The Coaching Triangle: From Dyadic to Triadic

In our coaching and coach training, our focus is usually on the partnership between the coach and the client. In this process, the coach leads the process with the client providing the agenda—the subject for discussion, resource discovery, action plans, and achievement.

In an online presentation, Professor Peter Hawkins suggested a new perspective for the coaching relationship. His presentation on “From Ego to Eco Coaching: Creating Value Beyond the Client” offered a challenge to place the coaching relationship in a larger context. How can the coaching relationship benefit the organization, society and the world?

Hawkins outlines the change in perspective in this way:

For the coach it means moving “from facing the person you are coaching as your client, to going shoulder to shoulder with them as your partner, jointly facing what their world of tomorrow is asking them to step up to.”

For the coach and client, the new orientation is one “where coach and client are jointly in service of the needs of the wider organization and its many stakeholders.”

What then comes out of the coach/client relationship is “creating not just personal development but shared value for multiple stakeholders including the more than human world.”

The context that Hawkins is considering includes climate emergency, widening inequality, human prejudice, increasing mental distress, and similar challenges. This is worthwhile and human-oriented approach. These are all challenges that need our attention.

How might we translate this triadic to our coaching with clergy and church leaders? One way is to consider how the coaching partnership furthers the Kingdom (or Reign) of God in the world. In the Gospels, Jesus presents the Kingdom of God as already present but not yet actualized. It was breaking through in his day as faith, justice, and mercy were shown among God’s people. The Kingdom is still emerging today. We live with an expectation of the coming in fulness of the Kingdom, yet we see signs of it from time to time.

We can apply this triadic approach to coaching as we not only help someone find their own way forward but in helping them to understand their unique place in their ecosystem—the team, the church, the family, the society, and the global community. As followers of Christ, we want to become everything that God has called us to be, but that individual believer is always part of the greater work of God. The work of the Kingdom is not about any individual, church, or organization, but each can be part of disclosing and furthering the work of God among us today.

We need a larger perspective in our coaching and Hawkins has provided us with one.

(This post originally appeared here on June 2, 2022.)

Articles this week are published in recognition of International Coaching Week.

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