Are You Holding Space for Your Coachee?

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When I underwent my coach training, one of the core coaching skills I learned was holding space.

In my training, I think I understood holding space more from the perspective of being quiet for the client as a way to take time to reflect and process what's coming up during our coaching session. In practice, I found holding space to be much more.

When I refer to holding space, it now feels more like being in the moment to spend quality time experimenting with flexibility, boundaries, emotions, new behaviors, and being present for whatever takes place. It is an opportunity to honor the patience and activities required to work through the coaching process. Likewise, I found holding space was just as important for me as the coach as it was for the coaching relationship I was building with the client. I discovered when I effectively hold space, whatever is happening in the moment is allowed to be as it is without attachment or the need to hurry along to fit into the coaching model. Although my coach training experience covered this key aspect, I learned more about what holding space meant during a coaching session with a wonderful client. Here is what happened... and what I learned.

A new client booked a six-session package with me. In our discovery session, I initially felt the client's resistance towards creating a coaching structure or following a coaching model to ensure we stayed on track. The more I applied a model, the more resistance came up. In addition, my client's agenda frequently changed during the course of the session. Even with a coaching model and asking significant questions, we were all over the place. When I tried to bring the focus back to the agenda, my client withdrew and shutdown. I listened intently, paraphrasing, re-framing and holding space for my client (as I was taught to do). But it didn't help. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I wasn't going to give up. Thankfully, she wanted to push through with me as well.

Before the next session, I read through a few case studies, reflected on past clients and tried to identify what was the hindrance. Was it my approach? Was it the coaching model? Was it my client's resistance to coaching? Nope. I discovered it was my understanding about holding space.

I held on to a specific idea about the coaching process. As a coach, it was my responsibility to hold space and decide what coaching model would work best. In doing so, I forgot to hold space for myself, the client and our coaching relationship. I forgot to move in harmony with my client's mental perception and values, giving the client autonomy and space to decide what coaching model would work best for her needs.

Utry, Palmer, McLeod and Cooper (2015) would likely suggest I must take a "pluralistic approach to coaching." Meaning, instead of the traditional coaching approach where the coach decides the model or framework to use based on the client's agenda, collaborating with the client and allowing the client to have more agency in deciding what the framework would look like is more effective and the heavy-lift is not left solely on the coach (Pendle, 2015). As such, a pluralistic approach in coaching refers to the collaborative sharing of ideas and decisions between the coach and the coachee. It's more than co-creating the outcome. It's co-creating every aspect of the coaching process and getting the client's feedback (Utry et al., 2015).

In that moment, I realized it's important to hold space for the coaching process, myself AND the client because we were in a three-way partnership (client, coach, coaching process itself). So, I forgot about the other two partners involved on this journey, myself and the actual client. I was focused primarily on the coaching model. Everything requires space, including the relationship, me and my client, to reflect, experiment and honor what's coming up in the moment. In summary, I needed to shift towards a digimodernism paradigm of mutual ownership in the coaching relationship, expanding on the concept of holding space, which differed from what I learned in my coach training.

In our next session, I acknowledged the disjointed feeling and asked my client what was coming up for her. She felt it, the "off-ness," too. So, I asked her permission to hold space for just understanding what we were experiencing together and come up with a model that works best for us in this moment. We explored how she thinks, what she wants, what her values are and how she wants to be coached before tackling her agenda.

With my client's agreement, we both created a new perspective and collaborative coaching approach that allowed us to be in the moment and define what the process looks and feels like for both her and me as we honored what came up in the coaching relationship. From this view, I was able to learn oodles about my client. I understood her thought-process, and we experimented with how questions can be asked, the language we both could use to open her up versus shutting her down and that would give me creativity as well.

I checked in frequently to make sure she felt we were in sync. She wanted to explore and experiment more with our engagement. So, I continued to hold space for us to explore and understand how our client-coach relationship would look moving forward and how to approach the process. What came up were words like "adventure" in coaching, "freedom" in coaching, and "play" with coaching. She and I collaborated on behaviors she wanted to change and ideas around implementing boundaries and self-care. So, I switched gears and took on an experimental, collaborative tone with the flexibility to support what my client valued—to have fun with whatever comes up and having an adaptability mindset towards my client's ever-changing agenda. In short, we defined the coaching model, the coaching model didn't define us. That is the benefit and beauty of a pluralistic approach to coaching.

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When we facilitated the next session, we were like a well-oiled machine. I better understood how she connected the dots mentally, she valued the space to be heard and "play" with the coaching process. In fact, part of my client's values were to feel free to have playtime (i.e., experiment and evaluate), and to be who she is in the moment—as the moments changed. She better understood the rational of my questions and that my inquiry came from a place of curiosity. We developed an interesting form of trust as we held space for each other and the coaching relationship in a way that allowed immediate growth and connection.

We discovered we like to play and experiment, at specific intervals, and just be with words, feelings, and behaviors as they came up—meaning, we were flexible with the model and where the coaching approach took us during the process. I was able to modify my coaching model and implement activities that matched my client's way of thinking and processing. We held space to "play" and by doing so, I saw an energetic, self-aware, confident client emerge from our sessions. And, I emerged with a better understanding of holding space.