đź“ť Alex's scrapbook

Recent notes

My model of coaching

May 22, 20265 min read

  • Other relevant pages:
  • Why am I writing this up? For myself!
  • This is all super new to me, this realisation of “oh shit, I’ve been on this path for ~10 years, I’ve been gradually gathering the prerequisites and am now actually quite good at this stuff, amazing!”
  • So yeah, now that I’ve gathered the prerequisites, coaching in a way seems quite simple, or at least, the below model feels quite straightforward, and when I’m doing it, it really does feel like magic as a result of the whole “the prerequisites have been handled” thing. It feels like I’ve arrived here without realising this was where I was going
  • My model is something like:

1. Things are hard to face alone

  • Many things are hard-if-not-impossible to face alone1
  • I’m currently calling this Meta-problem-solving: most people have a problem about how they face their problems. They have some problems that they can’t sit down and soberly work through, because:

The problem is too stressful/aversive

  • Solo:
    • The problem is too stressful/aversive to look at2
  • With a friend:
    • The other person does not find your problem stressful/aversive, because it’s not their problem.
  • With a coach:
    • The coaching container involves an explicit aim to spend hours on this stuff (vs a friend who only has so much capacity)
    • The coach is intentionally remaining well-regulated during the conversation (unlike a friend who might get opinionated, worried, annoyed, overly partisan etc)3
    • You now have a calm, attuned presence who can take on the role of the person who scaffolds you through thinking about, talking about the problem, making it faceable.

The problem is hard to look at, semi-invisible

  • Solo:
    • You exist in the mess, in the conflicting feelings, in the murkiness
    • It could be said that you exist in the symptoms (“ahhh, I feel so stuck, it feels so bad, I’m so frustrated!”) but don’t have a clear view of the upstream root cause(s)4
    • If you had the answers, it wouldn’t be a problem. In a way, it’s a knowledge problem
  • With a friend:
    • Dialogue allows you to look at the problem more objectively; there’s a third party present who can see some amount of the problem from the outside
  • With a coach (or a co-thinker, as I think what I’m proposing below is more rare):
    • The other person can guide you through exploring the whole situation, mapping out the system of conflicting beliefs, worries, conflicting desires etc, making it gradually more visible, bringing the whole belief structure into the light, and crucially, finding the upstream cruxes that are causing the downstream symptoms of e.g. stuckness, frustration

Lacking belief that you’ll make progress

  • Solo:
    • Coupled with “it’s aversive to sit and think about this” is a feeling of helplessness: “ok, I could journal about the problem, but then what??”
  • With a friend:
    • You might have an insight or two, maybe?
  • With a coach:
    • This is a person who has invested hundreds or thousands of hours into relevant skills, e.g. for me, I’m good at remaining regulated, asking good questions, noticing my own confusion and as a result asking for more info to make sure I’m understanding the system, taking notes and simplifying these into maps and models, spotting cruxes, making people feel at ease, etc. And I have genuine aliveness to figure this stuff out because it just suits my personality/preference landscape really well

2. It’s hard to have continuity/momentum

  • Solo, we have a million conflicting plans, goals, distractions, etc
  • In a coaching container (especially a co-thinking container where the coach (me) is a nerd who is making thorough maps and planning future threads to explore asynchronously), there is continuity between sessions, and an explicit focus/goal.
  • The fact that your problem/set of presenting symptoms (e.g. “I feel so stuck and frustrated and I know I want x to be different!”) and the desired outcome exists in the brain of another person is really key IMO. It has now been externalised, and it is now known by a well-regulated, non-stressed-about-the-whole-thing other.

Footnotes

  1. I think there’s a continuum here - some people, let’s call them super securely attached, super well regulated/well-adjusted people, will be outliers who can totally sit down and face their problems and work on them, as they have a background feeling of safety and “it’s going to be ok”, etc ↩

  2. And of course, aversion is one of the 3 core “defilements” in Buddhism’s (IMO very legit) model of our phenomenology, it’s pervasive, it rules us, we slide right off aversive things, often without even realising. And when this happens unconsciously, when things become quietly unthinkable/unfaceable because we bounce off them the moment they appear in our awareness, a LessWrong user gave this the label of “ugh field”, which is kinda great (link) ↩

  3. E.g. in Art of Accomplishment’s VIEW framework (for ~peer coaching), the I is for impartiality. As soon as a coach starts to genuinely worry about your problem and feel that it must be resolved (that is, getting partial), they’ve gone wrong (IMO), and are now reinforcing the person’s belief that “things are not ok until I resolve this thing”. This is what can often happen when talking about a problem with a family member or a friend. Very common IMO to e.g. talk to a part about a problem and for them to either give an “it’s easy, do this!” thing, or get stressed on your behalf (so you know have two nervous systems amplifying the “this is bad!!!” signal, making the problem even more stressful) ↩

  4. A key part of adult development psychologist Robert Kegan’s model of how we develop is that we go from being subject to a belief, to being able to step back from it and see/treat it as an object. We go from swimming in it like a fish in water, held by it (without realising), to being able to look at it, to hold it, interact with it. ↩

Graph View

Backlinks