Coaching: A Systemic Perspective

Coaching: A Systemic Perspective

"As coaches, we are pattern recognition experts".

Paul Mitchell, coach and founder of "The Human Enterprise"

* Coaching: can be likened to a journey in search of patterns

* Why do we say this?

- Clients present with fuzzy problems / clear goals

- Always with desire to understand experience

- We as coaches: help client to discover, notice previously ignored patterns in the complex mix of experience, thoughts, actions, and reactions (thus, the client's story)

* Complex systems theory: one set of lenses through which to view the coaching engagement

* Features of complex adaptive systems:

- Wide range of theoretical perspectives: cybernetics, family systems theory, complexity theory

- Ludwig von Bertalanffy: General Systems Theory (GST)

- GST premise: world is made up of interdependent and hierarchical systems that interact with their environments.

- World could be usefully viewed as a series of systems within systems, which all display some common characteristics.

- System: a group of interacting or interdependent elements that form a complex whole that unfolds over time.

- Defining feature of true systems: form entities that are greater than the sum of their parts.

- Hence, CAS: parts that make them up are whole systems in their own right.

- These whole systems interact according to their own rules and goals, adapting to each other, this interaction that brings order of the larger system.

- Example: Human body

Figure 1: Represents a simplified graphical representation of above mentioned in terms of the human person within the corporate environment.

* Specific features of CAS:

* 1) Holism and Interdependence

- We are more than the sum of our parts

- To understand the system, should examine system in terms of what is created when the parts interact.

- In terms of coaching: deals with system in all its complexity and tailoring one's coaching to address issues at every level of the system, including the personal.

- Parts of system essentially interdependent

* Key