Natalie: Let’s assume for a moment that it is easier for everyone on your management team – not just Kurt – for you to be the “can’t do” person. As long as you play this role, then no one else has to be responsible for the group’s “realism.” They can all pass the buck to you. This also means that you have a lot of power. Everyone looks to you to stop the action.
John: But I don’t want all that power….
Natalie: Are you sure that this power isn’t a source of some gratification for you? Do you always come away from these meetings as a frustrated, angry man?
John: Well, I must say that I do like to have some control in these meetings so that they don’t get out of hand and so that Kurt doesn’t get his way as a dreaming idiot!
Natalie: I would suggest that we explore this issue of power a bit and see how it relates to your concerns about control in the group …
If the conversation were to follow this course, then Natalie and John would be moving close to the boundary between coaching and psychotherapy. How might they explore John’s apparent need for control and his antipathy for Kurt’s visionary orientation without moving into an exploration of personal (even early life) issues in John’s life? This is always one of the major dilemmas facing the use of British School techniques. While they encourage the analysis of system-wide dynamics (such as the tendency of all members of John’s hospital management team to pull John to a “can’t do” role), there is also the pull toward exploration of deeply personal dynamics. Leaders get pulled into confining roles (called “role suction”), in part because they wish at some level to play these roles and because they derive often unacknowledged gains from this role suction. Where is the boundary between coaching and psychotherapy?
HEAD VS. HEART
A total of ten coaching sessions have taken place. John is pleased with the outcomes of these sessions. He has met several times with Kurt and has found more time with his wife and children. Kurt is willing to move beyond a “training” solution to John’s problem and is willing to look at re-assignment of some project leadership. But what about Joho’s relationship with the employees who report to him? Natalie and John now face another fundamental coaching issue. To what extent should they focus on interpersonal issues, rather than staying with John’s work/life balance and his relationship with Kurt and his response to the divergent priorities offered by Kurt? This decision on the part of Natalie and John might relate not just to their own expectations regarding professional coaching services, but also to their own assumptions about the roles to be played by men and women in contemporary society. Kanter (! 977) wrote during the 1970s about the role played by secretaries in American corporate life. She noted that these women (and they were rarely men) often played the role of surrogate wife to their male (and they were rarely female) bosses. They served in a supportive staff role, often moving along with their boss when he was promoted into a job of greater responsibility. (The secretary became part of the “chattel” accumulated by a male executive during his climb through the organization.)
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