Transformational coaching without "digging deep"

“Digging deep” is a metaphor used in the coachosphere to describe coaching sessions that are meaningful and transformational rather than transactional. A session where the client talks about their “values” is deemed “deeper” than a session where the client makes a plan for an upcoming presentation. I personally don’t really understand coaches’ (and credentialing agencies’) preferences for “deep” coaching when it is certainly the client’s prerogative to chose what would be most helpful for them in the session, but the trope does seem to exist in coaches’ conversations. In my view, every conversation that is about change (even imagined change) will help the client discover what they want, who they would like to be and what they might do to get there. Small changes can have big ripple effects in the client’s life. Looking for huge “AHA-moments” and transformations IN the session may be a red herring – actually, we are looking for transformations AFTER the session.

Also, I mentioned in my blog post on “First do no harm”, “digging deep” can be dangerous. In their effort to have a more meaningful conversation, coaches can invite clients to solidify the problem, make it seem more difficult to handle than it is or, in the worst case, invite the client to re-construct a “hidden” trauma.

There are ways to invite clients to talk about what is meaningful to them and to invite them to consider shifts which avoid both the trap of the coach aiming for a transformation that the client does not want and the danger of making the problem bigger. Here are a few:

Ask for a detailed description of what is wanted

When we ask the client to describe what they want (instead) and ask them to describe their life when they have what they want, they will construct a rich description of a desired future with them in it. Doing so, they will also describe “who” they will be in that future. When we ask perspective change questions, for example: “How will your partner notice that you are happier?”, we invite the client to see themselves acting as “who they want to be” in the future.

Externalize the problem

If the client wants to talk about a problem, we can invite them to see “the problem as the problem” and not themselves. We could ask what relationship they would like with the problem, for example: “What would you like to say to ‘your perfectionism’?” We can facilitate an imaginary dialogue with the problem to invite the client to discover agency and “who” they would like to be.

Inquire into the past of what is valued

If the client mentions that they value something, for example “honesty”, the coach might ask if the client would like to explore this a bit more to strengthen it. We don’t have to fall into the language trap of seeing “honesty” as a value inside the person that is driving them, which is an essentialist notion robbing the client of the awareness of their context and support in the community. We could ask something like: “Where did you learn that ‘honesty’ is important?” and invite rich, concrete and localized descriptions. To help clients utilize what they value, we could ask: “If you connected even more strongly with ‘honesty’ what would be different in the future?”

As you can see, we can have meaningful, “deep” conversations without falling into causal and essentialist language traps and without making the problem harder to solve. It takes some training to spot where language leads us into self-produced quagmires – a solution focused, narrative or collaborative training is a great starting point.

If you want to explore these quagmires, have fun, learn about our courses, why not join one of our free meetups and exchanges?

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