PDF Summary:Coach the Person, Not the Problem, by Marcia Reynolds

In Coach the Person, Not the Problem, Marcia Reynolds seeks to expand people’s understanding of coaching. She argues that coaching is a partnership in which coaches help clients examine and challenge deep-seated beliefs that limit them, rather than a surface level, problem-solving exercise in which an expert doles out advice.

Reynolds is a leadership and executive coach who has advanced degrees in education, communications, and organizational psychology. Through working with a range of clients—including corporations like AT&T and American Express, universities, and government agencies—she discovered that lasting change comes only when people confront the underlying assumptions and emotions that have led them into the same, problematic situations time and again.

This guide examines Reynolds’s approach to coaching, five practices she uses to empower clients, and techniques to hone your coaching skills. Additionally, we provide expert perspectives that support, counter, and contextualize Reynolds’s work.

(continued)...

Reynolds argues that coaching and reflective inquiry are critical because nobody can transform their thinking in a vacuum. She says that no matter how rational you think you are, most people don’t make decisions rationally and many blame others for their problems. As a result, it’s helpful to have another voice in the room, such as a coach, to support clients as they challenge their assumptions and expand their beliefs.

(Shortform note: The International Coaching Federation (ICF) expands on Reynolds’ assertion that coaching and reflective inquiry help clients make progress by de-siloing their thinking, arguing that creativity also plays an important role in clients’ growth and transformation. According to the ICF, a critical part of the coach-client partnership is helping clients reconnect with creativity, which they say is increasingly lost in a world that values conformity and productivity over reflection and innovation. When coaches tap into clients’ creativity by challenging and expanding their thinking, they give them the chance to experiment with new perspectives that help them adapt to and tackle challenges more effectively.)

Practice 1: Focus on Clients’ Underlying Beliefs, Not Their Surface-Level Problems

Reynolds argues that your top priority during sessions is to stay focused on helping your client address deeply held assumptions, beliefs, and emotions that hinder their progress—not fixing surface-level problems they present to you. Focusing on clients’ deeper beliefs and emotions helps them see how particular beliefs and emotions lead them into the same problems and undesirable situations over and over again. Then, they can view those problems and situations differently, expand their understanding of themselves, and make lasting change. In contrast, providing solutions to surface-level problems will address the issue at hand, but it won’t help your client understand why they repeatedly confront the same problem that masks itself in different forms.

(Shortform note: A different way of thinking about the interplay of beliefs, emotions, and behavior is through the lens of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a technique premised on the idea that clients can make positive behavioral changes by identifying and replacing negative, limiting thoughts with accurate, productive ones—a process that fuels a continuous cycle of cognitive and mood improvements.)

Reynolds acknowledges that examining clients’ underlying beliefs is an uncomfortable process because it requires clients to be vulnerable and coaches to delve into emotionally precarious terrain. But surfacing uncomfortable feelings and truths is the only way to help clients see that their inaccurate beliefs and challenging emotions are the source of their struggle to make decisions and take action in their lives.

(Shortform note: The issue of client vulnerability exists not just in coaching but in counseling professions, which historically were not as receptive to clients exposing their raw emotions as they are today. In Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg argues that until the mid-20th century, the cardinal rule of psychotherapy was clinical detachment. Therapists were trained in analysis, not empathy, and taught to respond to clients who expressed vulnerability with cool detachment, which discouraged them from sharing more.)

You can stay focused on clients’ underlying assumptions by reminding yourself as you enter sessions of core principles of the coach-client relationship that de-emphasize surface-level problem-solving, including that you’re a partner who’s there to help your fully competent client explore deeper beliefs, not an expert who’s there to solve their problems.

Practice 2: Reflect Back Clients’ Words and Emotions

Reynolds says that reflecting clients’ words and emotions back to them allows clients to more objectively see and examine underlying factors that limit them and consider new ways forward. The process begins with summarizing or rephrasing important points that your client makes, then asking follow-up questions and reflecting back emotions the client surfaces.

(Shortform note: Therapists support Reynolds’ approach for going deeper, asserting that when you listen to understand rather than respond to clients you make them feel heard and validated, which can give you more insight into the challenges they face. Similar to Reynolds, they say you can go deeper with clients by putting aside your personal feelings and agenda, suspending judgment, focusing on the other person’s perspective, asking open-ended questions to enhance your understanding of what they’re saying, and summarizing and validating what they’ve said.)

Reflect Back by Summarizing and Asking Follow-Up Questions

Reynolds says the first step of reflecting back is to verbally summarize your client’s key points, then add short, clarifying questions to get a deeper understanding of what they’re thinking and feeling. As you do this, you should allow room for your client to fill in the blanks and add additional details and explanation. This back-and-forth dialogue ensures that you have an accurate understanding of your client's position while revealing deeper motivations and emotions that your client is experiencing (perhaps subconsciously). By demonstrating to your client that you’re present and listening rather than jumping to conclusions, you'll receive helpful information that will enable you to guide them to their own realizations.

(Shortform note: Therapists assert that reflecting back is a component of “validation in therapy,” a process that helps clients see that their words and experiences matter and are being taken seriously, and that their behavior—even if inappropriate—is understandable. The process has been found to improve client outcomes and build trust and strengthen the therapeutic alliance between counselors and clients.)

To get the most out of summarizing and questioning, frame your questions to solicit the following information, which will help you help your client home in on the source of the challenges they’re facing and identify goals to move forward:

• What are your client's needs and wants? Which of these are most important to them?
• Do they believe they can achieve these things?
• What do they fear will happen if they don't achieve their needs and wants?
• What has your client already tried, and when? What was the result?
• Why is your client choosing now, of all times, to ask for help?

Summarizing what your client has said interrupts their automatic thought process, giving them the chance to pause and consider a) whether your synopsis is accurate and b) the underlying meaning of the thought or belief they shared. Reynolds says that summarizing entails three skills: recapping, paraphrasing, and encapsulating.

(Shortform note: In The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier adds that a good question gets to the point without feeling like it came out of a coaching manual. He recommends starting by simply asking, “What’s on your mind?,” then following up with, “Anything else?,” “What’s your central challenge?,” and, “What do you want?” Like Reynolds, he argues that coaches should trust in people’s ability to identify and rectify their challenges, and he says you can communicate this trust by asking: “How can I support you?” rather than stepping in and fixing their problems.)

Recapping is when you provide highlights of the issue, problem, or reason your client says they’re having difficulty making a decision or taking an action. It allows you to clarify and make sure you understand the full picture of what your client’s saying.

Reynolds recommends that you use the same words your client has used if their language is strong, for example, if they say they “hate” or think something’s “idiotic” or “wish” someone would do something. Mirroring their words allows you to tap into deeper emotions closer to the root of the issues they’re struggling with.

Paraphrasing is when you interpret and restate what your client said using different words. Paraphrasing allows your client to evaluate the meaning of their words and emotions and, if they don’t agree with how you’ve framed what they said, to correct or clarify what they meant.

Reynolds says that because paraphrasing is an interpretation of what a client has said, you should be mindful to stay true to what you believe they meant. Guessing what they were thinking based on your personal experiences loads external meaning and judgments onto the situation. This pulls you out of the reflective inquiry process, turning you away from the important role of a partner who sees their client’s greatest potential.

Encapsulating is when you sum up your client’s story in a handful of words. When you encapsulate, clients can agree or disagree with your framing, clarify what they meant, expand upon what they want or need to address, and decide on a particular direction to pursue. Ways that you can encapsulate a client’s story include:

• Stating a bottom line. For example: “Bottom line, you want to leave your wife but are worried about how she’ll react.”
• Making distinctions. For example: “When you say you’re ‘done’ with your wife’s terrible behavior, are you saying you’re annoyed with how she acts or you’re thinking about leaving her?”

Another Use for Listening Tools

Reynolds presents summarizing tools such as recapping, paraphrasing, and encapsulating as ways to get at clients’ underlying motivations, but you can also use them to ameliorate coaching conversations that take a turn for the worse.

In Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Et Al. explore four listening tools that can help you re-engage someone who’s shut down or blown up: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, and Prime (AMPP). The first three of these tools correspond to Reynolds’s questioning, recapping, paraphrasing, and encapsulating techniques, whereas priming actually contradicts some of her advice:

Ask: When someone acts out by going silent or responding to you aggressively, you can bring them back into the fold by first asking what their concerns are from a place of genuine curiosity, to let them know you care about their thoughts and feelings.

Mirror: When the person responds, you can reflect back their feelings through the act of mirroring. This can illuminate inconsistencies in their words and behavior. Like recapping, mirroring can help you tap deeper into what someone’s thinking and feeling.

Paraphrase: When you have a sense of what’s triggered the person who’s upset, paraphrasing and encapsulating their story allows you to acknowledge and ensure that you clearly understand what they’ve said. Though Reynolds doesn’t make explicit note of this, Patterson, Grenney et al. assert that paraphrasing can cultivate a sense of safety for the aggrieved party by showing that you understand their troubles.

Priming: Finally, if the person isn’t sharing and you feel you’ve hit a wall with them, you can encourage them to open up by offering a guess at what they might be feeling. Whereas Reynolds says you shouldn’t guess at what a client’s thinking or feeling, because it risks loading your external judgments onto their situation, Patterson, Grenny et al. assert that doing so encourages them to open up and share information with you.

Reflect Back by Pointing Out Clients’ Emotions

Reynolds says that when clients are talking you should pay close attention to subtle changes in their emotions and behavior, which can signal that they’re feeling something different from what they’re saying. Drawing clients’ attention to these emotional and behavioral shifts gives them the opportunity to pause, consider how they truly feel, and identify deeper reasons that they’re having difficulty making decisions or taking actions that move them forward.

(Shortform note: Reynolds says that pointing out clients’ emotions can help them dig deeper into their thoughts and beliefs, enabling revelations. In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves argue that emotionally intelligent people are already tuned into this deeper level of self-awareness and can recognize patterns of their own behavior that are limiting, reflect on the reasons underlying their emotional responses, and understand factors that do and don’t motivate them. This kind of self-awareness can make decision-making and collaborating with others easier, because emotions aren’t clouding their judgment or interfering with their ability to function effectively.)

Reynolds recommends three tips to reflect your clients’ emotions back to them in a way that will encourage them to examine their beliefs more deeply:

1) Point out emotional shifts, including changes in your client’s energy, tone of voice, and inflections and pace of their speech. For example, you might say: “I notice that you just got quiet. Can you tell me where your thoughts are right now?” or, “You’re laughing but it sounds like nervous laughter. Can you help me understand where that’s coming from?”

2) Allow your client to experience their emotions without judgment. You should accept—not try to change, ameliorate or interpret—whatever emotion your client displays. Your goal is to simply reflect your client’s emotional shifts back to them in as emotionally neutral and balanced a way as possible, so your client feels safe being vulnerable with you.

3) Be inquisitive. Being constantly curious about your client communicates that you’re interested in them. It can also ground you and help you navigate uncomfortable moments with your client. For example, if your client becomes upset or defensive, or if you find yourself feeling annoyed by or judgmental toward something your client says, it’s time to tap back into your curiosity and dig deeper into why they feel the way they do, to recenter yourself so you don’t introduce unhelpful feelings and beliefs into your session.

(Shortform note: Experts add to Reynolds’ suggestions for engaging clients emotionally by recommending that white practitioners working with clients of color take steps to engage in culturally competent practices. This begins with acknowledging, when relevant to your work together, that it will be helpful for you to better understand challenges your client faces as a person of color—for instance, whether they feel comfortable taking risks at work, and if there are places and times when they feel their voice is overlooked or misrepresented. Listening actively and not judging or responding reactively can demonstrate your interest in your client’s experience and build trust.)

Practice 3: Disrupt and Unpack Clients’ Narratives

Reynolds says that humans are meaning-making machines and that each of us constructs narratives to a) understand the world and ourselves and b) justify our circumstances. She says that we mistake these narratives for objective “reality,” when in fact they’re based on our personal experiences, social needs, and values.

Social needs are what each person requires to connect with others and have a sense of well-being, like wanting to feel safe, accepted, valued, and in control. Reynolds says that unmet social needs are often at the heart of problems that clients present.

Personal values are a person’s most strongly held, often inflexible, beliefs about what’s important in life—for example, family, power, religion or freedom.

Reynolds says that social needs and personal values shape our biases, beliefs, and assumptions, which serve as the glue that holds our narratives together. These needs and values also compose and form our identities, which harden over time, making change difficult.

(Shortform note: Whereas Reynolds sees rigid values as an obstacle to change, in Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins offers a different view. He proposes that there are two types of values: ends and means. Ends are emotional states you hope to experience that make life fulfilling, such as happiness, love, and security. Means are how you expect to achieve those ends. For example, one of your values might be “family,” which is the vehicle through which you expect to find happiness and love. For Robbins, the trouble comes when you pursue your means while forgetting about your ends. One of a coach’s tasks, therefore, might be to remind clients of their ends and help them find more effective means.)

Reynolds argues that coaches’ job is to disrupt and unpack clients’ thinking by helping them identify and deconstruct the biases, beliefs, and assumptions that hold their narratives together. This allows clients to question their narratives, see the situations they’re in differently, and move forward in new, more productive ways.

You can help clients dismantle long-held narratives by positively reinforcing your client for working to improve their situation. This encourages them to continue sharing openly. For example, you can say: “You’ve worked incredibly hard and done everything you can to improve your relationship with your brother,” or “You’ve identified and tapped into as many key resources as are available to you. What’s left in your control to do at this point?” Encouraging clients to continue to make their own decisions empowers them by making them see they’re not trapped in their situation.

Another Reason It’s So Hard to Unpack Narratives

In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari supports Reynolds’ argument that people typically see their narratives as a fixed truth and explains why they’re so entrenched: Rituals cultivate people’s belief in the stories they create.

Harari asserts that people develop “meaning-of-life” stories—which give you a sense of purpose and put your existence into a broader context—when they’re young, in order to forge their identities. He says that most people combine components of multiple meaning-of-life stories and, as a result, end up with multiple, inaccurate identities. Because people are good at compartmentalizing, they often don’t notice or acknowledge that these identities contradict one another. For example, someone who doesn’t believe in the death penalty might nonetheless be comfortable with vigilante justice that leads to the murder of a person who’s committed a heinous crime against a child.

Harari says that most people’s meaning-of-life stories would fall apart if they truly examined them, which they often don’t because they’re supported and reinforced in rituals found in religion, politics, laws, social norms, and institutions. Our stories are cemented through the lighting of candles in religious ceremonies, the enforcement of hierarchies and standardized thought in the military, and the carrying on of political traditions through the transfer of crowns and power.

Practice 4: Help Clients Set Goals and Take Action

Reynolds says that coaches keep clients focused on goals and actions they’ll take to achieve them. Setting goals provides a guiding light to aim for, decreasing the likelihood of sessions turning into a laundry list review of clients’ surface-level problems. Encouraging clients to articulate what they’ve learned during a session and commit to steps they’ll take to achieve their goals leads to concrete, positive change.

Help Clients Set Goals

Reynolds argues that helping clients identify goals increases the probability that they’ll make longer-lasting change than if you simply assign them a goal. A goal can be as simple as addressing an obstacle that’s preventing the client from making a decision or moving forward, such as an emotion, like fear, that has them feeling stuck. She says coaches shouldn’t give clients goals because it may prompt resistance. This is because change triggers a survival response in the brain that interprets doing things differently as a threat. People are more likely to embrace change when they arrive at their own conclusions about how and why that change is important—because it’s less threatening than if someone imposes change on them.

(Shortform note: Leadership experts offer a different take on why change is so difficult: It makes people feel they’ve lost control and creates an uncertain future in which they’re forced to contemplate their relevance and competence. For example, if a new boss takes over an organization, employees may worry about the security of their job, whether they’ll have to take on a different role or expanded responsibilities, and if they’ll be able to manage these changes. To minimize discomfort that can come with this kind of change, leaders can be honest and transparent about what workers can expect—for example, they might announce early in their tenure that they don’t have plans to lay off workers.)

Though it’s ideal for clients to start each session with a goal, not every client has a clear goal from the outset. Reynolds says it’s okay for goals to evolve over the course of a session. When clients’ goals aren’t firm or shift over the course of a session, you can help tease out a direction they might like to move in using the following tips:

Summarize and present choices of preferred outcomes. If your client appears lost, listing one problem after another rather than stating a clear goal, you can sum up what you’ve heard them say then present several options for direction they might take. For example, you might say, “I understand that you’re unhappy at your job because your boss has unrealistic expectations of you, but that you also enjoy your work. Do you want to leave your job or find ways to make things more tolerable so you can stay?” Your client can then clarify that they prefer one option over the other, or present a different option.

Listen for strong words and emotions that signal what your client really wants. Pay attention to words and phrases that emphasize a client’s true desires, like “I wish” or “the worst thing is.” Look, too, for strong body language, like slumping or a distressed facial expression. These words and emotions are clues that, with additional probing, you can illuminate your client’s fears or unmet needs, which can help you identify goals that your client wants to pursue.

(Shortform note: Coaching experts say that another way to help clients identify a goal is to directly ask them what’s not going well in their life, what they’re unhappy about, and what keeps them up at night. Oftentimes a great goal is the opposite of what your client says they’re unhappy about. For example, if they say they feel lonely, their goal might be to make friends or find a partner.)

Invite your client to change their goals if they have a revelation. If you notice that your client has a sudden realization that shifts or changes their goal in the middle of a session, welcome the change. A revelation might come in the form of a change of expression on your client’s face, a long pause, or laughter. You can learn more about what they’re experiencing by asking what led them to pause, or laugh. If that reveals that their thinking about their goal has changed, you can invite them to consider whether they want to revise their current goal.

If they say yes, ask how their new way of thinking differs from how they’ve thought about things up to this point, acknowledge the change, then have them restate the new goal clearly so you’re both on the same page about it moving forward. If your client knows their goal has shifted but isn’t sure what new goal to focus on, get them to commit to at least one action they’ll take to move forward, like setting aside a time to identify a new goal for your next session.

(Shortform note: Reynolds’s recommendation that coaches welcome mid-session goal changes is embraced by coaches in boxing as well. They argue that changing up goals can help boxers grow by pursuing bigger challenges they feel more passionately about, which can lead to greater development. Like Reynolds, boxing coaches help boxers uncover why they’re shifting their goal, because if they don’t understand this, they’ll lack the motivation to see the new goal through.)

Help Clients Take Action

Reynolds says that for clients to make meaningful change you must get them to articulate what they learned during each session and commit to concrete steps they’ll take to achieve their goals. Failure to do this makes it too easy for clients to forget what they learned and not follow through on their goals.

Clients should have one goal in every session, even if that goal is simply to reflect on what they learned during the session. You can get clients to commit to a goal by asking:

• What their plan is to achieve the goal
• When they plan to get it done
• What obstacles they expect to confront in working toward it
• What resources they can draw upon to overcome barriers they’ll face
• How they feel about their plan

Reynolds recommends wrapping up your final session with clients by asking them to describe their experience and what they learned. To reinforce their commitment to growth, remind them of the good work they did to make progress, including your reflection on a moment that their vulnerability resulted in an important shift in the process, their development over the course of your sessions together, and goals they set and achieved.

Set Bigger Goals to Find Greater Success

In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone takes goal setting to a more extreme level than Reynolds, arguing that you should get in the mindset of setting goals that are 10 times higher than you’re inclined to and do 10 times what you think is required to achieve them.

Cardone asserts that people make several key mistakes when setting goals: They set their expectations too low and target things that don’t adequately motivate them, and they underestimate the obstacles they’ll face and the effort and resources it will take to meet their goals.

He says that when you set your bar higher than you normally would, even if you don’t achieve your goal, you’ll still end up in a better place than if you’d set a lower bar. In contrast, when you set your goal too low, you’ll never realize the full potential of what you could have accomplished if you’d aimed higher. For example, if your goal is to be less lonely, instead of setting out to make one friend, your goal should be to make 10 friends. You may not end up with 10 friends, but you might end up with two or three instead of just one.

Cardone goes on to say that the success you find from setting and achieving goals that are 10 times what you normally would set will fuel even more success, because being successful creates momentum. He argues that successful people look to keep their success going because they have to live up to their potential to be happy. In this context, he says, being dissatisfied and wanting more success is a positive, motivating force.