Vulnerability as Strength
Vulnerability enables intimacy. Intimacy promotes reflection, expression, and growth. Vulnerability as a weakness frames a strength. Vulnerability requires strength of character, openness to difference, and the courage to occupy an internal space that is disquieting for some and liberating for others. Many people view vulnerability as a weakness in character, intent, and commitment. Vulnerability can weaken coaches and coachees as it is energy-intensive. It can deplete energy stores and exhaust progress. However, vulnerability can energize, generate self-awareness, and fuel creativity and innovation. Experiencing and employing vulnerability for self-discovery offers opportunities for change and potential for transformation.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung refers to the "Shadow" as the unconscious mind that houses deep-seated issues about ourselves that we repress, inhibiting us from becoming who we are and what we want. If not examined, this "dark side" of the psyche promotes stagnation. While a complex and nuanced concept theorizing about unconscious inhibitors to self-awareness and professional progress, coaches and coachees must be aware of this influence and other psychodynamic forces in the coaching relationship.
Through learning to tolerate vulnerability and regulate associated impulses that can distract from the coaching process from goal achievement, coaches and coachees can develop a mutually supportive relationship, aiding each other in identifying the imprisoning "shadows," applying psychodynamics strategies and methods to diminish their presence and impact, in turn fueling purpose and cultivating commitment to progress toward goal achievement.
It is essential that coaches receive advanced psychological education, training, and field supervision to fully understand this Jungian concept, as well as other psychological theories, models, and methods, especially those originated by Sigmund Freund, Hyman Spotnitz, and Benjamin Margolis. The contributions of these author-practitioners can enable the coaching relationship and advance continuous professional development essential to framing an informed, responsible, and efficacious coaching experience.
How can vulnerability enable beneficial outcomes from the coaching relationship?
Consider the characteristics of courage, purpose, connectedness, and their association with vulnerability.
Courage
Courage comes from the Latin cor-Heart. For coaches and coachees, experiencing vulnerability requires courage: the courage to suspend existing habits of thought and behavior and embrace new or revised forms of expression and action, articulating paths to becoming. Courage diminishes vulnerability. Coachees demonstrate courage in scheduling an appointment to explore being coached, developing a coaching goals plan, and persistently experimenting with and applying new skills introduced through being coached. Coaches demonstrate courage by being trained as certified coach (https://coachunion.com/), engaging in psychodynamic professional training, and integrating new coaching knowledge and skills into their coaching practice, often acquired through continual coaching supervision. Vulnerability and courage may seem an odd pairing; however, they have influenced and enabled leaders to achieve extraordinary accomplishments. As the British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, wrote, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Being courageous promotes success and builds endurance to cope with failures in life and work. Courage is attained through trial, effort, and discovery. Vulnerability fuels our journeys toward courage.
Purpose
Vulnerability can inspire purposes Purpose fuels desire and inhabits goals. President John F. Kennedy stated, "Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction." Purpose directs our thinking and behavior relative to achieving what we want. Vulnerability may be a transitional cognitive and emotional experience necessary in tempering our resolve to adopt purpose and committee to growth. We can harness the power and potential resident in vulnerability through crafting, revitalizing, and adapting the purposes of our personal and professional lives. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, "The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things." Purpose invites challenge and defeat, while vulnerability offers insight, discovery, and evolution.
Connectedness
Nature informs us of our connectedness to the external world. Connectedness and causality create the patterns and networks of our lives. Awareness of our connectedness enables us to plan and implement focused and purposeful action toward achieving our goals. In his Meditations, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Vulnerability is having the courage and strength to live according to your personal nature. Many people confuse vulnerability with weakness, and this is not only untrue, but it is an anti-truth. Vulnerability is an act of strength." Vulnerability, as a strength, enables connectedness. Vulnerability promotes receptivity to new ideas, lessens resistance to habitual behaviors, and promotes the willingness to explore undiscovered dimensions of ourselves and others. Connectedness is the fabric of life and foundational to the coaching relationship. Through dialogue and reflection, defensive attitudes and behaviors can weaken and become unnecessary, enabling mature object relations and receptivity of growth. Cultivating connectedness may require specific psychoanalytic knowledge and skills developed through coursework and supervised field experiences. Acquiring this knowledge and skill can form the basis for building coaching relationships predicated on acceptance, trust, and honesty. These qualities are essential to the effectiveness of the coaching experience. Connectedness in the coaching relationship enables coaches and coachees to discover, witness, and experience the conscious and unconscious themes and communications during the coaching session, promoting change and progress toward achieving goals.
Vulnerability
American author Madeline L'Engle wrote, "When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up, we would no longer be vulnerable. However, to grow up is to accept vulnerability. To be alive is to be vulnerable." Coaches must recognize that vulnerability can be a powerful force for change and transformation. Vulnerability can evoke resistance to exploring barriers to progress toward stated goals. Resistance manifests through myriad defensive processes (i.e., thoughts and behaviors). These processes can collude and, if unexamined, result in the perception of safety and stability, which, in turn, remains in the unsatisfying status quo.
Moreover, through erecting and maintaining conscious and unconscious defensives (i.e., defense mechanisms), coachees stymie metanoia or "shifts of mind" that could enable the discovery of an authentic self-perception, resulting in progress toward goal achievement. Coaches and coaches possess and deploy defensive structures to protect perceptions of the self and others. Awareness and management of defensive structures can empower and, in turn, advance the coach-coachee relationship.
We tend to avoid vulnerability as it may render us influenceable. Sometimes, we may willingly surrender or submit to influences from others or our environments. These acts can be viewed as states of weakness resulting from the lack of self-control. However, in coaching, the opposite may be true. Surrender evidences courage to be vulnerable, and submission can enable purpose. Applying the power and potential inherent in vulnerability in our coaching practices may be challenging. However, once applied, it can become a source of strength and resilience in our lives and work.
