For me, no, not yet! But a very insightful webinar on compassion fatigue in the series Motivational Interviewing & Beyond earlier this week had me thinking about compassion and empathy in coaching, burn out and how we sustain our inner energy to keep “showing up” and giving.
Click on the image to go to a full recording
These webinars from Motivational Interviewing co-founder Professor Stephen Rollnick, his colleague Dr Joel Porter and their guests have been such a rich source of ideas, new thinking and encouragement throughout the last fifteen months of loss, uncertainty and frustrating restrictions.
I tuned in to the latest, “Compassion Fatigue: What’s Going on Here?” wondering what I might learn about sustaining energy in coaching and the chance to reflect on some of my experiences, good and bad.
I am a big believer in looking beyond the world of sports coaching to learn from real pioneers and leading practitioners in different fields. If we want to learn from the best about empathy in action, trust, creativity, making a difference or other challenges, why only look to so-called top sports coaches? The webinar underscored how rich and deep is the expertise of those from the world of clinical psychology and other therapeutic practice, at the cutting edge of supporting people affected by trauma and suffering.
With thanks to all the speakers for sharing their insights so openly, this post captures some of the ideas I picked up and thoughts they prompted about compassion in coaching.
Burn Out versus Compassion Fatigue
One of the guests, Dr Brendan Murphy, made an important distinction at the start, between burn out and compassion fatigue. Especially in the sports coaching world we often talk about burn out – of becoming over-stretched by too many commitments that we take on or that we are expected to pick up.
I’m not sure it was burn out, but I certainly recall the feeling of disaffection and thinking “why should I bother any more” that contributed to me stepping back from a Head Coach role a few years ago – a hollowed-out sense of being taken for granted, that a shared purpose had been lost and being weary of a lack of support from others in positions to do so much better. Not great. However, like other former, disaffected Head Coaches I’ve talked with, I was never tired of the actual coaching itself and quickly found a way to keep that going.
In contrast, Brendan pointed to compassion fatigue as coming from a place of being over-exposed to others’ suffering and distress, of being affected too deeply and too often. This seemingly relentless exposure to the suffering of others obviously and fortunately doesn’t feature in the world of sports coaching. Even the most overstretched coach, fed up with being disregarded, is unlikely to face the same degree of seemingly never ending engagement in other’s pain. In this way I felt able to put my past frustrations into a healthy perspective.
One more introductory point to help place the discussion before looking at compassion in coaching. Dr Stan Steindl made a helpful connection between the following:
compassion as having a sensitivity to another’s (and one’s own) suffering and a commitment to do something to alleviate it
empathy as a skill that we might bring to a compassionate response
and sympathy, often thought of as an inappropriate reaction, yet essentially about being moved, without which there is unlikely to be a meaningful connection.
So where might we see compassion in our coaching?
Compassion as Belief
A fundamental principle of Confidence Centred Coaching is to treat the ambitions and aspirations of those who come to us for coaching as a precious gift we are privileged to share in. Having a belief in the amazing things the person in front of us can do – whether an elite athlete or a complete novice – seems to me a starting point for compassionate coaching. This requires a dedicated effort to attune ourselves to what a particular challenge means for them.
And often we will find our belief in what someone can do goes well beyond what, at least initially, they think is possible.
As a small example, last week I was enjoying a one to one swim session with a young boy who I teach through the charity Level Water which supports children with disabilities. To encourage him to dive down closer towards the bottom of the pool, a little deeper than he’d done so far, I said:
“how about you try the same again AND swim through a hoop?”
“That’s impossible!” he said, treading water and holding a look of total disbelief and some amusement that I would suggest such a thing.
And then he did it. First time.
We agreed that, from then on, we would call it “The Impossible Dive”, to be executed as often as he’d like in our sessions each week – which he gleefully did yesterday, with me taking the hoop a little further away each time.
A word of caution: how easy it is for a coach, unwittingly or otherwise, to impose their own view of what someone should be aiming for, maybe through a well intentioned, compassionate wanting to show our belief in them. So we have to ask: whose hoops are we setting out? Here’s where the discipline of creating a space for curiosity, to find out more about where the person in front of us is coming from, the significance and meaning of their challenge and the emotions around it. We’ll just know intuitively from there how to help them discover their best - and have great fun exploring together the far reaches of their possibilities.
This is the philosophy of my coaching business, ZigZag Alive: “always believe in the amazing things people can do with just the right degree of challenge, expert care and encouragement.”
Compassion as Courage
The discussion around compassion fatigue, how to avoid or deal with it brought to light another feature that I think is evident in compassionate coaching: a bravery to let go of having all the answers. From the world of clinical psychology Brendan expressed this as a courage to step back when feeling overwhelmed and overly responsible, of recognising one’s limits and capacity to endure and to look after oneself.
This reminds me of one of Charlie Mackesy’s beautiful prints from The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse shown here.
And in my experience, taking the approach of acknowledging we don’t have all the answers calls for a bravery to let go of what would be conventionally thought of as the coach’s whole legitimacy.
I recently shared with a group of senior coaches an idea I call “who owns the right way” – where the focus is all on the athlete discovering and feeling for themselves being at their best, rather than us prescribing and measuring them up against our view of the “right” effort, readings on a power meter or perfectly executed swim stroke. One of the coaches responded incredulously – “so why would anyone come to us for coaching if it’s all down to how the athlete feels?” Indeed, why?
But come they do. And by having the courage to let go of positioning ourselves as the expert – always expected to be in the know, answers and prescriptions at the ready, the holder of the “right way” to perform – I’m finding brings a deeply rewarding richness and constant new-ness to each contact. (And pretty amazing results too.)
Compassion as Action
A point Stephen Rollnick was keen to emphasise was that compassion only happens in action. Back to Stan Steidl’s definition of compassion. Note that there’s an all-important second part: a commitment to do something. Compassion is more than being a sympathetic bystander, moved by what they see or hear, but having a readiness to see how we might help, whatever form that might be.
This prompts two thoughts in my mind. The first is the simple, quiet, largely unnoticed impact we can have just by turning up. By listening and being attentive to where the person in front of us is. The act of listening. Of pausing and being ready to ask “what else?” Here the skills of empathy that are core to MI come into their own.
In the discussion there was an interesting interplay between what the speakers called cognitive empathy and affective empathy – basically showing an interest in and an understanding what someone has said; and a more emotional sitting with and taking in the feelings of others. Finding a healthy, workable balance between the two emerged as one way to avoid compassion fatigue.
Right now there is also a much bigger picture and room for coaches to show compassion in action. The pandemic has highlighted so clearly deep-seated inequalities and discrimination. In the sports that I coach it is glaringly obvious. Triathlon, despite being a relatively new sport, has singularly failed to draw in people of colour. Similarly swimming and cycling, with the all too few exceptions proving the rule.
Now is the time for coaches to be activists: for example in relation to racial inequality, not just to say that I am not a racist, but to be actively anti-racist. There are so many other areas too where a coach, maybe without realising it, can model life changing values. As I’ve written about elsewhere, to put our energy and compassion into ensuring we don’t “go back” to a “normal” that excluded too many and needs to change.
Compassion for Oneself
So we end on what might seem a bit of a ranty note - and one that perhaps doesn’t reflect where the webinar ended. A recurrent theme in the webinar and mentioned several times above is being compassionate toward ourselves. As well as being attuned to others, this is about being attuned to how we are affected by others, having the self-awareness to know our limits and to see and respond when things get too much. In fact I suspect it’s not really a question of as well as – without self-awareness and self-compassion, how can one sustain compassion for others?
In this respect the speakers shared various ways in which they try to avert compassion fatigue, all rooted in knowing themselves: to be alert to being overstretched, mindful of boundaries, recognising the limits of their responsibility and as in Family Physician Mats Hogmark’s reminder “its not about me.”
So there you have it. What a privilege to be able to listen in and reflect on the discussion. Big thanks to Stephen, Joel, Ange, Brendan, Stan (zooming in at 4:00am from Brisbane) and Mats on his walkabout in Swedish forests.
As always, please leave your own reflections and ideas in the comments box below.