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Shame in the Coaching Relationship – Reflections on

Organisational Vulnerability

First Published:

Cavicchia, S. (2010) "Shame in the coaching relationship: reflections on organisational vulnerability", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 Iss: 10, pp.877 - 890 www.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/02621711011084204

Abstract

Conceptual Paper

Keywords – shame, coaching, relationship, spontaneity, organisation, vulnerability.

This is a paper about the particular human experience that is shame and its

manifestations in the relationship coaches and their clients co-create. I consider

shame as a relational and contextual phenomenon, how it is experienced, how it

arises, and the impact it can have on organisational and coach-client interactions,

learning and change. I consider in particular the inhibiting effect of shame on

spontaneity and improvisation so necessary for adjusting creatively to complex

situations in organisational life, changing conversations, and unfreezing entrenched

and unproductive patterns of relating.

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Example 1 - Jim

At a client meeting I was attending in the capacity of team coach, 11 senior leaders in

a global industrial components manufacturing business were discussing the

implications of the current economic crisis on sales revenues for the first quarter of

the year. The mood was becoming tense and agitated as individuals put forward ideas

for increasingly drastic cost reduction measures to ensure they achieved their profit

targets (projected before the crisis set in). The conversation was characterized by

defensiveness, posturing and very little listening. Individuals argued forcefully for

the need of their individual departments to be spared headcount reductions, and

equally forcefully for why every other department should not be spared. One of the

leaders, let us call him Jim, who had just been on the receiving end of a rather

aggressive effort to get him to agree to reduce his department’s overheads by 30%,

said, “….of course, one option might be for us to revise our expectations for the

coming year instead of pushing to meet targets we set before we could know what we

would be up against. This would help us balance the need to respond to the financial

crisis with the need to maintain the integrity of the organisation in the long-term.”

This suggestion was met with silence, then derisory laughter from some, and, very

soon after, the conversation returned to its earlier confrontational pattern. Jim, who

had made his suggestion with an air of optimistic excitement, visibly slumped, and,

looking crestfallen, appeared to withdraw from the conversation, remaining surly and

silent for the rest of the meeting.

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Example 2 - Jenny

On another occasion I was coaching a newly promoted senior executive in an oil

company, let us call her Jenny. She described her line-manager as controlling and

prone to being directly and publicly critical if he did not agree with the way Jenny

was thinking. My client, who I knew to have a capacity for creative and innovative

interventions, increasingly spoke of feeling stupid and confused. On one occasion she

described feeling as if “everything I have been able to draw on over the years is

worthless. I feel pretty dumb and useless right now, I can’t even think. I just don’t

know what to do!”

Example 3 - David

A supervisee of mine, whom I shall call David, describes being at a briefing meeting

of consultants hosted by a client who is about to invite bids for a significant coaching

contract. As other consultants introduce themselves and what they have to offer in a

flourish of polished elegance, David catches himself comparing himself to the other

professionals in the room. He notices that the dominant style of the other consultants

(on the surface at least) is very assertive, slick and self-assured. He starts to tell

himself, and believe, that they all must have more experience and skill to offer than

him. He loses contact with his own experience and capacity for reflection, and feels

himself sinking into a deep inner sense of deficiency. Long before it is his turn to

speak, he has concluded there is little he can offer here, and no way he is likely to win

the work. When it is his turn to present, he feels acutely self-conscious, clumsy and

tongue-tied. He is not invited to the next round. In spite of a track record of

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significant and successful organisational interventions, he comes to supervision

convinced he is a fraud and has nothing to offer the world of consulting.

Whilst there are many ways to read the dynamics of these scenarios, I shall

concentrate in this paper on considering the part that shame might be playing in each

of them. I shall refer back to each at different points in my discussion.

A sickness of the soul

Shame, and its milder form, embarrassment, are the feelings which alert us to when

we might have transgressed an acceptable range of behaviour. As such, shame can be

seen to have a useful function in maintaining norms and social cohesion. Most

writers on the subject, however, consider the negative effects of shame to be most

significant in their impacts on self-experience and human interactions, and it is these

that I shall be exploring in this paper.

Gershen Kaufman (1989) describes shame thus: “Shame itself is an entrance to the

self. It is the affect of indignity, of transgression, of defeat, of inferiority and

alienation. No other affect is closer to the experienced self. None is more central for

a source of identity. Shame is felt as an inner torment, as a sickness of the soul. It is

the most poignant experience of the self by the self, whether felt in the humiliation of

cowardice, or in the sense of failure to cope successfully with a challenge. Shame is a

wound felt from the inside, dividing us both from ourselves and from one another (p.

16).”

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He describes how, in the midst of shame, “the attention turns inward, thereby

generating the torment of self-consciousness. Sudden, unexpected exposure, coupled

with binding inner scrutiny, characterize the essential nature of the affect of shame”

(Kaufman, 1989, p.17).

Orange (2008) highlights how, with shame, we feel deficient by comparison with

others, we feel we are failures in our own and others’ eyes. We feel so held up to

critical scrutiny that we want to sink to the ground and become invisible, as is the case

with David in example three.

Gestalt psychotherapy and relational psychoanalysis (e.g., Philippson, 2009;

Philippson, 2001; Orange, Atwood and Stolorow, 1997; Hycner and Jacobs, 1995;

Stolorow and Atwood, 1992) consider that self- experience, the sense we have of

ourselves moment by moment, is a feature of the field conditions we inhabit at any

time and our relationship to them. This is a departure from an individualistic view of

human beings as isolated and closed (Wheeler, 2000), still to be found in many

organisations, to a description and conception of human experience, cognition and

emotion as intimately, and profoundly connected to the relational dynamics of the

interactional field (Beebe and Lachmann, 2002).

Stolorow and Atwood (1992) emphasize the human organism-environment field in

determining core aspects of our sense of who we are. The intrinsic embeddedness of

self-experience in intersubjective fields, they argue, means that our self-esteem, our

sense of personal identity, even our experience of ourselves as having distinct and

enduring existence, are contingent on specific sustaining relations to the human

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surround. Thus the quality of relationships, the dynamics that arise within them, and

the contextual features that characterize them, all contribute, moment by moment, to

our shifting experience of, and capacity to remain connected to, our sense of self,

inner viability, resourced-ness and creativity.

A brief developmental perspective

While some of us may be more prone to shame than others, it is, nonetheless, an

experience most know something of. We all have had the experience of being and

feeling small in relation to others who are powerful and big (usually, but not

exclusively, parents).

Relational development perspectives (Beebe and Lachmann, 2002; Stern, 1998;

Stolorow and Atwood, 1992;Winnicott, 1965) suggest that the emergence of a

coherent and functioning sense of self, which is experienced as resourced, and which

can adjust fluidly and creatively to the ever-shifting sands of individual needs, and the

demands of the external environment, be that at home or at work, is bound up with the

content and quality of these early relationships.

I wish to concentrate here on a series of particular perspectives which serve to shed

light on the dynamics of shame in coaches, clients and organisational life. These are:

• Shame as a result of identification with negative self-images or beliefs.

• Shame as a result of a rupture in relationship.

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• Shame in relation to trying to live up to ideals, self- images and idealized

self-images.

Identification with negative self-images and beliefs

Erskine (1995) and Philippson (2009) describe how, when we are reprimanded as

children, we will often identify with the content of criticism and the negative

emotional charge of the person who is scolding us. In simple terms, this means that

we believe the messages that we are a “bad” boy or girl, that we are “greedy” or

“rude” – the specific content is unique to each of us and potentially vast.

Identification is an important process. Although what we are taking in are ideas and

another person’s temporary and partial perspectives about us, the process of

identification means that we start to take them for who we are in a way that can

become fixed and absolute (Kaufman,1989). These ideas then contribute to the vast

array of images that we hold about ourselves, who we are, what we are and are not

capable of.

A rupture in relationship

Where parents and significant others fail to respond to us in a way that feels

supportive, tuned in, and sensitive to our feelings and needs, we experience a rupture

in the relationship. A rupture disrupts our feeling of being accepted and received for

who we are by an “other” who is important to us. When we feel this acceptance, it is

as if a “relational bridge” (Kaufmann, 1989) exists between us and the other. The

experience of the relational bridge is core to our sense of psychological integrity and

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well-being. When this bridge is ruptured by an experience of being missed,

dismissed, humiliated or criticized, the experience is one of shame. We feel

unacceptable in the eyes of others, diminished and fundamentally flawed. The

example of Jenny serves to illustrate how this susceptibility, whilst formed in

childhood, can frequently be reactivated in adult interactions, especially in superior-

subordinate interactions at work with their potential to evoke historical parent-child

relational templates (Krantz, 1993).

Self-images, ideals and identification

As we experience interaction upon interaction, the feelings and thoughts that we

construct as a result of them coalesce into a complex web of self-images that give

mental form to who we take ourselves to be. In addition to images based on

deficiency, we also develop positive self-images. These can be based on accurate

assessment of our capabilities, or be inflated attempts at compensating for feelings of

vulnerability and insecurity as in the case of narcissistic process (Almaas, 1996).

It is important to understand that, to the extent that we identify with these positive

images is the extent to which they need to be maintained through our living up to

them. Any failure to do this will cause a de-stabilizing of the image, and a

corresponding ruffle in the fabric of self-experience, in essence, who we take

ourselves to be. Ideals and self-images can motivate individuals to achieve great

things and behave in ways that are supportive of social functioning. If they are overly

and unconsciously identified with, they can tip into workaholism, addictive striving,

loss of efficiency and, ultimately, burnout (Casserley and Megginson, 2009). There is

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an important distinction to be made here between what may be actual qualities of

capability and competence, which an individual has and can draw upon, and the

image of being competent and capable with which an individual is identified, and

which is threatened every time life-experience calls it, temporarily, into question.

Early experiences contribute to each of us forming a unique, fingerprint-like

susceptibility to shame, with some being more prone to and affected by shame than

others. Our unique individual shame templates remain with us in adult life and colour

our interactions with others. Just as these templates were originally forged in

relational interactions, they go on being potentially evoked and maintained in

relationship. The good news is that it is also in relationship that they can be surfaced

and re-drawn, in order to reduce their debilitating impacts. I shall now turn my

attention to some of the ways shame can arise in the relational, contextual matrix that

is an organisation.

Shame and organisations

Organisational theory is evolving to conceive of organisations as complex systems of

human relationship and interaction (e.g.,. Gould and Stapley, 1991; Stacey, 2001;

Wheatley, 2006). Understanding the nature and dynamics of these interactions is

increasingly informing how organisational development and learning are

conceptualized and facilitated. Given the relational nature of shame, understanding

the effect of shame on individuals and interactions is an indispensable perspective for

coaches and consultants wishing to act as agents of change.

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Shame is a potent and palpable reminder of our need for relationship and our very

real, human vulnerabilities. Organisations often implicitly and explicitly work to

deny vulnerability in favour of outward manifestations of bullish confidence,

passionate commitment, privileging the individual over the relational.

Individualism, and this is certainly the case in many organisations, naturally glorifies

the lonely hero while denigrating any human need for relationships and support,

which is seen as infantile or effeminate (Lee and Wheeler, 1996). The part emotion

plays in thinking and in determining behaviour is often denied. Instead there is a

privileging of knowledge capital, control, partial and “illusory” certainties, and ideals

such as omniscience and omnipotence (Cavicchia, 2009; Hirshhorn and Barnett,

1993; De Vries, 1980). These latter two aspects often act as idealized self-images,

which many, with varying degrees of awareness, feel they have to live up to.

Increasingly, the complexity of organisational challenges, and the need to develop

resilience and responsiveness in the face of rapid, constant and unforeseeable change,

require that organisation members develop the capacity to bear uncertainty, interact,

consider and make use of emotional life, think, create strategies and increase

response-ability in and through the medium of relationship and conversations

(Cavicchia, 2009; Wheatley, 2006; Stacey, 2001; Isaacs, 1999). Whilst world events,

questions of sustainability and economic volatility are increasingly calling this forth,

it is not always easy to achieve. Experiences of stuckness, confusion, not knowing

and uncertainty, whilst all common, undermine the ideals of omniscience and

omnipotence and so have to be hidden, where they then act as silent and private

sources of anxiety and shame.

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Shame disconnects individuals from a realistic assessment of their resources, as with

Jenny in example two and David in example three. Shame drives a retreat from

relationship, as with Jim in example one. It fuels conflict and splitting in the form of

the blaming and scapegoating of others, where an individual or department

experiencing or fearing shame, attempts to restore some sense of well-being by

finding fault in others. The experience of shame contributes to a contraction of the

space for inquiry, dialogue, and thinking together. Experimenting with new

behaviours, or imagining new possibilities, become extremely difficult to the extent

that individuals are often acutely self conscious, primarily preoccupied with being

acceptable, and unwilling to risk anything that might make them look bad or simply

different (Cavicchia 2009). Spontaneity, as in the case of Jim’s suggestion, is quickly

stifled.

Moving from advocating a position into exploration and inquiry inevitably confronts

us with an experience of not knowing. If individuals are closely identified with an

internal and/or organisational ideal of “needing to know”, they can feel shame as they

experience uncertainty in the face of multiple possibilities, and often resort to taking

and defending positions (as with Jim’s colleagues). Interaction then becomes the

conversational equivalent of trench warfare, with much energy expended in digging

in, very little movement in any direction, and the sacrificing of creativity and

potential.

In example two, Jenny is identified with an image of success and potency based on

past experiences. Faced with a boss she experiences as unsupportive, the image

collapses and she experiences herself as having no resources to draw upon. What has

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actually happened is that, in the absence of mirroring from her superior, an image has

collapsed. It is her identification with the image, and the fusion of her sense of

capacity with that image, that leads to the distress and the feeling of being resource-

less. Over time she was able to reframe her struggle as being novel (she had never

experienced anything like this before at work) and, through my non-judgmental

acceptance of her current reality, and musings on the organisational context and the

nature of shame, she was able to reconnect with her capacity for thought and

creativity in service of negotiating a relationship with her boss she found difficult.

This represents a movement away from identifying with an image to identifying more

with core qualities such as reflection and imagination, and being immersed in the

process of discovering how best to respond to a complex situation. “I am successful”

is precarious. If it cannot be maintained the experience is often one of shameful

incapacity. “I have the ability to feel and think my way through uncharted territory”

came to be a much more sustaining, resourcing and supportive notion for Jenny.

The linear, reductive, “rational” biases of many organisations (Cavicchia, 2009) mean

that presenting problems are not considered from a wider contextual perspective.

Instead, there is often a preference for structural “root” causes, which deny human

emotional and relational factors. This tendency towards reduction contributes to

maintaining the shame system in place. Here individual perspectives must be proved

or disproved, defended or attacked (as with Jim in example one), and individuals

groomed for success or scapegoating.

Embracing a more complex perspective, where multiple stakeholders, subjectivities,

contingencies and emotion are all seen as contributing to what actually happens in

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interactions in organisations, can help to relax the grip shame has on individuals, and

increase their ability to reflect on the interdependent nature of relationships and the

factors that give rise to their challenges. Far from being a way of avoiding

accountability, reducing the fear of exposure can make it easier for individuals to take

fuller accountability for the part they have played in any situation, reflect, learn, and

make them less likely to pass accusation and blame elsewhere.

Shame in the coaching relationship

Shame is an ever-present potential in the coaching relationship, particularly in

organisations where, inevitably, standards and ideals, scrutiny, assessments and

feedback, rules and expectations, codes of conduct and cultural norms abound. All of

these serve to heighten the sensitivity of coaches and coachees to whether they fit in,

or are making and will continue to “make the grade”. Where as coaches we may

identify with, or be cast in, the role of expert, coachees can feel inferior in relation to

our real (in some areas) and imagined (usually in many areas!) greater expertise. This

is particularly the case where coaching may be subtly or overtly construed as remedial

in some way. The emphasis coaching places on outcomes and forwarding action can

mean that clients who may be struggling to acclimatize to the coaching process, or

identify a way forward, might feel shamed by a coach’s insistence on output. In these

instances, the pursuit of a solution, however well- intentioned, can come to feel like

persecution – and the coach an ever so helpful sadist.

The emphasis coaching can place on skills and tools can also result in coaches being

less sensitized to the quality of relationship with their coachees. Enthusiastic coaches,

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who might extol the virtues of their particular approach, can assume an air of

methodological evangelism. This can alienate coachees whose unique experience may

differ, and imply that there is something wrong with them if they fail to benefit from

what is presented as some kind of panacea.

I often hear coaches and supervisees talk about particular clients being

”uncoachable”. This can be based on an accurate assessment of the coachee’s

material, but also, at times, on a discounting of the part shame might be playing in

informing the quality of relationship between coach and coachee. When faced with a

client who appears defensive and resistant, it can be tempting to deflect away from

our own feelings of shame by labeling (and potentially shaming) our clients as

“uncoachable”. When supervisees talk of “uncoachable” clients, I often suggest they

experiment with reframing their experience as “right now I don’t know how to

proceed”. Where they feel sufficiently supported by my open and inquiring attitude,

they can usually find the support to go on thinking about themselves and their

coachees in ways that either further the work, or support a more detailed assessment

of what is going on in the coaching relationship.

Gestalt and other relational psychotherapies emphasize that client and practitioner are

involved in a dance of ongoing mutual and reciprocal influence (Orange, Atwood and

Stolorow, 1997; Hycner and Jacobs, 1995). This is to say that, moment-by-moment,

coaches and coachees subtly influence each other, and this contributes to the feelings

and thoughts that arise, the work that unfolds, and the learning that occurs – for both!

As self-experience is a direct consequence of this process, coach and client can be

thought of as co-constructing one another and their experience in the relationship.

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Case Example - Mike

A number of years ago I was coaching a senior HR professional in a manufacturing

organisation, whom I shall call Mike. I had gone through a standard contracting

process, and spent some time explaining the kind of coach I was and my ways of

working. He seemed comfortable with this and we contracted to work on developing

his leadership capability and presence. He said he was not confident and clear about

his leadership style and how he wanted to be with his new team, in a way that would

be both supportive and developmental.

As we began to explore his current thoughts and approaches to leadership and

surface areas for development, he appeared to become less engaged. His responses

to my open questions became less detailed and thoughtful, and he seemed to be

retreating from contact with me and the coaching process. It is significant that, in

spite of noticing this, I found myself unable to think about what this might be saying

about our relationship, and became more and more preoccupied with coming up with

the goods, and with feeling responsible for finding a way to engage him. Yet, the

harder I tried, the more distant and disconnected he became. I was feeling

increasingly anxious and had started doubting myself and my ability to be of use to

him.

In one session where I experienced him as particularly taciturn, I found myself

working extremely hard, thinking about all the different leadership models I had come

across, and feeling quite frantic as I trotted out more and more perspectives in the

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hope of coming up with something that might prove to be of interest. Eventually, I

started to feel irritated with him and made a confronting and rather punitive

interpretation that he was overwhelmed with the enormity of his challenges, and

might be disengaging as a way of managing his anxiety.

He looked at me with fury in his eyes and said with disdain “Oh that’s what’s

happening is it?”!

This pulled me up short. In what felt like a split second, I realized the extent to which

I had missed attending to the quality of our relationship and had failed to name what

I was experiencing. I realized that, given my own vulnerability and need to feel good

and competent, I had, myself, moved further away from him and an interest in his

experience. My comment about his disengagement was infused with this need to save

face and also, undoubtedly, a projection of my own withdrawal from relationship! I

also remembered that earlier he had mentioned an experience of a coach that had not

gone well for him. He described how she had insisted on telling him what he needed

to do and how he had felt de-skilled in the process.

I looked at him with mock seriousness and exaggerated gravitas in response to his

question. “Believe me“ I intoned firmly, “ I am your coach!”

He looked confused for a moment, then broke into a smile, this built into a deep belly

laugh, which I also joined in with. In that moment it felt as if a barrier had dissolved

between us and we could share in my self-deprecation and the intended irony of my

comment. This moment of humour relaxed something in the field of our relationship,

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and we were soon talking about how we had perhaps not got off to a very good start.

I owned the part I had played in getting busy, and perhaps being over-zealous in my

interventions. He was generous enough to disclose that his experience of the other

coach had made him suspicious of me and reluctant to fully engage.

This example illustrates the often subtle, yet powerful, unconscious ways in which

coaches and coachees can configure the relational field. Mike’s experience of his

previous coach was in the field at the start. I failed to register the possible

significance of this, suggesting that something of my own performance anxiety about

doing a good job had reduced my capacity to reflect on information that implied the

early stages of our contracting might need to be handled with particular care. Given

my own levels of anxiety at not being “effective”, I was unable to think about Mike’s

reluctance to engage and resorted to getting busier and busier, becoming, I imagined,

a version of the previous coach. I shared this thought with Mike who agreed I had at

times “spookily” resembled her. Out of conscious awareness, both Mike and I had

conspired to reenact something of his earlier coaching relationship. By being willing

to turn our attention to the quality of our relating (and how we had missed one

another!), we were able to create a new and novel encounter that eventually yielded

much learning for both of us.

As coaches we can over-identify with the ideals of our profession such as being able

to manage our feelings and be capable of the perfect intervention at all times. A

relational perspective allows us to consider that when we fail in some way, it may not

simply be as a result of our own limitations (although we need to monitor this as part

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of our ongoing development), but a manifestation of an aspect of the relationship with

our clients.

Working with a sensitivity to shame

As shame is an experience that is intimately bound up with the dynamics of relating

(Lee and Wheeler, 1996; Jacoby, 1991; Kaufman, 1989), working with a sensitivity to

shame calls for a concern with the quality of the relationship as it unfolds between

coach and coachee.

It has long been observed in the fields of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that

clients achieve transformative change on the basis of their experience of their

therapist and their relationship with him or her (Stern, 2004; Beebe and Lachmann,

2002).

Relational dynamics are now being considered for what they might have to offer the

process of coaching (De Haan, 2008). Where we can be sensitized to, and make use

of, the power of these qualitative, relational experiences, we open up the possibility of

developing deeper, more sustainable support and resilience in our clients for when

they find themselves in situations that may evoke shame and a diminishing of their

capability.

I shall now turn my attention to aspects of coaching and the coaching relationship that

can be attended to in service of working with a sensitivity to reducing shame and

increasing the resources of coachees.

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Contracting for relationship

Much contracting in coaching can concentrate on desired outcomes. In working with

a sensitivity to shame, it can be beneficial to turn attention towards the relationship

the coach and client might create. Fuller and Fridjhon (2005) suggest a process for

designing a “partnership alliance”. Here questions such as “what is the

culture/atmosphere we want to create together?”, “what would help this relationship

flourish?”, “how do we want to be together when it gets difficult?”, orientate both

coach and coachee to the relationship as a dynamic process that calls for conscious

and intentional management.

Stance of the coach

Different coaching theories acknowledge the importance of the coach’s attitude in

contributing to supporting the coachee’s development (Palmer and Whybrow, 2007;

Whitworth, Kimsey-House and Sandahl, 1998). Of particular relevance, when shame

is in the field, are attitudes such as compassion for self and other; acceptance of what

is; playfulness and lightness of touch; detachment and indifference to specific

outcome; curiosity and inquiry. Mindell (1995) calls these “metaskills” as opposed to

tools and technique. They are vital in evoking an emotional and relational field in

which clients are more likely to make use of our interventions.

Crucial to working with shame is a coach’s ability to be fully available. This is not

easy, as it means coming out from behind the shield of tools and technique, and being

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willing to be vulnerable, touched, impacted and moved by our coachees and willing to

share this with them where appropriate.

Monitoring the relational dance

This involves monitoring the moment-by-moment quality of the relational bridge

between coach and coachee, and noting and naming possible ruptures in order to

restore connection. The quality of the relational bridge and the coachee’s levels of

internal support are key factors in helping to determine the grading and timing of

more confronting interventions. These are a necessary and often extremely powerful

component in coaching, yet they must be practiced with sensitivity and alertness to

the quality of the relationship to try and ensure that the coachee can make effective

use of them. As coaches we will get it wrong by our clients from time to time. Here

it is important to be able and willing to reflect on those moments and own the part we

played in whatever rupture might have occurred, as in the example of Mike.

A concern for mutuality

Clients can project expertise and authority on to us as coaches. Whilst this may be

appropriate at times, we need to be alert to the part these projections can play in

making clients feel diminished and emptied of their own resources, which they have

placed onto the coach. Being willing to be human and name our own limitations can

be a powerful way of restoring moments of mutuality where asymmetrical power

relations may have arisen.

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Evocation and indirection

Related to a concern for mutuality is an attitude of gentle and interested inquiry that is

based on evocation and indirection. Phillips (1998) describes this as “having a stab at

hinting”. Here the coach’s questions and thoughts are offered in a light way along the

lines of “might it be possible that….have you thought of….?” The “I” of the coach is

intentionally diminished to reduce the possibility that the coachee will feel shamed by

the coach’s “superior” knowledge or authoritative opinion. These interventions are

particularly useful when exploring the nature of a coachee’s particular shame

dynamics and limiting belief systems. It can be of enormous benefit for coaches and

coachees if the coach views every intervention as an experiment in order to discover

what the coachee then does, or does not, make of it.

Education and normalization

Shame is experienced as a private and profoundly solitary phenomenon. Finding

ways to talk about it and normalize it can go a long way to reducing the tendency for

people to believe they are the only ones who suffer in this way. I have gone into

some detail in this paper to outline factors which can fuel shame, in order that coaches

might feel more open and resourced to talk about these phenomena and demonstrate

their ubiquity. In this way coachees are likely to benefit from feeling less isolated and

part of a human race which shares similar experiences, enabling them to think about

their own particular experience of shame. This supportive reflexivity can help to

relax the internal images and structures that keep shame in place. This represents a

departure from trying harder, attempting to force positivity, and doing more, which

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tends to work in the direction of shoring up self-images. Any experience of success,

and its attendant feelings of joy, will always be short-lived and feel precarious if the

individual is not able to integrate and normalize inevitable moments of vulnerability

and limitation.

Modeling support and reflection in the face of not knowing

As coaches we can, provided we have done the necessary work on ourselves, embody

and model a capacity to remain resourced and thoughtful when we are not sure how to

proceed. As a significant component in the forming of shame experiences is based on

internalizing negative beliefs and attitudes from others, internalizing more positive

experiences can go a long way to reducing susceptibility to shame. Over time,

coachees are likely to internalize a coach’s calm, supportive and reflective attitude,

which they will then be able to draw upon in themselves when faced with challenging

situations. By also surfacing the role of self-images in creating anxiety in the face of

limitation, which deviates from the individual and organisational ideal of

omniscience, it is more likely that coachees will be able to integrate the experience of

not knowing as a temporary and occasional realm of experience. This acceptance

supports the development of trust in their capacity to go on thinking and resourcing

themselves in the face of uncertainty. In this way, not knowing need no longer be

experienced as catastrophic, a source of defensiveness and shame, but a necessary

pre-cursor to meaning-making, discovery, learning and creativity. This can engender

resilience to “hang in” with complex change processes, and reflect on the experience

of chaos and confusion that accompanies individual and organisational

transformation.

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Embracing complexity

In working with a sensitivity to shame it can be helpful to take a more complex,

wider-field perspective on the coachee’s presenting issues. Coaching theory and

practice still tend to be shaped by the individualistic biases of the organisation and

sporting fields out of which they have arisen. This can lead to simplification and

reduction in the way meaning is made about the coachee’s experience and

development. Holding in mind the importance, and possible relevance, of multiple

voices and multiple meanings, allows coach and client to be less attached to seeking

the “right” answer. Individuals can be supported to make better use of tentative

hypotheses, insights and experiments to think and act differently, if their experience

can be located in a wider context, and the effects of system and relational dynamics

on their felt sense of worth examined.

Dis-identification with internalized negative self-images.

There are many approaches to working with negative self-images. These include

visualizations, working with affirmations, imagery and anchoring of positive states,

externalizing and dialoguing with the inner critic, to mention but a few. All

potentially have a place. I mention tools and techniques last because I wish to

emphasize the importance of attending to the quality of relationship between coach

and coachee in determining the usefulness of these approaches and the fact that,

without a sufficiently sensitive and attuned relationship, where shame is concerned,

they can become persecutory and ineffective.

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Conclusion

In working with shame, the dynamics of relating between coach and coachee offer a

potent way of undoing the historical shame templates and beliefs that are often

evoked in organisational and coaching interactions. Developing an internal image of

a supportive, sensitive and reflective coach, along with the feelings and thoughts this

then gives rise to, enables coachees to develop and draw upon a broader range of

internal resources, and counter any previous tendency to collapse into incapacitating

shame. Whenever a coachee says “ I was feeling really stuck and wobbly, then I

thought, what would Simon do right now?”, they are making use of an internalized set

of representations that they can mobilize in service of their own ability to think on

their feet. This is not that they are becoming clones of their coach! In fact they often

report making thoughtful and creative interventions that would never occur to me!

Rather, they are making use of an experience of being with their coach to activate and

develop their own reflective abilities, and to discover what they would do in a given

situation outside of the coaching room. Tools and technique undoubtedly have their

place in coaching. What I am proposing here is an approach that can also make

conscious use of relational principles, where the quality of a coach’s presence,

attunement to the coachee’s experience and their shared awareness contribute to the

relational crucible in which shame phenomena can be surfaced, explored and

transformed. This can then lead to a more reflective orientation to when shame arises,

and greater acceptance of self, including moments of limitation and not knowing.

This stands to cut across the common tendency in organisations to recoil from the

experience of vulnerability and limitation and develop ever more entrenched ways of

25

covering it up to oneself and to others with, for example, a drive to do more and more

to the point of burnout, or the pursuit of perfection to such an extent that

procrastination takes the place of action.

Working to unlock the clinch of shame in individuals and organisations seems a key

component in supporting realistic assessments of presenting problems, creativity and

greater range of response to complex situations and challenges.

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Simon Cavicchia, BA (Hons) (Oxon), MA, MSc, MSc (Gestalt Psychotherapy), Dip Supervision, UKCP. Simon is an executive coach, coach supervisor, organisation consultant and Gestalt psychotherapist. He is currently Joint Programme Leader of the MA/MSc in Coaching Psychology at the Metanoia Institute in London, and was, for 6 years, a visiting lecturer on the MSc in Change Agent Skills and Strategies at the School of Management, University of Surrey. He is a visiting faculty member at Ashridge Business College on both the Ashridge Masters in Organisation Consulting and Ashridge Masters in Executive Coaching. In his organisation work he has consulted at all levels in organisations, and is particularly interested in integrating relational perspectives from psychotherapy into coaching theory and practice, and researching how these perspectives can be used creatively in organisational settings. He has a private psychotherapy and supervision practice in London. He can be contacted at simon@i-thou.demon.co.uk