Parallel Processes

I've been coaching for so long now and enjoy it more than ever.

The endless fascination of working with other human beings, generally extremely talented and successful, and the unique nature of each relationship lead to profound satisfaction.

After all these years, parallel processes remain a source of wonder for me, no matter how often they happen.

As you no doubt know, and at their simplest, I'm talking about things that happen in the session which have parallels with events, conditions or behaviours in the client's world; the unconscious mirroring that occurs when dynamics from the client's workplace relationships are recreated in the coaching relationship itself.

To put it another way, phenomena experienced by the coach based on the dynamics between the coach and coachee; the coachee's "system" manifesting itself in different ways in the coaching room.

Really very powerful when used adeptly.

And that's one of the reasons why my strong preference was and is always to coach in person, at least for some of the sessions with each coachee. It's crucial that the coaching, in-person or not, is set up in a way which protects my ability to notice; after all noticing and intuition are absolutely core to my practice.

And I believe that creating precise conditions for coaching leads to breakthroughs and, to my point in writing this article, to spotting parallel processes.

A few years ago I was studying once more at Hult Ashridge Business School and we invested quite some time in revisiting parallel processes as they present themselves in coaching supervision. In fact we were so focused on them at one point that I became highly attuned to the concept. I had to ensure I didn't see them everywhere. That said….

I was working with (and still sometimes see) an outstanding man, someone who doesn't really realise how good he is and whom I look forward to seeing each time I spot him in my diary. One of the organisational conditions he was grappling with was "overload", with everyone trying to do too much and a lack of focus.

He was colluding with it, in fact. I highlighted it but maybe didn't need to. He knew it.

And what happened in one memorable session? His world was brought into the room in a powerful way.

I felt overloaded.

I noticed a lack of focus in the session.

Invaluable data for any coach.

As we whittled down our objectives, we began recognising and working with his pattern of interference outside the coaching room: achieving less than he might by trying to take on too much. At a personal and, given his seniority, organisational level.

By noticing and bringing this to the surface, and by encouraging exploration of what was going on, we started to craft a really interesting new agenda from the ideas he generated in the following half hour. An agenda which he now tells me moved him forward and made him & his business more successful.

And so… the parallel world needs a window onto it in the coaching room. Being acutely attuned to parallel processes is one way of opening that window.

It's really powerful. Ensure it's in your coaching armoury.