Julio. I love that perspective from Carol Gilligan for a very simple reason: it challenges the ontology that you are you. Actually, you can never exist without me. We are a dance. Now, of course, we have a biology, but even from that perspective we’re not as independent as we think we are. The way I am being right now is not just defined by history. It is defined by your presence. What you allow me to be probably also means what you do not allow me to be. The dance constitutes the dancers as much as the dancers constitute the dance. The moment that we hold the notion that we are interdependent, we begin to understand the phenomena of love and care in a very powerful territory. You allow me to unfold in ways that no one else does. The man that I am with you is just the man I can be with you. There’s a continuity, of course, but the unfolding that you allow me, the reflection I get from your questions, your presence, your physical attitude, etc., is all part of it. What Carol Gilligan is saying challenges the epistemology of the individual, and that is a very ontological, and interesting perspective.
Bill. And it becomes extraordinary in terms of the implications for coaching.
Julio. Enormous.
Bill. So, there is a paradox embedded all this. In some sense, every aspect of who I am is there in the seed, but that which unfolds with you is different from that which unfolds with anyone else.
Julio. Yes, I water you, and I nurture you, and vice versa, in ways that nobody else does in exactly the same way. I quote very often, Bill, that the best compliment a woman ever gave me is J love the woman I am when I am with you. But that compliment, if you look at it, is simply a realization of living together, and that’s what it is. I realize that when I am with different people, my unfolding takes different directions.
Bill. There’s a wonderful scene in the movie, As Good as It Gets, with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, in which he plays a horribly constrained man. There’s a scene in which he says to her, “I’m a better man with you than I am with anyone else.” That’s quite a powerful statement.
Julio. If you take coaching from this perspective, look at what happens. Coaching is not about the moves I make but about the presence I am and what my presence permits, allows, gives room to, and that cannot be translated into tips and recommendations. That comes from the place where I come from. In our school of coaching, when we tell people we have tips and recommendations, this only comes at the last moment. What’s more important and must come first is the capacity to engage with a human being in such a way that your engagement allows that person to unfold in the way that person has not been able to.
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