How to coach while dealing with fear and uncertainty.
Anyone who works with people to facilitate change needs to understand that there are restraining forces holding the status quo in place. The consequence of this is that when individuals ask you to help them change there will usually be some sort of resistance. In this article I will suggest how to work with the resistance rather than ignoring or buying into it. As the article is written from the perspective of a coach I will refer to the problem owner as "the client".
Many people have an instinctive reaction when someone brings them a problem. They might:
- Give advice
- Make suggestions
- Try and put the problem into perspective
- Sympathise
It is easy to assume we are under some kind of obligation to give a response like this. After all if the person has brought us their problem and they are unhappy aren't we under an obligation to help? And for most people help = making suggestions or sympathising.
However if we respond in this way, to some extent, we take ownership of the issue away from the person involved. We do so because we believe the person is asking for help (which is true) and the way we should help them is by making suggestions (which is not necessarily true).
Let us examine a real scenario where one person was trying to help another. This conversation was recounted to me by a client called James. James had a friend called Mary who worked as an administrator in a legal firm. She was unhappy with her job and came around to see James. The conversation went something like this.
Mary "I am sick of this job, if I have to deal with my b-----d of a boss for one more day I will go insane No one give me any support, I have not had a pay rise for 2 years and I'm going nowhere".
James "Well have you thought of working as a legal temp? You could earn more money".
Mary "No I have a mortgage I could not take the risk"
James "What about applying for a new job?"
Mary "Who is going to employ me at my age?"
James "What about retraining?"
Mary "I can't start on something new now - it's too late"
James "Oh never mind - have a drink!"
Problem solved until the next time.
I am sure you get the idea. Offering someone a quick solution to their problem often gets the response 'Yes but…'
It might be tempting at this point to think "Well blow them! If they don't want my perfectly good ideas they deserve to remain stuck". While this is a very normal and human reaction it does not take into account the real dilemma most people find themselves in when they want to make a significant change in their lives.
People (generally) do not wilfully turn down an offer of help. But while we often genuinely want to change a difficult or bad situation we also fear loosing what we know because we are afraid of what might replace it. The coach should bear in mind that any significant change usually involves dealing with mixed feelings of both wanting to stay with the status quo and wanting to create a better situation.
Let us look in more detail at why change is often difficult. There are two important reasons that significant change is not straightforward for most people.
- Fears about the future
- Habitual behaviour
Fear about the future
Our minds are very powerful. And the most important role of the mind is to ensure both it and ourselves survive. Anything that the mind perceives as threatening will be dismissed or forgotten about whenever possible. So if the thought 'I want to change my job' comes into our minds it is followed almost instantly by the thought that this could be dangerous - which is almost immediately followed by the thought "I can't do it". This process happens almost instantaneously, without us being conscious of it, because the mind is programmed protect against all known fears. The result is we end up unhappy and unable to change.
There are two types of fears that generally trap people. The first comes from experiences in the past and the second is fear of the unknown.
Fear caused by experiences in the Past
There is a story from India at how baby elephants are tied up with a rope around their leg attached to a stake. If the elephant tries to escape the rope chafes against its leg which hurts. So the baby elephant learns not pull against the rope. When the elephant is older it can still be chained up the same size and rope and stake. Because it has learnt that it will get hurt if it tries to escape. Even though it could easily pull the stake out now it is a fully grown. So the elephant's fear holds it in place despite there being no real risk of being hurt now.
This is the equivalent of many experiences that we carry in our heads. We know that there are times in the past when we tried to change and got hurt as a result. So we 'forward project' and imagine that if we were to try a similar change now we would get hurt again. Our subconscious minds have not 'grown up'. As far as the mind is concerned we are still as young and vulnerable as when we were hurt in the first place. A lot of people are held immobile by their fear - just like that grown up elephant.
Fear of the unknown
Many years ago when I was working in outplacement, I heard many people say "I'm really pleased to be made redundant, I hated that job". By letting them go the company had actually done them a favour by forcing change in a situation where they were unhappy but felt powerless to change by themselves. Although they really disliked what they were doing the fear of leaving it was so great they were held immobile. And the unknown is the biggest fear there is.
Fear will cause people to stay in a really unsatisfactory situation, complaining and being disappointed in life rather than taking action which will lead them to get better situation. By avoiding the risks they maintain the status quo but the personal cost to themselves and the people around them can be high.
Habitual behaviour
There is a folk law story about men and mice. If you have three tubes and you put a piece of cheese in the end of one of them a mouse when first given the puzzle will investigate each tube and find the one with the cheese in. After a while if you keep putting the cheese in one tube - say tube three, the mouse will quickly learn the cheese is always down tube three and will go straight to tube three to get it's reward. Now if the cheese is removed after a few times the mouse will go down tube three to find the cheese and then realise it is no longer there and stop looking.
The difference between a mouse and a human in this situation is that, even though you have removed the cheese, the human will keep going down tube three to find the cheese again and again because he knows that cheese is found down tube three. Once we have been 'rewarded' for certain behaviour human beings have a tendency to keep repeating that behaviour over and over again even when it does not give us what we need.
This force of habit and trying to gain a reward from the wrong places can keep a client firmly stuck in negative patterns even when 'common sense' would indicate that they should change. We can very easily find ourselves in a rut which is another powerful restraining force on making significant change.
Dealing with the forces of fear and habit
Now we have established that human beings are conflicted about change how should a coach, or anyone else, respond when we are trying to help others? What should a coach do to ensure that s/he does not end up being stymied by the resistance? Here are a number of pointers you can use which will help you to work with an individual on personal change. The first points deal with how you build a constructive relationship and the second points deal with what to actually do in the session.
Building a constructive relationship
Build trust with your client
An important starting point is to establish a good enough relationship so that the client can tell the truth to you about their fears. It takes a certain amount of trust on the part of the client to admit that some of their fears might be irrational. That trust can only come from building an honest and open relationship. Being honest and well intentioned will serve you well in building trust. The coach needs to 'sponsor' the part of the client that wants to change in order to build the momentum for change while at the same time showing they understand the part that is fearful.
Trust the client has the answers and can find them - with a bit of help
When we immediately offer suggestions as to what a client should do we are making the assumption that the person cannot find the answer for themselves. An alternative assumption is that that the client is in the best position to solve their problem and role of the coach is to help create the right conditions so they will be able to find solutions that will work for them.
Working with another person in this way is the key to the solution. Because the coach does not share the same fears as the client it is often easy for them to see a way through. We have all experienced that it is easier to find a solution to other people's problems. As a coach you can be sympathetic but focussed on helping the person take responsibility for the solution.
Understand but don't get caught up in the client's world
I sometimes visualise people who want to change as kind of being trapped in a spiders web of fear and doubt. If they try and move in any direction the threads tighten and pull them back to the centre which means that they never progress. As a coach you should trust that your skill can find a way through and you need not get caught up in the clients 'web of fear'.
A good overall approach is a mixture of curiosity and determination. If you are genuinely curious you will show you want to understand the client's world, which is important if you are going to help them. And if you are determined you will show that you are not going to buy into the justifications that keep them stuck.
How to run the session
1- Find out what the client wants
A good first question is often simply to ask one of the following questions
- What do you want?
- When your goal is achieved what would somebody watching the scene from outside actually be seeing and hearing that would indicate that you have succeeded?
- If you woke up tomorrow morning and the problem had magically disappeared, how would you know?
These questions focus the client on the future state they want rather than what is wrong at the moment. The output should be a clear goal in SMART format. Once the coach and client agree that they have established a clear goal which will help them out of the problem they can move to the next stage.
2 - Establish what is stopping the client moving forward
Once you have established where the client wants to be you can find out what stops them moving directly from where they are, to where they want to go.
The sort of questions that work well are:
- What risks or threats might you have to face in solving the problem?
- What skills or information do you need that you do not have in order to solve this?
- How would you have to change personally to solve this? What is preventing you changing?
Sometimes the client might believe certain factors are blocks when it is not really clear how they are stopping him or her. Remember Mary's belief that she was too old to get a new job. Rather than just contradicting the client the coach can use the following questions:
- Is this something you know to be true or think it will be?
- How do you know that this is true?
- How could you test if this is true?
Even with this approach when you challenge the status quo you might hear a lot of 'yes buts' because the habits and fears are too ingrained to even imagine change. In this case you can ask:
- What would you have to give up or lose if you changed the situation?
The output from this section should be a clear list of obstacles which both the coach and client agree are stopping them move forward.
3 - Work out how to get around them
Once you have clearly established the real obstacles the hard work is usually done. It then becomes relatively straightforward to plan a way around the obstacles so there is a way forward.
Good questions here are:
- "How could you get around this obstacle?"
- "What would you do if you had unlimited resources?"
- "Have you ever dealt with something like this in the past? How did you go about it then?"
- "Are there any other groups or individuals who might be prepared to help?"
The output should be an agreed way forward on each obstacle so that it is no longer blocking the client's progress.
4 - Plan action
Once you have agreed how the client will move forward you can take each option and turn it into an immediate action step. Using questions like:
- What would be the first step?
- What support do you need?
- On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being complete confidence, how committed are you to carrying out the actions agreed?
The final output should be a SMART action list which both coach and client can agree will take them forward towards their goal.
Making significant change is not easy for most people. If you use the above principles consistently and carefully you can master the skill of helping people in that situation and the world certainly needs more skilled and caring individuals at this time.
Bob Griffiths is a coach and facilitator who works extensively with individuals and teams on organisational and personal change. He can be contacted via the contact page.
