A coach comprehends the broader context of the client when he understands how the client interacts with and prioritizes within each life system, which encompasses self, couple, family, friends, work, and community. All of these groups give context to life. Adults need to be and to feel effective within the systems that surround and support life. Just as fish cannot live without water to swim in, we cannot live without the systems we’re in and the environments they provide. In fact, our lives are embedded in systems through the roles we have in them. Systems shape the way we think and feel, provide us with arenas for our own fulfillment, and program us with roles and expectations.
During our adult years, we can define the roles we prefer and choose how to leave or diminish the roles that become burdensome. Sometimes coaches can help clients gain a broader perspective and transcend system roles temporarily by reflecting on the roles the clients prefer in the years ahead. Specifically, coaches can help clients see what their own roles are within a system, gain perspective on their involvement, and identify ways to change roles if they are no longer satisfying. And clients might want to improve an unhappy situation by rearranging priorities and achieving balance. Another possibility is to move on, either inside or outside the system, when roles no longer satisfy or remain available. Coaches can help clients understand their options and feel empowered to pursue newly found goals. This chapter is organized around six human systems: self, couple, family, friends, work, and community.
Coaches must first determine their clients’ status in and feelings about the system or systems they’re in that are of concern. Considering these questions can be useful:
Self-care often emerges as foundational to great leadership in the work of coaching, and it is directed to fostering holistic, balanced self-care. The better clients do with this system, the more likely they are to do well with the other five. Managing personal roles effectively prepares clients for managing larger roles.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider
The couple is probably the most neglected human system in adult life. Typically we give more attention and have more professional assistance for work roles and family roles than we do for couple roles. Coaches should look for what is working in a client’s life as part of a couple and promote that. A coach should look for the ties that bind currently. Be ready to refer a couple to a trained therapist if that seems appropriate.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider
Coaches are not family therapists, yet when a leader’s life includes a dynamic family, the natural crises and challenges that surface at the most unexpected times in this system will undoubtedly surface in one way or another inside the coaching engagement.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider
The important role of friends in our adult lives tends to provide a sense of balance between work and life and a sense of continuity. More than men, women typically have more friends in general and more life friends in particular, that is, the friendships aren’t based on work or career. Men tend to develop friendships around work- or career-related contacts and around sports interests. But as men and women move into their fifties and sixties, friends play more important roles in their lives.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider
Because few linear careers are left, adults have to learn throughout the life cycle how to reevaluate their work roles and preferred rewards for work in order to formulate a personal business plan that extends their overall responsibilities into a challenging future.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider
A coach might help a client evaluate his or her social system connections, including involvement in community organizations and activities.
Basic Questions for a Coach to Consider