Why am I in this situation again?Should I do A, B, C or nothing?Why do I feel and act like this?

The relationship between the coach and the coachee is crucial for a successful coaching process. One of the biggest criteria to make this happening is the mindset or attitude of the coach. Systemic coaches act on the assumption that the client is the expert of her or his life. Respect for this autonomy of the coachee as well as curiosity, active listening, impartiality, appreciation for the existing life strategies and using existing resources and strengths are all great qualities and the right mindset for a professional coach.

We use the Origination Disruption Method in our coaching process to get to the roots of a certain non-benevolent context the coachee has and that is now causing psychological strain. It describes an incident that was unexpected and surprising to the coachee and caused a certain “negative” thinking, feeling and acting afterwards. Quite often it happens in early childhood or teens. Even if two children are having exactly the same disruption the experience can be totally different and they can develop totally different belief systems or one none. An example could be: “The 7-year old Mascha comes home from school and wants to show her parent the good grade she wrote in her math test which she is really happy about. She goes to her parent and says: Look, I have a good mark in my math test. And the parent answers: Alright, could you please bring out the trash? Mascha is confused by the response of the parent because she expected the parent to be happy as well. So she thinks this must be because it wasn’t the best grade. She will work even harder on the next math test and when it’s the best grade she could get, then the parent is happy as well. But then on the next math test, she writes the best grade and the parent might even be extremely happy but she starts to think and maybe even say: Oh, this one was way easier than the last one, so it doesn’t really count. Or: I was just lucky. She starts to believe “I’m not enough”, works hard, gets maybe even a lot of degrees etc. but never stops believing “I’m not enough” because it’s her engine, it catalyses her actions to a certain point where the prices she pays for this strategy overweigh the gains she gets. That’s usually the point when clients call because they realise the “old” strategy doesn’t work anymore and something needs to change and they need support from a coach to better understand their strategies and trust themselves again. 

Goal setting is a crucial part of the coaching process. Usually in the first coaching session the coach and coachee determine a goal together (what would the coachee like to “achieve” in terms of feel, think and/or act (differently) after the coaching is done). This is the directory for the whole process. Other goals that play an important role during systemic coaching are the ones that support the coachee in establishing new context(s) in one’s routine. The goals or action items should be formulated as a constructive and clear full sentence (beginning with “I”), in active language (”I will… instead of I could…”), in presence tense and with a specific date/time.