Transformational Coaching Workshop
(Module Leaders: Professor Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith)
Transformational Coaching enables coachees to create fundamental shifts in the way they work, through transforming their way of thinking, feeling and behaving in relation to others. It is our contention that this is achieved through focusing on the shift that needs to happen live in the room, so that a sustained change takes place, beyond the coaching session.
Transformational Coaching sits at one end of a spectrum of coaching. It focuses on helping clients transform how they think, feel and behave, when working on their issues, in such a way that they will also create a ‘knock-on shift’ in the wider system of which they are part.
Transformational Coaching is distinguished by four key elements, which can be summarised as:
Shifting the Meaning Scheme
The ability to help clients change their ‘meaning schemes’ (specific beliefs, attitudes and emotional reactions) during the coaching session, which leads to a ‘perspective transformation’ for the client. Our Transformational Coaching model is based, in part, on the insights of Mezirow (1991) who clarified the processes by which adults learn and change their behaviours.
Working on Multiple Levels at the Same Time
To effect change with the client, the coach needs to be able to work on multiple levels at the same time (that is, to attend to the physical, psychological, emotional and purposive elements and how they combine in the present situation). The change in perspective has to be ‘embodied’ (i.e. the coachee needs to be able to think, feel and do differently) for it to be truly transformational.
Shift in the Room
Transformational Coaching therefore focuses strongly on freeing the coachee’s ‘stuck’ perspective within the session, live in the room. The process, by which the coach helps the client experience an integrated transformation of perspective, is termed ‘creating shift in the room’. A method of first matching and then mismatching the coachee is used to create the transformational shift and use is made of the CLEAR model to achieve this.
Four Levels of Engagement
The change in perspective comes through a change in the coachee’s assumptions, values and beliefs about the issue brought. Transformational coaches use the ‘four levels of engagement’ model to map the connection of these assumptions to the feelings that drive the behaviours, that then generate the specific responses an executive is trying to modify.
This two day workshop will offer a chance for participants to work on developing these skills and exploring how this way of coaching might be useful in their current coaching practice. The workshop provides an invaluable opportunity for experienced coaches to increase the impact of their coaching.
We will illustrate and practice how Transformational Coaching focuses on creating a shift in the thinking, feelings and behaviour of the coachee at each stage of the CLEAR process (Contracting, Listening, Exploring, Action, and Review). In doing so, we will also compare it to other types of coaching framework.
