationship between a coach and a manager, executive, entrepreneurial coachee.
In biology, adaptive complex systems are living systems that create order near chaos. They are very unstable, always on the verge of chaos, and that's what makes them so sensitive. They are holistic, emerging, and creatively responsive to mutations; they are in constant creative dialogue with the environment. We can call this dialogue "strategic thinking".
Each of us is a complex adaptive conscious system, both physically and mentally.
I argue that the coach's level of complexity must be at least as high as that of the coachee. And in the face of this complexity, it is of little use to ask pre-made questions of the type: "And what prevents you from achieving it? "If you did, how would you feel?" We have to be at another level of reflection and provocation.
I am convinced that one of the essential tasks of any manager, at any level, is to think strategically, and I wonder how many coaches deal with the complexity of strategic thinking for which the worn-out questions of using them are so useless.
I think complex essential questions always start with a "Why?" and generally preceded by something like: "What do you want to talk about?" "What would you like me to ask you?" And with each response of the coachee a new "why ?, or" what else? ", And thus almost to exhaustion… or even silence.
Silence may be the moment of "insight", of "re-framing", of taking a step back and seeking a global perspective, one of the great problems of our world today is short-placism.
We have to help the client to be an inoculant, that is, to question what is taken for granted, the usual; to see things differently, to go from perception to imagination; fear is almost always the obstacle that stands in the way, because, first, it distorts perception; and the means to failure leads us to avoid risks. For all this neuroscience has new and very effective responses.
We also have to understand that executives (and especially those of large corporations) have to face sometimes insurmountable obstacles when trying to transform them from within: guerrilla wars to defend a position that must change. So much so that sometimes some have to sell divisions and thus end internal obligations, commitments and political coalitions. These are all manifestations of fear.
The concept of the market and the transactions that take place in it, suggests the idea of reciprocity: money is exchanged for a value that is offered. But at a deeper level, this exchange implies dependency and the resentment that many managers have as suppliers of clients they depend on is frequent. This is what some teachers say: "the teaching would be wonderful if it were not for the students." These feelings emphasize that although exchanges involve reciprocity, they can also represent war or conflict in the minds of our clients. They always want more than what the supplier can profitably supply.
"Beware of the client" is like the Latin "caveat emptor".
To some extent it is forbidden to even think that our clients are our antagonists; in fact, in business jargon it is often said that "our only reason for being is to serve our clients" or make them our partners, but neuroscience and psychoanalysis tell us that we can ban an idea, repress it or displace it, but it never disappears.
I have cited just one sample button of strategic thinking but the reader knows that there is much more material that cannot be left out of a coaching process.
With this example I have tried to show the complexity that our clients can have in their conscious or, more likely, in their unconscious.
And after this short exposition, my conclusion: can we continue asking question after question without revealing the complexity of our clients' work? Will that complexity be similar to ours?
I have only tried to contribute something very short and reduced to the great and enormous task of the reflections that we coaches have to ask ourselves.
