Coaching on the Axis by Simon Kahn Marc;

Author:Simon Kahn, Marc;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Business coaching at the existential level

During coaching, people may find themselves exploring existential concerns—the search for meaning in existence (Blackburn, 2005). The philosophical works of Martin Heidegger (1962) and others such as Victor Frankl (1984) and Ernesto Spinelli (1989) inform this aspect of coaching work. These authors tackle the fabric of meaning that human beings create in the narrative of their lives. What does it mean to ‘be’ the person one is? Such considerations are ‘deeply rooted’ because they reach into the search for answers to the primordial questions: ‘Who am I? Why do I exist?’

In business coaching, “the coach helps the client to articulate existential concerns such as freedom, purpose, choice and anxiety, and identify and replace limiting paradigms, thus leading to positive change” (Stout-Rostron, 2009, p. 234). This level of work can be important, especially when it influences the relationship between the individual and his or her organisation. What role does one’s work play in the meaning-making narrative of one’s life? Exploring individual meaning and purpose is a powerful entry into deeper layers of relating between a person, an organisation, and the underlying beliefs and meaning structures of the two.

Existential dialogues in business coaching can occur when an individual questions his or her own personal values and core beliefs in relation to those of the organisation, and can go so far as to touch on issues of morality, spirituality and faith. They also emerge when a coach prompts the client to examine why he or she holds particular views of the world. This often happens as part of the process of understanding what is happening in a business context around a particular choice or action.

For example, Bianca, a creative director in an advertising agency, held the belief that humans should not eat animals as “the practice of killing living beings is wrong.” She appreciated that in the animal world many killed for survival, but maintained that human beings could survive without doing this and “the practice supported an ideology of aggression in the world.” It was this ideology that she felt was problematic in that it underpinned many forms of suffering, both for people and the planet. As a result she was a strict vegetarian.

One day, during a coaching process focused on building Bianca’s leadership abilities, she arrived at her session in a state of existential anxiety. She had been asked to lead a marketing campaign for a large fast food chicken chain. She explained that she was unable to work on this account because of her “values and beliefs.” Unfortunately, the account featured as a major opportunity for her company who were thrilled to have won the work, and expected her to deliver her usual creative genius. “I just don’t know what to do, I’m completely stuck?” she said in her coaching session. In this situation, the existential concerns of the individual were in conflict with those of the environment to the extent that the success of both, from a business point of view, was at stake.

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