Compassion and coaching

Category: General

John Duncan There are a couple of questions that have been puzzling me since I first got involved with coaching some three years ago. First, “What drives people to become coaches and spend their time acting as change agents for others?” Put another way “Why spend your life helping others to achieve their full potential instead of just fulfilling your own?”

The second question concerns rapport. I understand that building rapport is a vital element in any form of relationship and is particularly important if we are to coach effectively. But what is it about human nature that demands that sort of connection?

Regarding the motivation behind coaching I can see of course that there is a clear business opportunity to be had from coaching private individuals or corporate organisations. But I sense that there is a deeper force motivating coaches to share and impart their skill. From watching and listening to people who have been coaching for some time it seems to me that there is a common thread that runs throughout their approach. I would characterise it as a passion for what they do combined with a compassion for people. As well as being deeply satisfying from a subjective viewpoint, the transformation that coaching delivers in others seems to catalyse a chain reaction within coaches, generating an ambition to bring that chance of fulfilment to as wide an audience as possible.

There are, I think, three possible explanations for this compassionate ambition, which also provide a rationalization behind our apparent need for empathy and rapport. Each explanation provides alidity for whatever standpoint you hold regarding human behaviour and the mind, be it spiritual, philosophical or psychological.

The French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin first postulated the evolution of consciousness in the nineteen thirties. However, his work was considered so out of tune with Roman Catholic doctrine at the time that it was not published until after his death in 1955. In his book “The Phenomenon of Man”⁽¹⁾ he argues that there exists an envelope around the world formed entirely of human thought that he termed the noosphere (derived from the Greek “noos” meaning soul or consciousness). It is today sometimes described as a “world wide web of the mind”. He believed that humanity was moving towards a unified organ of consciousness and that we are on the threshold of a collective reflection. He describes a force “driving us together into a contact which tends to perfect each one of us by linking him organically to each and all his neighbours.”⁽¹⁾

A hundred years before de Chardin, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, building on the works of Immanuel Kant, expounded a similar but non-spiritual position. He believed that outside the world of experience there is a single undifferentiated reality beyond time and space. Logically this means that we as individuals are “In the ultimate ground of our being … one and undifferentiated ⁽²⁾.” Taking this a step further Schopenhauer believed that this is the basis of our human compassion, namely “the ability of each of us to identify with one another, feel for one another and share each others suffering and joy ⁽²⁾.” Personally, I interpret this is as the reason why empathy and rapport are of such importance in any human interaction and specifically within the coaching relationship.

At about the same time that de Chardin was writing “The Phenomenon of Man”, Carl Jung ⁽³⁾ was developing his ideas of the collective psyche or unconsciousness. Jung broke this down into two components - archetypes and instincts. The latter were largely biologically driven and directed towards behaviour geared to survival. Archetypes on the other hand seemed to Jung to represent a collective set of human psychic responses to phenomena that is common to all cultures. By extension this means that our unconscious minds respond communally to a given set of circumstances, further reinforcing the idea that there is some be deep-rooted basis of why rapport is so important in any relationship.

So here we have a theologian, a philosopher and a psychoanalyst who, from separate and very distinct starting points, are drawn to similar conclusions about the intrinsic interdependency of each one of us and the rest of our society. Whatever their premise, whatever position one feels more comfortable with, all these explanations provide sufficient commonality in their propositions to lead me to believe that there is indeed some common and overarching selfless motivation that drives coaches to share their experience and knowledge. It also seems to me to be no coincidence that each explanation also directly leads to an insight into that part of our nature that seems to intrinsically desire a bond based on trust and empathy.

I would like to close with the following words from George Bernard Shaw, which in many ways sum up this compassionate drive behind coaching.

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making me happy.

“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole of the community and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.

" I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

References:

(1) Tiellhard de Chardin P, 1975 Edition, The Phenomenon of Man, Harper Colophon, USA

(2) Magee B, 1998,The Story of Philosophy, Dorling Kindersley, London

(3) Hyde M & McGuinness M, 1999, Introducing Jung, Icon Books, Duxford

John Duncan is Director of Huxley Strategic Choice,
and specialises in Transition Management and Executive Coaching. John is currently working with Brefi Group on a project in the steel industry.