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Philosophical Foundations |
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PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF INTEGRAL COACHING
The practice of coaching must have a foundation beyond our momentary impulses or intuitions. It needs to rest on something solid and tested. Otherwise, our actions can easily result in more harm than good.
Integral Coaching primarily rests on six major foundations of theory and research and two decades of applying them with people and organizations:
Pragmatism
The philosophical tradition most focused on resolving practical difficulties and learning what works through experimentation. It is based on the work of John Dewey, William James, and Charles Pierce and brought to the modern world in the books of Richard Rorty. Coaching is not an academic exercise; its point always is to have a practical impact in the day-to-day life of clients. Having our work infused with pragmatism assures that we do not become enamored with our own models or methods and that, instead, we always ask, "What will be most helpful for our client right now?"
Ontology
A branch of philosophy that studies being. Humans are a unique kind of being. Philosophers have been onto this for a long time and have been trying to describe the difference. In the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger made a revolutionary step in this inquiry, and nearly all philosophy that has followed him has been influenced by what he said. We are meaning-making beings who are at the same time constrained by social, historic, linguistic and biological forces. Integral coaches must be well grounded here so that our work fits the genuine human condition. We must take into account the deep call we all feel for authenticity and the courageous path necessary for its fulfillment.
Linguistics
Humans swim in language as fish do in water. The horizons of what is possible for us are bound by the way we speak and listen to ourselves and others. Our branch of linguistics flows directly from the work of John Austin, John Searle, and Fernando Flores. These thinkers studied how language coordinates action and brings about our social world. Working at a fundamental level with language allows clients to initiate profound change in identity, meaning, and relationship. By becoming more competent speakers and listeners, clients resolve nearly all of their everyday difficulties, especially those associated with producing results and generating innovation. Once introduced to the phenomenon of language, clients never see the world in the same way again. That which was solid and immovable is seen as a matter of interpretation. Irrevocable conclusions are recognized as only one of many angles that can be taken on a situation. In a way, all human change involves being an active speaker and listener of a new language. Integral coaches have learned through their own experience the power of language and invite their clients to share in its mystery and wonder.
Biology
Everyone we coach has a body, and Integral Coaches never forget this. Our work has to find a harmonious home with how the body functions. All learning is in the body; where else could it be? In a practical sense this means that our work is based upon what has been learned by the best somatic thinkers, biologists, and cognitive scientists. Only when a pattern of response has been integrated into the body has true long-lasting change taken root. Then someone has been truly coached.
Adult Development Theory
Adults learn in different ways than younger people do. They are always in the middle of their lives and have their own views, habits, beliefs, relationships, and ambitions. At the same time, important work by Jane Loevinger, Robert Kegan, Carol Gilligan and others convincingly shows that adults develop through a series of distinct and identifiable stages. When we appreciate this, our work is appropriately designed to fit an individual's current developmental level and encourage movement towards the next. It is by making developmental steps that adults deepen their connection to others and come to a profound sense of meaning. Coaches of grown-ups must understand the landscape of adult development so that they have a contextual frame for what's happening in a client's life. These research-based theories point coaches to the most salient topics and fruitful approaches.
Integral Theory
Based on the work of Ken Wilber, integral theory is the bold project to include everything in human life, leaving out nothing. The more fully we can understand the forces constructing and coursing through a human life, the more powerful our coaching can be. Coaching fails when we leave parts out, and integral theory provides a framework that makes this less likely.
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