When I first started out on my professional coaching journey almost 20 years ago, I was told repeatedly that it was not necessary for a coach to have either personal or professional direct experience of a client’s particular issues. Rather, a coach was merely a ‘mirror’ and, through a process of carefully constructed and insightful questioning, had the potential to help clients access their own inner wisdom to reach their own solutions.
Twenty years on, the raw material of this essential proposition has been whittled and worn away, turned, shaped and moulded by personal experience, professional training and awareness of developments in the field of coaching and integrated coach-therapy practice. While to some extent, it still stands – providing a firm base for me to work from when I am doubting my own capabilities, feeling underskilled, overwhelmed or out of my depth – I have found myself questioning the notion that a coach can work with any client, regardless of what they bring into the space.
In the same way, the articles in this issue also challenge the basic idea that a coach can and must always adopt and maintain a detached, neutral stance in relation to clients and their material. In our lead article, 'The JEDI coach: embracing inclusivity', Priya Nalkur of the RoundTable Institute proposes inclusivity as a core coaching competency. She demonstrates how, in order for our profession to be more inclusive and embracing of difference, as practitioners we must be prepared to ‘take a stand’ and open ourselves to the possibility of change, both within our profession, and in the broader system with the social impact of our work, through the unique relationship between ourselves and our clients.
'Greater inclusivity in our profession requires us all to take a stand and to show up so that more of us – practitioners and clients alike – feel invited to take our places at the table'
Each of our contributors here demonstrates the importance of the relationship between practitioner and client, and of how we can ‘take a stand’ by bringing to the relationship our humanity, empathy and wisdom gained through our own lived experience – personal, professional or systemic – of race, gender, sexuality, religion or neuro-divergence, through life-threatening illness, the menopause transition or even advances in technology and the ways in which we harness or use it.
As I was putting this issue together, I was reminded of former contributor Robert Stephenson’s call for increased diversity within our profession back in 2021, and his hope that we all can find our ‘place at the table’.1 Greater inclusivity in our profession requires us all to take a stand and to show up so that more of us – practitioners and clients alike – feel invited to take our places at the table.
As ever, if you feel called to respond to any of the articles in this issue with an article of your own, do get in touch with your ideas. Until next time…
Diane Parker coachingtoday.editorial@bacp.co.uk
