What is narrative coaching? - Chapter 4

In the fourth chapter, narrative coaching will be discussed. Stories are an essential part of cultures and communities. They are fundamental to the way we make sense and meaning. Stories shape how we see what is happening within and around us and enable us to mentalize. By telling and living one's stories in new ways, people can increase their capacity for intimacy (making connections) and agency (making contributions), and consequently live more authentic, meaningful and fulfilling lives. Yet, a narrative frame is relatively new in the field of psychotherapy and coaching. Narrative coaching provides a safe and structured space in which people can hear themselves tell their stories and experiment with new ones, without the need for specialized terminology or normative labels. In doing so, coaches play an important role in helping people to re-author their stories about themselves, others and life itself in service of the development tasks at hand.

Narrative coaching has, over the past ten years, become a powerful tool for helping people to:

• Become more aware of their own stories.
• Recognize that these stories are personally and socially constructed.
• Understand how these stories shape their identity and behaviour at both conscious and unconscious levels.
• Be more authorial in aligning their stories with identities and actions that would enable them to live more fully and authentically. 

What is the theoretical foundation of psychodynamic coaching?

Narrative studies are based on the following four pillars: (1) social constructionism and post-structuralism; (2) phenomenology; (3) narrative structure and literary analysis; and (4) narrative psychology and social sciences, such as anthropology.

Social constructionism and post-structuralism

Social constructionism examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The central notion of social constructionism is that meanings are developed in coordination with others, rather than separately within each individual.

Post-structuralism is an umbrella term for the theories that build upon and reject ideas that are established by structuralism. Post-structuralists do not see literary texts as having one single purpose and interpretation. They claim that the reader creates meaning and forms a specific perspective through their engagement with a text. 

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a philosophy of experience. For phenomenology the ultimate source of all meaning and value is the lived experience of human beings. All philosophical systems, scientific theories, or aesthetic judgments have the status of abstractions from the ebb and flow of the lived world. The task of the philosopher, according to phenomenology, is to describe the structures of experience, in particular consciousness, the imagination, relations with other persons, and the situatedness of the human subject in society and history.

Narrative structure and literary analysis

The study of narratives from a literary perspective focus on the structure and analysis of texts, in order to improve our understanding of their significance and purpose. Therefore, Burke (1969) identified the following central elements of a narrative as a Pentad:

• What was done (act)
• When and where it was done (scene)
• Who did it (agent)
• How he did it (agency)
• Why (purpose)

Later, Bruner (2002) added the 'coda' as the sixth element to refer to the meaning and implications of stories. 

Methods such as narrative therapy and narrative coaching see stories as situated, emergent, and co-constructed 'texts' that have the potential for perpetuating hegemonies or sparking liberation. Hence, it is important for coaches to understand narrative structure in order to listen to people's stories expertly and help coachees to reconfigure these elements to create new possibilities. 

Narrative psychology and social sciences

Important elements from narrative psychology and social sciences are:

• Identity
• Play
• Development
• Learning
• Rites of passage
• Thresholds

Identity is anchored in two basic orientations that people have in interaction with their environment:

1. Striving for stability, consistency and continuity as the basis for safety and security.
2. Striving for agility, novelty and discontinuity as the basis for exploration and growth. 

The coaching dialogue is seen as:

• Describing, reflecting on and speaking about the coachee's experiences related to their current situation.
• Exploring and reflecting on their self-presentation in related social contexts.
• Gaining new insights and more meaningful options as a result.
• Integrating and sustaining the new self-narration over times.

Further, an underappreciated element in people's growth through coaching is their willingness to 'play' in exploring new possibilities for their narratives and identities. It appears that what children experience through play has a lot in common with experiences of adults in developing themselves and making transitions. Both require: (a) re-aligning identity and role expectations in order to be successful; (b) negotiating between 'identities claimed' and 'identities granted'; (c) navigating the threshold between fantasy and reality; (d) circumscribing activities within boundaries and limits, in time and space; (e) integrating body, spirit and mind at a higher level, but in a non-threatening way. It therefore is important to incorporate a safe space for both children and adults, which enables experiment with releasing and rehearsing identities they may need to meet their current or anticipated needs and to try out new and untested behaviours. 

According to the narrative design model, there are four stages: (1) situate; (2) search; (3) shift; (4) sustain. They form an ongoing process (a circle). Each of the four sages in narrative design is separated from the next by a threshold; a doorway that marks a shift in attention in terms of what is happening for the person in transition. A threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier, that distinguishes and opposes two worlds. 

What kind of empirical evidence supports narrative coaching?

Given the nature of narrative practice, it is not surprising that most narrative research is descriptive and qualitative in nature. The authors of this book found only one randomized controlled study (Stelter, 2014) that was conducted to examine the influence of narrative collaborative group coaching in the career development, self-reflection and general wellbeing of young sports talents with the aim of facilitating the integration of their athletic career, educational requirements, and personal lives. The results showed significant improvements among the subjects who participated in narrative group coaching. The effect was also present at the follow up measurement, five months after completion of the intervention.

What tools and techniques do narrative coaches use in practice?

One way for narrative coaches to apply narrative coaching in practice is by providing both an interpersonal structure (such as a safe place) and a narrative structure (such as notions of landscapes of action or landscapes of consciousness to help to fully engage with and explore their stories). Further, coaches make the distinction between available narratives and potential stories in order to help coachees design a new story. 'Re-storying' or 're-authoring' is the process of designing new, more powerful narratives through a stronger alignment between a coachee's mindset, behaviour and environment in service of their aspirations. To support this process, coaches stay as much as possible in story time and story space in sessions, focus on the story as it is being told in the here and now, and keep bringing coachees back to the present moment. The underlying idea is that people need new experiences, not more explanations, to create and sustain meaningful change. 

Drake (2012) wrote seven principles of narrative coaching:

1. Trust everything you need is right in front of you.
2. Be fully present without judgement to what is and trust the process.
3. Inquire based on what you hear and speak only if you can improve on silence.

These principles in turn are reflected in two key narrative practices: radical presence (the present is the only time frame for action, which means that all problems are problems of the present) and inside-out listening (listen with a non-judgemental presence, an engaged mindfulness and a multi-layered attention to what emerges in the conversation; that is, what is said and what is not being said). 

In the fourth chapter, narrative coaching will be discussed. Stories are an essential part of cultures and communities. They are fundamental to the way we make sense and meaning. Stories shape how we see what is happening within and around us and enable us to mentalize. By telling and living one's stories in new ways, people can increase their capacity for intimacy (making connections) and agency (making contributions), and consequently live more authentic, meaningful and fulfilling lives. Yet, a narrative frame is relatively new in the field of psychotherapy and coaching. Narrative coaching provides a safe and structured space in which people can hear themselves tell their stories and experiment with new ones, without the need for specialized terminology or normative labels. In doing so, coaches play an important role in helping people to re-author their stories about themselves, others and life itself in service of the development tasks at hand.