
Several years ago I had a dream of being at the edge of a cliff. In the dream, I hear a voice saying, “don’t back up” in a very directive tone. My position in the dream is unclear. Am I facing the open air beyond the edge of the cliff, or am I facing the safety of the land? If I back up, would I go over the edge and tumble into the abyss, or would I back up onto firm ground? I am also uncertain about the identity and source of the voice. It’s a presence more than a person.
This simple dream has been insistent in my recall, and I have worked with it a great deal, seeking to understand its unconscious wishes and enigmatic meanings. I dreamt it shortly after the death of Pat Adson, an influential coach in the institute where I originally trained, who died several years ago in her 90’s. A colleague visited Pat’s deathbed and asked what final wisdom she wanted to impart. Pat’s words were, “don’t wait,” a message that touched this visiting colleague and prompted her to convey Pat’s final words to many others. One interpretation is that the dream was a sort of echo, a slight transformation and specification of Pat’s message. Another interpretation is a wish to stay at the edge, neither backing up over the brink nor moving onto safer ground. Staying at the edge is also a metaphor for remaining on the fringe rather than the middle of things, which makes me think of Kurt Vonnegut’s saying that you can see more from the edge than from the centre. The interpretations and associations can go on and on.
I have found myself in many different landscapes looking over the edge of a cliff and thinking of this dream again and again. The echoes continue. The invitation to write this reflection was yet another one, this time an invitation to create a ‘cliff narrative’ about the formation of coaching identity. How has becoming a coach been a way of staying at the edge?
When people ask me questions about the beginnings of becoming a coach – “How long have you been a coach?” or “When did you start coaching?” – I answer that there are two ways of seeing it. One is the origin story of the professional path, and the other is the personal formation.
Professionally, I was a consultant who performed strategy studies and offered support in the implementation of new strategies. I gravitated to the part of the work that involved dialogue with client leaders about the role of their own behaviour and mindset in making change happen in their organizations. I got into designing and facilitating experiential learning events in support of this and eventually moved into executive coaching because I enjoyed working with people one-on-one more than with teams or larger groups.
To prepare for a coaching credential, I studied at the Hudson Institute, a program that includes a substantial grounding in psychological and developmental theories. In the succeeding years, many other formal training programs have added layers to the Hudson foundation. Offerings from unconventional sources have been a source of great influence. For example, I completed a program in becoming a death doula, centring on the study of conscious dying and deepening my appreciation for, and practical knowledge about, ways of working with the ultimate transition, the ever-present ending, the final cliff.
My encounter with Lacanian psychoanalysis is another unconventional strand which continues to shape the coach I am becoming. Lacan famously reinterpreted a quote from Freud, which in German would be “woe es var, soll ich werden,” often translated as “where it was, there shall I be” and which Lacan interpreted as “where it was, I shall be becoming.” I take this to mean that there is something about that “it,” that force in our life, that helps us or insists in us or requires us to keep becoming. My encounter with these ideas began with a book by Annie Rogers, which led to a personal analysis, which led to attending years of seminars, and now I find myself hosting a seminar, giving talks about Lacan and coaching, becoming a candidate at a school of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and describing myself as an analytic coach.
In addition to professional strands of becoming, there are also personal ones. I grew up in a household with a brother who was troubled from a very young age. The word used to describe him back then was ‘rambunctious.’ He had a high IQ, a learning disability that impaired his ability to write, and an emotional volatility that unpredictably erupted in hostile aggressivity. In today’s world he might have been diagnosed with ADHD or oppositional disorder or some combination. There was a lot of family therapy and various forms of accommodation for my brother, many of which didn’t make sense to me, or felt unjust to me, penalized me, limited me.
And so, I was frequently asking, why are we doing things this way? Do we have to do things this way? I think these are fundamental coaching questions about the reason why things are the way they are, and to ask, are there other possibilities?
Fear of my brother’s fury had great power in the household. The prime directive was “don’t provoke him and don’t let him provoke you.” The firm installation of these words in my psyche shaped me profoundly. I learned all sorts of ways to enjoy provoking him on the sly, my favourite being the silent treatment. I also learned all sorts of ways to maintain equanimity amidst chaos. Even with years of reflective practices to shed light on and undo some of this unconscious patterning, I am certain that this history continues to shape my identity and thus colour the way I work as a coach.
The recognition of becoming a coach from the very beginning as a role in the household didn’t occur to me until relatively recently. As Kierkegaard says, we live our lives forward, and make sense of them backwards.
Taking up a coach-like role in the household was a response not only to my brother, but also to my parents. My father was an alcoholic and a gambling addict – – fun, affectionate, hedonistic – – and also quite troubled. My mother was a very unusual woman, a pioneer for her era, one of the first women in the engineering profession. She specialized in HVAC systems for high rise buildings. She had many of the stereotypical engineer qualities. She was brilliant, a concrete thinker, aloof, and had very little attunement or natural human connection capability. She had no friends, and very little EQ. If she were a child in school today, she would probably be considered on the spectrum. I am proud of my mother and learned a great deal from her about being a professional woman, but as a kid, I was always looking for surrogate mothers, for surrogate mothering, and fortunately I found what I needed in many places. Perhaps I was drawn into coaching as a way of becoming that surrogate myself, trying to see and hear others in ways I always longed to be seen and heard.
Another strand that stands out in my becoming coach is my work as an RA, a Resident Assistant, in the university dormitories. It’s a role as peer leader that includes a kind of coaching. Have you heard that there is an epidemic of mental health issues and emotional distress on university campuses? My experience suggests that this is not a new phenomenon. In the 1980’s, residents in my building would come to my room to sit on my couch, (literally, I did have a couch), and talk to me about all kinds of things. My RA training included the first instruction I’d ever received in how to listen and ask open questions and make referrals. This was the start of becoming more skilful in these foundational acts of coaching.
Questions about the origins of becoming a coach braid these and so many other strands together. I’m still, and always will be, in the process of becoming coach. These days, I see the process of becoming coach entangled with becoming artist, and becoming more of who I am in all kinds of ways, and finding ways to name what I am.
I have a great deal of trouble with the word ‘coach.’ It has come to be a signifier that says something, to generate an assumed meaning, but it doesn’t say what I want it to say. It doesn’t say enough. Or maybe it says too much. But it says something that’s recognizable that other people can hang their associations onto. When I say what I actually like to say, it feels good coming out of my mouth: I have an analytic studio, a space where things happen, and where we can create. No one knows what an analytic studio is. It sounds like maybe I’m a kind of drama teacher. And perhaps that’s partly true. I’ve been using more and more techniques from psychodrama in my coaching and the man in my life is a gifted practitioner of psychodrama.
I’ve also been inviting dreamwork into my coaching practice. I have been interested in my dreams for decades, ever since an early therapist encouraged me to pay attention to them. This question of becoming coach and what it means to coach or to be a coach has been showing up in my dreams. I’ve had several dreams about trains and train stations. Of course, trains are made up of coaches. I’ve dreamed about jumping the tracks. I wonder about all of these meanings and associations. There are a lot of other things going on in the coaches and train stations in these dreams, and many layers and interpretations to consider.
In addition to working with my own dreams, I have invited some of my clients to pay attention to their dreams and speak about them, and they tell me that’s been interesting and fruitful for them.
Dreams arise from the realm of the unconscious. Christopher Bollas offers a way of thinking about the unconscious as ‘the unthought known’ – – something we know enough about to dream, but haven’t brought to conscious thought. I’m convinced that there is a great deal to be gained by attending to the unknown, to honor, trust, and make space for what is unknown and unconscious. Or am I going over the cliff here? Is dreamwork suitable domain for someone who still calls herself a coach?
If something is becoming to you, it means that it looks good on you. Is being a coach becoming to me? Does it become me to be a coach?