A coach must be supervised
A therapist is supposed to be supervised by another therapist, who will prevent them from straying off course and help them maintain the proper distance from patients—a necessary condition for being able to help them. These discussions focus primarily on the therapist’s relationship with their patients (particularly the issue of transference and countertransference), but they necessarily touch on a more personal aspect of the therapist, who is a human being first and a therapist second.
What about coaching? A coach is obviously not a therapist, but they, too, work with people. The risk of causing harm while intending to do good is very real. A coach would therefore benefit from being supervised as well.
The problem in the IT field is that most coaches (commonly referred to as “agile coaches” or “craft coaches”) have no formal training in coaching. We can assume they have a firm grasp of the underlying subject matter, but what about the specific skills involved in building relationships and providing guidance? This relationship, incidentally, is established both on a one-on-one basis and with a team as a whole.
It bothers me a little to say this, but it’s true for me as well. I drifted into coaching because of my technical and organizational expertise. Aside from that, I’ve learned on the job, at the cost of a few missteps.
And at times, I really feel that this isn’t enough. I’ve been working with companies for three years now—business is booming—and yet I can’t help but ask myself certain questions:
- Is my approach with this client the right one?
- If the coach thinks it’s good, can I be satisfied with it?
- If a coach doesn’t think it’s good, does that necessarily mean it’s bad?
- Am I pulling the right levers?
These questions have been around for a while, but a recent assignment that left me unsatisfied has made them more pressing. For this reason, I sought the help of a professional for my supervision. Putting things into words should help, as should having an outside perspective on my work.
On closer inspection, these questions pertain to ethics. I’m tempted to think that the medical principle of “first, do no harm” is a good starting point: don’t add to the confusion in a dysfunctional organization; opt for a series of small changes rather than a single, inevitably painful “big bang”; be ambitious on behalf of the people you’re helping while remaining realistic about their capacity for change… These are all concrete applications of the principle “primum non nocere” (it sounds smarter in Latin 😉).
But there are borderline cases.
It’s often jokingly said that successful coaching results in developers quitting: because they realize that the organization they work for is dysfunctional and won’t change, while they discover that other ways of working are possible.
The joke is interesting because it raises the question of whom the coach is supposed to help: his client, who pays him, or the community made up of the client and his employees? Whose surplus should he therefore maximize?
Food for thought 😊