Clarifying aims: who wants what?

In any coaching encounter it's helpful to think systemically about aims: what the coachee wants for themselves, what their organisation wants for them, and what the coach wants for the coachee.

In supervision this week I was helped to think about my hope for a particular coachee. That clarification refines the position I take, and my capacity to be of help. Not a fixed stance but a curiosity with which to enquire, to develop or negate a hypothesis about the role the coachee finds themselves taking.

Systemic practitioners refer to the withness (Shotter) of this process. Being with the coachee is itself an opportunity for meaning making - even in one-to-one meetings, the organisation is present. Attending to the similarities and differences between the coachee's, the organisation's and the coach's roles and preferences is powerful grist for the mill.