So much of transformational coaching relates to a client’s sense of identity or purpose. I want to suggest they are very related to self-esteem. Here, in this column, I will ponder the connection more deeply. As always, I do not offer answers or how-to’s. Instead, I share my perspective as a coach who almost always works at deep levels of the psyche.
Most people have little to no connection to purpose or to a solid, enduring sense of identity such that they wander aimlessly through life. Now they may not see themselves that way, as they attach their sense of self-worth to their money, the size of their house, their role in their organization, their educational degree, the number of children they have, or any of a number of things we believe we have or own. But these are not enduring things. They may give us some semblance of ego pride, but they do not endure. Witness the person who once had wealth but lost it and then feels deep despair. They had attached their self-worth to their money, and when gone, they go into a deep depression. Or witness the person who gets a promotion, feels great for a day, a week, or a month, and then falls back into their same self-depreciating patterns that reflect their depression.
I have often said to clients that all therapeutic roads, if they are of any value, lead to higher self-esteem, and I believe that to be true. I also believe that one of the profound added value of a good transformational coach, is to help the client develop their self-esteem.
But few clients go into a coaching agreement searching for self-esteem. Instead, they go in seeking to fix something that they define as broken or learn something that they want to learn. They tell us, I want to be more confident, more successful, have more money, attain a certain status, get better at (fill in the blank) and we respond as coaches by saying, “happy to help.” What we often know, however, or perhaps intuit, is that to get there may require some deep psycho/emotional/spiritual excavation, and this will likely touch on something remotely related to self-esteem. But we don’t say that because we don’t know this for certain, at least not immediately, or we do know it but don’t want to scare the client away. The client didn’t come for self-esteem or deep self-awareness. They came to fix something, and in our get fixed, get rich fast world, they may reject the deeper offer that we know to be essential for something enduring.
It's almost as if we’re playing a secret game. “Please fix me,” says the client. “Happy to,” says the coach, and so they begin what appears to me to be a shallow game, one designed to make some money for the coach, and satisfy the get fixed quick desire of the client. Please know that I’m not necessarily talking to you directly. You may or may not be that coach, but if you are, beware, for you are falling into a trap, perhaps one of your own making, and you can’t get out of that trap (nor can your client) if you commit to playing that game.
The way to get out of the trap is to play a different game. It is the game of honesty about what truly causes enduring success. It is hard work, and brave exploration that is required of a client
to get to the deeper patterns that prevent or cause greater success. John Calipari, the famous coach of the Kentucky Wildcats basketball team often attracts the finest recruits from all over the world to his college team. They come, considering his college along with many others, who want those very same recruits. The secret to his success is that when he talks with them about whether his school and his program is right for them, he does not try to sell them on the possibility of getting to the NBA. He doesn’t promise them riches. Instead, he promises he will work their butts off. He says, if you want glory, you must work for it. No short cuts here. Many former members of his college team who are now NBA stars will tell you that the reason why they chose his team to play on over all the other highly worthy teams is that Coach Calipari didn’t promise them anything other than hard work. Calipari says you have to earn your spot here. Nothing is given to you. And the great ones like it that way. They know it to be true, that you have to dig deep to get something of value over time.
So, the contract a transformational coach makes with their client matters a lot. Instead of outcomes, we offer a process. Instead of speed, we offer deep, vulnerable exploration. And if our process is a good one and we’re able to enact it well, and if the client wholeheartedly and vulnerably joins us in that exploration, we have more than a puncher’s chance of success. In fact, we have the beginnings of something that will likely amount to enduring value.
Recently, I began working with a client who wanted to be a better leader (almost all my clients are that way). We explored what he meant by that and, in particular, what he wanted to work on. Initially, he wanted to be a good executive leader, having just been promoted to a big executive role in his company. He didn’t know (or believed he didn’t know) what being a good leader at the executive level required and heard I was very good and help leaders be better leaders. I had no idea there were self-esteem issues underneath, at least at first. After a few sessions with him where I was a good sounding board on leadership, he started to share with me that he often questions himself, not in that good way we all need to wonder if we’re doing a good job, but in a way that feels somewhat crippling. Interestingly, I had noticed in prior sessions that he seemed to tend to over explain his actions and over explain his thinking. Such a pattern is probably not problematic for a college professor, but for an executive, it evinces lack of surety. Now, just because he has that speech pattern with me doesn’t mean he is that way at work. It is suggestive of it but not certain. So, I hadn’t said anything about it. Instead, I simply registered it in my mind as something to bring up later if relevant. It now seemed relevant.
I asked him point blank, “I wonder what your level of self-esteem is?”
“What do you mean?” he asked with some interest.
“Well, what you are saying is that you struggle with self-doubt at times. I see that as potentially a self-esteem issue, but it might be something else. At the same time, I’ve noticed a speech pattern that might suggest the same.”
“I think I know what you mean,” he replied showing a willingness to explore. “What is it that you see?”
I shared with him the pattern and then said, “I’m putting what you said and my light observation together and just wondering about your level of self-esteem. Would you say it is very low, medium or high?”
“I think it’s medium. I am sometimes confident and other times not. I know there is a lot of room for improvement in that arena.”
“That is what I was wondering. The reason why this matters is that to be a great executive leader requires high self-esteem and I believe the best use of our time will be to support you in increasing your sense of self.”
“It’s not what I came for but as you speak, I’m intrigued.”
“Would it be okay if I probed a bit into your life just to understand you a bit better.”
He happily agreed and we then went into a very deep exploration of his life and how it created his level of self-esteem. At the end, he said, “I want more self-esteem. Will you work with me on that?”
“Yes,” I replied, “I’d love to, but please know that in my experience this is not a quick thing at all. Depending on how deeply you work with me, it could be a year or two before you notice any meaningful progress. I’m confident, however, that if you do work with me, you’ll feel noticeably different in a year or two. I can’t promise that, but I’ve had great success with my transformational method and believe that if you are diligent in working with me, you’ll be more genuinely confident in yourself than you are now. Are you game?”
“Yes. Let’s do this.”
I gently smiled, knowing while the journey will be difficult at times, it is what will matter for him, and it will also be more satisfying for me.
Now let’s tie this back to identity and purpose. In my view, an enduring self-esteem has something to do with a strong sense of identity, and a strong sense of purpose. It also has to do with other things like facing one’s traumas and one’s repeated patterns of conditioning of one’s past. There is rarely one simple cause of low self-esteem, and to suggest we have a magic bullet to fix it is folly. I don’t know yet all the causes of what lowered this client’s self-esteem, but I do know we’ll get to it with loving deep, courageous inquiry.
And I also know that if his journey is anything like most of the others I’ve facilitated, we will find some loss or lack of enduring identity or life purpose somewhere. I don’t yet know this to be absolutely true, but if our process works (and I believe it will be based on past experience), then there is a high chance that something seemingly miraculous will happen. He will find healing
and he will find a deeper sense of who he is and who he is not. With that, he will have a chance of become a great leader and even more importantly, a person fully comfortable in his skin.