In Meta-Coaching, we have identified that there are six kinds of conversations that a coach can have with a client. One of those is the Confrontation conversation.
Ah, confrontation – such as “Why would you do that?” “And if you have a big reason for doing that, how would you do that?” “What skills are involved?” “What processes?”
The reason why is that sometimes a client shows up and seems to be blinded to their current reality. Ah, blind spots – as in areas of one’s actions, words, and responses that the person themselves cannot see. Blind spots are often created by our foremost thinking patterns. These are the ones that are our best strengths and gives us our outstanding talents whilst, at the same time, being the very place where we are blind, and even blind to that blindness.
Blind spots can also be the very thinking patterns that drive how you think, reason and perceive the world. They are typically not operating in our conscious thoughts and so are beyond our awareness. They show up in the very processes we use to protect ourselves, defend our way of life and so our defense mechanisms operate not only as security operations but also as blinding influences. They blind us to ourselves.
Finally, there are in all of us areas that we have just not paid attention to. We’re blind to such areas simply because we give them no thought and no attention. This may arise because we dis-value certain things or we may just not understand how they are important.
A confrontational coaching conversation is a dialogue that is initiated in order to bring factors that influence experience to a client’s awareness. In doing so, it generally means that the coach will bring up an unpleasant subject, one that the client would prefer to avoid. And when we do, we expect denial, rejection, resistance and a whole range of defense mechanisms. It’s natural. It’s to be expected.
It is even to be expected of people who are psychologically healthy. A person doesn’t have to be sick or neurotic to use defense mechanisms. All people do. I do. You do. It’s “human nature.” And that’s good. It’s good because protection is built into us. As a meta-coach, we don’t want clients who are so soft, so open, so easy that there’s no strength of backbone, tenacity, persistence or commitment!
So, in a confrontational coaching conversation, we bring to your awareness things that will typically be unpleasant and undesirable. We may confront behavior that isn’t working. We may confront language patterns that are at the source of limitation and diminishing. We may confront ways of thinking that undermine and sabotage performance. We may confront whether you are actually carrying out your action plans and translating what you know intellectually into what you do behaviorally. We may confront an over-used thinking pattern, cognitive distortion or attitude.
Why? To provide a real-time personal mirror of what’s going on so that you can unleash more of your potential. The confrontation is part and parcel of a fierce conversation that gets to the heart of things.
How? That’s where the art and the skills of your specifically trained meta-coach come in. Otherwise it will simply be a confrontation in all of the highly dysfunctional way that we’ve all seen others confront— yelling, accusing, judging, pointing the finger, mind-reading etc.
Actually, there are two confrontational conversations you can have with your coach.
Firstly – when your coach confronts you with something that’s getting in the way of you reaching your desired outcomes. Secondly – where the coach is facilitating two or more people to confront each other about some issue that they are in conflict about, to enable them to work through to understanding and some resolution.
Are you ready to face your confrontational conversation?
Co-authored with L. Michael Hall
