The Coach’s Voice
A coach’s voice matters when a coach struggles to find an authentic, natural way to speak about their work, particularly in the years after training when tools become comfortable and skill sets feel more robust. The question of, “Who am I here, in this space?” begins to assert itself. As an artist, I see that there is no equivalent of an artist studio to experiment and get creative with the coach’s voice. A studio in this context is not referring to the physical space to practice or make art, but a group of students working with a mentor, who get together regularly to study, and to present and discuss the development of their new works. It is my opinion that, without a commitment to experiment with our voices, the coaching profession is at risk to move towards a flattening of language; vague jargon has become the primary way to communicate ideas, most of them “cringe”.
One antidote to this downward slide is by reading materials from various disciplines, cultures, and time periods that are pertinent to coaching. In doing so, we encounter the voices of different people speaking to the fundamental concerns of coaching, but from outside of the coaching profession. We get grounded in the fact that the fundamental concerns of coaching are perennial, and that we are a part of the long history that inquires into what it is to be a human being. We can tune our ear to other ways of speaking about the things we care about.
Coaching--this weird, late-20th century, post-capitalistic amalgam of consulting and self-help—is, at its heart, neither truly consulting nor self-help. When we move beyond an organizational or personal goal, we see fundamental concerns such as: How does a person become one’s best self? What is a person’s role, “here” (in a local circumstance) or in the larger world? What will a person “do” and to what end? What is the deeper purpose, if any, of that “doing”? What is needed for a person to be healthy, happy, thriving? What is it to have one’s actions and life be in alignment with one’s values and gifts? How does a person work and live well with others? And so on. These concerns are not unique to coaching—or consulting, or self-help, or therapy, or any other number of practices or disciplines. These concerns are the concerns of being a human being, to be met through whatever modality one is lucky enough to encounter, and heard through whatever voice speaks to the individual. Artists, philosophers, theologians, scientists, theorists, educators, and more, have been addressing questions like these through all of time. We are just the latest iteration, one potentially useful modality, through which these questions may be addressed.
By reading different texts that approach and reflect on human nature, the human experience, and the role of humanity in our world, we expand our thinking and the language we use to think those thoughts. The exposure to different perspectives gives us implicit permission to formulate our own perspective and language as coaches.
Consider that the voice, for the purposes of coaching, has three aspects:
• The first aspect of the voice is a coaching perspective, or philosophy. A lack of a coaching philosophy looks like, “I don’t even know what coaching is,” or “Does coaching even work?” These are sentiments expressed by coaches—not clients!—who are adrift or disconnected from their reason to be a coach. I am not speaking of the desire to be of service or help people. I am talking about an existential anchor for the pursuit of coaching itself; the “why coaching exists” according to an individual coach. Again, this is distinct from why a coach coaches (“I coach because….”). What it “is” or whether it “works” begins as a personal, philosophical assertion, likely based in beliefs, values or an ethos. This is where the wisdom of one’s practice lives. This is where a coach is drilled into a fundamental belief, or even faith, in what coaching affords human beings and the human experience.
• The second aspect of a coach’s voice is their practice, process, or methodology. A lack of clarity around methodology can be a pain point for coaches in their experience of their own voices. Issues in methodology may look like coaches who are creative but do not give themselves permission to create outside the box of their training, or coaches who work in multiple modalities but are blocked from integrating them into a defined coaching practice. Coaches anchored in a training or the ICF competencies have their methodology, it’s flat. Developing a methodology that goes beyond training and competencies takes time and experimentation and, if a coach takes this on, is essential for the coach to mature through the eventual marriage of their philosophy with their methodology.
• The third aspect of a coach’s voice is a style or way. This is the deeply personal, often ineffable, entirely qualitative, and purely phenomenological aspect of the voice. The way of a coach is as unique as individual people are. It includes but goes beyond how a coach presents themselves. While a methodology often reflects the style of a given coach, on the deepest level, the way or style of a coach is what brings humanity to the coaching methodology and philosophy. It is both the manifestation—and model—of integration: who one is, where one came from, what one believes, how one thinks, and how a person experiences themselves as fully alive. Simply said, your way is your joy.
While exploring the voice, it is valuable to put distance between the self and any outward facing content or need (images, language, marketing tactics, attention on an audience, or niche, etc.). Naturally, the voice evolves over the course of a coach’s career. It necessarily comes from within, not from without. Being in real relationship with the self, able to encounter oneself fully as one is and is not, is part of what gives any coach the power to speak in their full voice, and to have earned the inner authority to speak to another’s process.
And so to close, I leave you with three questions:
What do you believe?
How do you work?
What is your way?
© 2024 by Marita Bollici. All Rights Reserved.
