Coaching as “Space-making” for the Better Self

• In Event: Becoming Otherwise: STS Inroads into Techniques of the Better Self - II: Limits and Agency

Abstract

In this presentation, the practice of coaching is made available for inspection through an 8-minute live demonstration by me – in my (second-career) capacity as an accredited life/career coach – and a colleague who has volunteered to be my client for the occasion. Warts and all, this ‘empirical exhibit’ is meant to spur a conversation about what goes on in coaching, and how, as a practice, it is designed to support personal transformation.

In particular, the audience will be invited to pay attention to the way coaching entails “space-making”. Drawing on the principles I learned in coach-training and observations from my own practice, I use this term to refer to the way coach and client – in and through their interactions with each other and with the environment – work to create and expand space in ways that help the client obtain insights and realizations. I suggest that “space-making” may add in useful ways to STS analyses and engagements with “techniques of the better self”, especially for how it makes not-knowing and contingency as important as purposeful action/improvement/results. The extent to which my colleague and I manage to make coaching work (and not) at the conference may also prompt reflection on what is needed to effect generative “space-making”, and how expectations regarding outcomes are designed and responsibility for them distributed.

Author

• Catelijne Coopmans, Department of Thematic Studies - Technology and Social Change, Linköping University