The value of emotions in coaching

A few days ago, I read an interesting article by Eefje Rondeel about a recent study on what coaches actually say to their coachees: "When it came to mutual respect and trust between coach and coachee (also known as the affective bond), other verbal expressions seemed to play a role. In sessions where coaches reflected [and explored] the feelings and emotions of the coachee at least a few times, coachees experienced this affective bond as stronger than in sessions where this was not done’.

In a subordinate clause, she mentions that emotions could sometimes be important for the coaching relationship. This is quite positive.

We coaches often refer to scientific results, because we ‘don't want to do just anything’. In 2008, I became familiar with the work of the founders of emotional intelligence: Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer (1980s!). In the Netherlands, I met psychologist Theo Bögels, who brought the Emotional Intelligence Test EQ-i © to our country. As a coach, I noticed that recognising and labelling emotions and feelings are skills in themselves, and decided to incorporate this into my working method when I started my coaching practice. I wrote a free e-book about ‘the value of emotions’ at a time when the words often caused confusion in boardrooms. Leaders were not yet ready to look at ‘the undercurrent’. I often felt like a voice crying in the wilderness.

Leadership & emotions

I am so glad that people like Marc Brackett, of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, openly share their learning process, bringing science and learning together. Dr. Steven Stein, of the EQ-i 2.0 at Multi-Health Systems Inc. (MHS), also writes clearly about leadership and emotions. While part of science still sees the body as a vehicle, Bessel van der Kolk has gone against the grain and championed what is stored in the body. This could well be one of the success factors of coaching: that professional coaches approach the person holistically and not purely rationally or focused on trauma, and so on.

I regularly coach people who are also seeing a psychologist. In our coaching programme, we explore and label feelings and emotions within the context of coaching, something that, according to them, receives less attention in psychology. My coachees receive a sheet, a notebook, and the app ‘How we feel’, so they can choose whether to explore their inner world analogue, digitally, or both. This self exploration contributes to achieving their coaching goal.

Eefje Rondeel's article can be read on the Dutch Order of Professional Coaches (NOBCO) website and here on LinkedIn.

#coaching #development #emotionalintelligence #nobco #emcc