Individual Coaching in an Outplacement Project

Introduction

This paper addresses some aspects of an individual coaching assignment, which took place over a period of six months. There are some aspects of this piece of work that I feel that there is the urge to think more deeply about this as it is beneficial for future.

Assignment, context, and additional background information

I got an assignment to coach Marcela, a part of an outplacement project. One major Financial Service organisation is successfully operating and growing in Spain for many years and it has decided to change its operating model and centralise several important functions at a regional level. As a result, many senior jobs became redundant in Spain and the people were offered either to relocate to the newly created regional hub (located in Eastern Europe) or to leave the bank with a severance package.

I got very surprised to get a request directly from the HR Director to coach Marcela and some of her peers out of the bank. The HR Director was new, and he explained to me that lot of things had changed, since I have worked on the last project at the bank (nearly 24 months ago). My role in the new assignment, he said, was to support my clients through coaching them to transition out of the bank as a part of a general restructuration. The task was to help them for dealing with loss of job and preparing them psychologically for a new beginning during the restructuration. I was also surprised as in the past, I didn’t contract directly with the Bank, and I used to do it with a Consulting firm, in which I work as an associate. Under the arrangement, my individual clients could request for many sessions with me, as they required job within the next 6 months or until they found a new job, if that happened earlier with a total limit of 12 sessions.

This time, the bank contracted me directly instead of the consulting firm that I previously worked as an Associate. I was informed by the consulting firm that, due to fee reduction they will not continue working with the bank and that I have authorisation to work with them directly. I left curious without a clear hypothesis, if the truth behind this was related to fees or they didn’t want to get involved with this type of difficult project. In this time, I didn’t see any impact on my own practise, and I confirmed that, I have the capabilities to deliver the task without being part of a firm. Reflecting on the concept of the impossible task (Roberts) I don’t think it was an impossible task but a challenging one, where I am exposed with experience of painful change and loss. I also in parallel was experiencing the loss of the Mother Consulting Firm and working now on my own.

Marcela

I have already known Marcela and coached her and some of the other senior people that are now on the outplacement programme. I have been coaching some of them previously as a part of Global Leadership Development programme. Marcela has done very well on the programme and since then got a promotion into a senior executive role, which she has always wanted. After the previous nine-month, coaching assignment was over and we kept connected. Marcela called me from time to time, when she needs an independent advice or wanted to share some of her successes. Marcela is also originally from Buenos Aires, like me. We are both Argentineans, emigrants working in Europe and in one way Marcela always have been someone special for me. I felt many times connected to her, as I think we have similar experiences and it is something that my supervisor called for my attention during my work to understand boundaries, emotions, and fantasies and also the potentiality of collusion with her.

First Coaching Session

First Coaching Session

At the first session, which was planned to take 90 minutes, lasted 2 hours. We extended for 30 minutes as it was very emotional, I lost track of the time and we extended 30 minutes of the time boundary. There was not much space for me to talk or intervene. I mostly listened to Marcela sharing with me the story of the last couple of months repeatedly, every time with new level of detail and emotions but nothing different. I experienced her like a little girl losing an object or her home.

She described that at first, she felt secure and safe and even spoke in support of the bank new transformational changes. She presented with great surprise, how the good and close relation she had with both superiors, the Marketing VP and General Manager, both of whom she known for years suddenly changed. She felt that, the things were changing as both bosses became unavailable, disappearing at the outside meetings or on business trips to the HQ. She felt anxious a bit but continued to trust everything that was all right and continued taking care of the business. Then she learned through some office gossip that both bosses were about to move to their next appointments. In family therapy, there is this concept of triangulation, when two people stick together in an attempt to outdo the third party. She was called to meet with the HR Director, whom she did not know well, as he just joined the company some weeks before the changes started. She said that, for most of the meeting she could not understand what he was talking about: once he mentioned the redundancy option, she was so shocked that went numb inside and could not listen properly and think straight for the rest of the meeting. She said in her mind she just kept thinking: "this is not happening to me...this is not happening to me..."

I asked Marcela to summarise what were the options available to her. She replied that, she wanted to stay in her current role, and she felt the role could not go away and could not be escalated to the regional level. She felt she had to fight hard and convince the right people to give her some time, 6-9 months, to prove the role that is needed and justified. I probed for other options, but she could not think of any. She was so strong in her denial of the situation that she still could not think straight, when it came to reality of possibly losing her role. She kept asking me to help her to fight for the role.

However, I insisted and then she told me about other options offered to her by the company. At first, she kept saying that, it was either her current role or redundancy. But when I probed further, she said she was also offered a role in the Regional HQ, but the role required relocation to the Eastern Europe Bank operations. After more probing, she said that, she also was offered a cross-functional move to become VP of one of the smaller functions in Spain and for the first time she can be the member of the Spain Executive Committee (“ExCo”). But she did not really consider this as an option, as it seemed to her "too far-fetched and unrealistic". I did not see a possibility to go into discussion, as I realised we crossed the time boundaries without both of us noticing. This is something that culturally in Latin America could have happened, but this never happened to me working on here. Marcela was emotionally exhausted and suggested to end the long session by her putting down a list of currently available options on a white sheet of paper and take that for further exploration.

When the option appeared on the page, Marcela broke down into tears saying: "I still cannot believe this is happening to me - it feels like an awful dream!" I was there, but did not say much — I just gave her time and space to express what was an earlier denied emotion of fear, frustration, and sadness. I also tried to hold my own sadness, which were close to come out. When Marcela got over the tears, we agreed to end the long session and meet again in a couple of days to talk through the options in some detail. We said goodbye, but while she was saying goodbye, she touched my shoulder in intent to hug me or even kiss me, something that in an Argentinean context will have happened naturally but with her never happened before through our work. It didn’t happen but I felt her intention to do it in a way to receive my protection and support.

Second and Third Session

Marcela took a lot of time in reflecting upon the activities with the company. Having joined the company at a very beginning of her career, she had worked here most of her professional life. She told me she started out as a secretary at a sales office, and then moved on to become a marketing assistant. Marcela got noticed by her boss, who recommended her for a fast-track development program. She did very well on a program and consequently joined key brand group as a marketing manager. She had always been a high performer and a high potential employee. She also worked hard for long hours and devoted most of her energy to her career.

Marcela was so loyal to the company that for several years she had postponed her plans to have children. She had difficulties in getting pregnant and she postponed a curative surgery recommended by specialist. She first postponed the surgery to get a long-desired promotion to head of a brand group and then to become the deputy to the marketing VP, then she felt she needed to put in some hard work to justify the received promotion. As a result, when after 12 months into her new job, she was going through the operation and they started trying for a baby again, things were not working out as planned and the doctors were pessimistic. Marcela just turned 40 and felt she probably missed her chance of ever having a baby. At this point in her story, she started crying again. I again gave her a space to express emotions, feeling myself also very emotional. When she got over the tears, I asked what her husband reaction to the situation was. It turned out he was still very much unaware of the potential redundancy, she could not bring herself to tell him the news. She felt she let him and their family down by focusing too much on her career and as a result failing on both fronts in her professional life and on a "baby front".

Insights from the coach emotional experience

Though I often coach people through personal and professional transitions, this assignment turned out to be emotionally very challenging to me. First, it made me recall my own transition out of the corporate world and all the painful emotions it took to detach myself from what was for nearly 20 years core part of my identity. For some reason Marcela's situation and emotions were closer to my heart than similar situations of many of my other clients. Second, I found it hard to cope with feeling of failure and guilt that suddenly overwhelmed me. I felt sadly some sense of responsibility for Marcela's "career derailment", as I had earlier been her executive coach for another programme before. The fact that her possible redundancy was due mostly to external factors (role being cut and Marcela not willing to move geographically or cross-functionally)Third factor that made this case difficult was to hear Marcela's "failed baby" and a sense of postponement of personal life due to work. Though I am a man it also connected me with the postponement to set up myself in a relationship and settled with my own family. I realised on reflection and with supervision support that, I could not have any responsibility for Marcela's situation.

Reflecting on the challenges and some further insights

After these two sessions and a better understanding through reflection and exploration of the countertransference, I really understood that my real task as a coach was to help Marcela accept the new reality, regain her sense of control and self-worth, identify new career options, and support her in moving on to explore them. Specially, my role is helping her to understand the process of loss in case she decided to take the redundancy package and if she decided to move into a new role to a different country.

With the help of my supervisor, I realised some of those feelings were coming from my experience, while others were connected to my relationship with my client, Marcela had pre-disposition to form dependency relations and delegate responsibility for her life and career to significant others, her bosses, the company, or me as a coach. A personal tendency to take care of others needs first and that potentially could contribute to me accepting so easily the mother role in the relationship with my client. I felt overprotective of Marcela and emotionally overstepped the boundary between us. The supervision helped me to become aware of these dynamics, constructively deal with it and empower my client to take responsibility for her own life and career. This is something that, I have also worked and is a continuous own personal challenge on myself as the older sibling who take care of two younger twin sisters, when my mother died at we were young. It also connected me with another interesting emotion that relates to be an immigrant and living and making a living out of your home country. In my case, it is not only the same experience that the client but with the addition that I am a son of two immigrant parents that immigrated to Argentina after the Spaniard and Italy Civil world (family’s migrations as a result of violence and war). You grow up with an internal experience that work could be more important than personal life matters, as work and a professional career will provide the financial support to be not exposed to hunger and will provide with a good financial future, security, and safety that my parents missed, when they suffer the social impact of civil wars and totalitarian governments. Not providing the 300 % to your professional development, not working long hours, no time for summer holidays or personal breaks will break and destroy the client and mine own family paradigm. I felt sad for the realisation that was a wrong paradigm but an important blind spot to work with her too. Also it suggests that, there are some specific vulnerabilities and a strong attraction to ‘helping’ in this case as manifested by Marcel and me too. Anna Dartington (1994) suggested that, staff may be drawn to tasks that give them the opportunity to work through own unresolved issues. Perhaps they have “similar needs and a similar propensity to fit with certain kind of defences” (Roberts, 1994, p.112).

First, I worked to make Marcela face reality of her role being cut and to deal with real and not fantasy options ahead of her. I helped her to consider in depth each option and assess it based on her needs and career plans. For the first time, she had to think of her long-term career aspirations. It was difficult for my client to identify and state her needs as different from those of her role, her company, or her boss. She got so used to be a good employee and a manager that struggled to imagine herself in any different role or capacity. She realised that, she did not want to take the regional role, as she was not mobile due to her husband's work commitments. She also did not want to take cross-functional move because that would take her too far out of her comfort zone both professionally and personally. So, finally she ended up looking at redundancy as an option again.

Another key challenge for my client was not to take company's decision, as a sign of rejection of her personal and professional value. She was so attached to the company and the team, that it was very hard for her to see herself as separating from both and yet successful and happy. The fact of her redundancy made her feel all her years with the company were devalued. In order to deal with that, I asked Marcela to retell her story in the third person and focus on the assets she acquired during her time with company. We called such core achievements and competencies "golden bars" and every time she formulated a "golden bar" type achievement, I asked her to put it on a list. My aim was to let her witness about her own strengths and achievement, which could not be taken away or devalued by any external change. At the end of the session, she had a long list of a golden bars", but she still was not accepting them all as her own. The process of acceptance took time and constant reminding from me, I kept asking her to bring up the list and read from it out loud every time, and she got overwhelmed by the sense of failure. Though Marcela resisted at first and then laughed at the artificial process of reading her own achievements, it did make her feel better and after a while she did not have to read from the paper but could spoke of her achievements with confidence and pride.

As a result of our work, Marcela took decision to leave the company with redundancy package and take time off to rest and reflect upon her personal needs and career aspirations. She said that, she might consider doing freelance consultancy work or even study to become a coach. I encouraged her to experiment with new "possible selves" (Ibarra) while she had the time and the money to do so.

Marcela said, she would always remember and love her "alma mater", but she probably would never want to come back there. She felt it was time to graduate and move on as she was ready to take responsibility for her own life.

Conclusion

Reflecting on this piece of work there is sadness that creeps into me. I feel as if I abandoned the client. Somehow, it appears I did not finish my task. Also, on hindsight now, only if I, too, set myself an impossible task, could I ‘fail’? (Roberts, 1994)

This connects me with Segal’s (1973) manic reparation concept, as a defence that aims to “repair the object in such a way that guilt and loss are never experienced” (p.95). Maybe this is also what I was trying to do as coach. The real reparation is integral to the depressive position. It involves facing loss and damage and recognising what belongs to the self and what belongs to the object. Good enough reparation includes a degree of guilt that is not so overwhelming, as to induce despair, but which can engender hope and concern.

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