the art of lingering in coaching and leadership · 2019-11-26 · lunchtime lecture 10 april eu...

Lunchtime lecture 10 AprilEU Commission

Reinhard Stelter www.rstelter.dk 1

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2019 QUT Leadership Coaching Conference: Crossing Boundaries

The Art of Lingering in Coaching and LeadershipTowards transformative exchange

Reinhard StelterProfessor of Sport- and Coaching Psychology

Coaching Psychology UnitDepartment of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports (NEXS) University of Copenhagen (UCPH)

Visiting professorMaster of Public GovernanceCopenhagen Business School & UCPH

Email: [email protected]

www.rstelter.dk – www.nexs.ku.dk/coaching

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Short presentation

• Professor of Sport & Coaching Psychology, University of Copenhagen

• Visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School (Master of Public Governance), and CBS Executive

• PhD in psychology. Further education in psychotherapy, coaching and leadership. Accred. coaching psychologist (International Society for Coaching Psychology)

• Research interest in coaching, self & identity, learning, leadership

• Invited Founding Fellow of the Institute of Coaching Professional Association at Harvard

• Member of the Scientific Advisory Council (2009-16) –Institute of Coaching, Harvard Medical School

• Honorary Vice President of the International Society for Coaching Psychology (2009-) and former board member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, EMCC (Danish Chapter)

• Own coaching and consultancy practice

• “The Coaching Book of the Year 2019” Award from Henley Business School

Rein

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Reinhard Stelter - Coaching Psychology Unit



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Crossing boundaries Germany 9 Nov. 1989


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Crossing boundaries Germany as a society is still struggling to work things out …




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My intention with this lecture

I wish to cross boundaries in regard to a renewed understanding of coaching and what I would like to describe as transformative dialogue

I would like to highlight numerous societal aspects as argument for the necessity to renew coaching & personal leadership

Present an approach to transformative dialogue that also might be used as basis for dialogical leadership


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Societal changes

We live in a world of globality(Beck, 2002)

... in a hypercomplex society(Luhmann, 1998)

... where self-reflexivity is a basic condition (Giddens, 1999)

... where identity and self-presentation are a central issue for the individual (Gergen, 1999)

(See also Stelter, 2014)



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”The Burnout Society”by Byung-Chul Han, 2015

20th century: Immunological age:• We could distinguish between inner and outer,

friend and enemy, between own and foreign.

Today: Supremacy of positivity• Satiation, overcapacity, communication overload, hyperactivity, multitasking,

shallow attention

• Consequences: Tiredness, exhaustion, stress, depression, ADHD

Individuals become subjects and victims of their own performance and thereby their own worst enemy

Power control grows through surveillance of one’s own performance – Motto: Yes, we can!

Control society: Self-disciplining intensifies, especially through social media and many report systems


Societal challenges

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Societal challenges

New ways of developing knowledge & learning

• Formerly accepted ”authorities” (e.g., leaders, teachers) have lost their monopoly of knowledge

• Knowledge is now situated and is shaped in specific contexts and working situations

• Team coaching will be the new way of learning and development




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Societal challenges

New challenges in leadership

Leadership means handling complexity

• Both leaders and employees have to handle growing complexity in our working life, organizations, and in society in general.

• Contingency = ’ something else is also possible and right’

= impossible to find unequivocal solutions ”it depends”

• Leadership means handling these contingencies – knowing that it is impossible to create clarity, safety, and security.


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Reflective leadership

• We need to accept and value the permanent reflective space

• Reflective leadership means to move away from an operative closeness towards a self-observing reflexivity where the leadership system observes its own way of thinking and acting

• The focus is to lead from a contextual view point

• Second order leadership: to adopt a meta position and be reflective in regard to one’s own self-reflectivity




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Polyphonic leadership

• The leader’s ability to speak across diverse positions in the organization and put words to different voices & competencies

• This means: Organizations need to be dynamic with a less hierarchically structure than just some decades ago

• Leaders have to live up to organizational demands about multiperspectivity, inclusiveness, negotiation, andresponsiveness


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Leadership is dialogue-oriented and involving

• There is a need to overcome traditional ideas of total control in organizations

• Leaders have to work towards establishing support for the mission and vision of the organization by introducing a collaborative culture

• Leaders need to be team-player and complementary partner (also in leadership teams)

• Leaders need to strengthen relationships and the identity in the organization

The goal is: To form relation-based organizations




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Leader as coach – how can that work?


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Leader & coach –this can be a dangerous cocktail?

Kirkeby, professor of leadership philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, warns us:

Coaching is an intimate technology. Like in the brothels in St. Pauli and Amsterdam, where you can open a couple of small hatches in a wall and check out the breasts of your selected prostitute in order to test the goods, coaching can open a few tiny hatches in the coachee’s front.

Then the manager can check the amount of commitment meat on the soul. Let’s just hope that he can pull his hand out again.

Coaching is an intimate technology. It is intimidating because it combines the gazes of the confessor, the interrogator and the executioner.

The interrogator goes for confessions. The executioner goes for blood-letting, he is a surgeon of profession. The confessor’s currency is remorse.

When this mix is balanced properly, one arrives at the condition of ‘utterly and completely brain-washed’

(quoted and translated by Stelter 2014, p. 22).




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Openness, meaning and value reflection-

central for the art of lingering in dialogue


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DialogueThe Art of Thinking together(William Isaacs, 1999)

Dialogue fulfills deeper, more widespread needs than simply ‘getting to yes’. The aim of a negotiation is to reach agreement among parties who differ.

The intention of dialogue is to reach new understanding and, in doing so, to form a totally new basis from which to think and act.

In dialogue, one not only solves problems, one dissolves them. We do not merely try to reach agreement, we try to create a context from which many new agreements might come.

And we seek to uncover a base of shared meaning that greatly help coordinate and align our actions with our values.

(p.19)




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Value reflection pivotal for the Art of Lingering

Values are a central part of our identity. Focusing on values is a reflection on themost central part of our life.

Values represent “a possible mode of certainty” (Kirkeby, 2009,

155).

Value evolve through ethical imagination based on deliberate and intuitive judgment.

Values are a guide for our lived knowledge and practical wisdom

Values are the basis for a readiness to act


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Coaching - a transformative dialogue

• Coaching is a very fuzzy concept

• I talk about transformative dialogues

• It is important to develop sustainability in people, meaning to find a stance – a value ground on which to live and act




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What needs to be different in coaching as a transformative dialogue – as the art of lingering?


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Third generation coaching as a

transformative dialogue


Partly asymmetric relation

With moments of symmetry

3G Coach /

Dialogue guide

Self-reflection

Dialogue partner/ coachee

Challenge / theme

Co-refleksion

The dialogue guide supports her partner in their reflective process

The dialogue guide is a resonating partner and sharing witness in the dialogue

The dialogue guide is a fellow-human and collaborative partner



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Lingering inThird Generation Coaching

Relationship – moments of symmetry

Symmetric relation as the ideal-typical state : Both sides are dialogical partners. They co-create reality in collaboration

Inspiration can go both ways

R Stelter - Univ. of Copenhagen

The dialogue guide is resonating about what is said by his/her dialogue partner.

Dialogue as a transformational learning process for all parts

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Third Generation Coaching (3GT) as transformative dialogue

• 3GT will secure the integrity of both parties

• 3GT moves away from a narrow goal perspective

• 3GT forms a reflective space

• 3GT allows moments of symmetry between both parts

• 3GT is meaning-making in collaboration

• 3GT is value-oriented and develops a readiness to act




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Leaders need to combine multiple positions

The leader is a servant (“willing to die for the community”)

The leader is a team player

The leader is meta-level observer

The leader is a decision maker

The leader is a inspiring, value-based dialogical partner (a third generation coach)


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In conclusion

How to be a valuable dialogue partner?

Be a good listener – this is the no.1 dialogue qualification

Be sensitive – a withness thinker (J. Shotter, 2006)

Ask questions that help to see things from a different perspective

Relate to yourself through the other – be a co-reflecting partner

Do not push! Wait for Kairos! – the right or opportune moment

Cultivate the art of lingering in dialogue!

Be a resonating body in the reflective process!




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All the best on you way!


Thank you for your attention!

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References

• Beck, U. (2000). What is globalization? Oxford: Politiy

• Gergen, K.J. (1999). The saturated self – Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic

• Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity – Self and society in late modern age. Oxford: Polity.

• Kirkeby, O. F. (2009). The new protreptic – the concept and the art. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press.

• Luhmann, N. (1998). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

• Stelter, R. (2009). Coaching as a reflective space in a society of growing diversity -towards a narrative, postmodern paradigm. International Coaching Psychology Review, 4, 2, 207-217.

• Stelter, R. (2014). Third-generation coaching– striving towards value-oriented and collaborative dialogues. International Coaching Psychology Review, 9, 1, 33-48.

• Stelter, R. (2014). A guide to third generation coaching. Narrative-collaborative theory and practice. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media.

• Stelter, R. (2019). The Art of Dialogue in Coaching: Towards Transformative Exchange. New York, NY: Routledge. Coaching Psychology https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351006545


https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351006545

the art of lingering in coaching and leadership · 2019-11-26 · lunchtime lecture 10 april eu...

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