Relationship Matters

Ep.6 Idiot Compassion

October 26, 2022 CRR Global Season 4 Episode 6
Relationship Matters
Ep.6 Idiot Compassion
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Katie talks with one of the co-founders of CRR global, Faith Fuller, about Idiot Compassion. Idiot compassion is helping in unhelpful ways.  Helping someone perpetuate their neurosis or unskillfulness at the expense of others.  Or at the expense of a client's well-being.  This conversation covers:

  • The different situations that can bring out idiot compassion
  • Using Meet, Reveal Align and Act as a way of sharing a truth in a much more skilful way
  • The coach as a mirror: a client cannot change unless we reveal the truth to them

Faith Fuller is one of the co-founders and President of CRR Global. She is a psychologist and experienced trainer and coach, with over 15 years of experience in working with organizations, couples and communities. Faith takes a systems approach to coaching, namely that all aspects of the system need to be addressed in order for effective change to occur. Her particular skill is empowering powerful, productive and joyous relationships in couples, partnerships and teams. She also has a background in consultation, team building, conflict resolution and community crisis intervention.


For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Key 

 

KC – Katie Churchman 

FF – Faith Fuller 

 

[Intro 00:00 – 00:09] 

 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode I’m talking with co-owner and president of CRR Global, Faith Fuller, about Idiot Compassion. Idiot compassion is helping in unhelpful ways. Helping someone perpetuate their neurosis or unskillfulness at the expense of others or at the expense of a client's well-being.  This conversation covers: the different situations that can bring out idiot compassion, using meet, reveal align and act as a way of sharing a truth in a much more skillful way and the coach as a mirror. Our job as a coach is to reveal the truth to our clients. As well as being a co-owner and president of CRR Global, Faith Fuller is a psychologist and experienced trainer and coach with over 20 years of experience in working with organizations, couples and communities. Faith takes a systems approach to coaching, namely that all aspects of the system need to be addressed in order for effective change to occur. Her particular skill is empowering powerful, productive and joyous relationships in couples, partnerships and teams. She also has a background in consultation, team building, conflict resolution and community crisis intervention. So without further ado I bring you, Faith Fuller, talking about idiot compassion. 

 

KC – Hi Faith, welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast! So happy to have you back on the show. 

 

FF – Yeah, I’m delighted to be here! 

 

KC – And I’m excited to talk about idiot compassion with you today. It’s quite the provocative title, idiot compassion, so say more about this term. 

 

FF – Yeah. Well, the term came originally from the Buddhist world which is Chogyam Trungpa Pema Chodron, are the ones that really talk about it the most. Although I think it’s quite an old concept, and it’s basically ways in which we try to help in unhelpful ways. I think that most of us want to be good people or we want to be positive coaches, and what that means is sometimes we can perpetuate somebody’s unskillfulness or their neurosis by not confronting a situation that needs to be dealt with. And so if there’s something going on that’s at the expense of our clients wellbeing we may be sort of allowing it to go on and to continue because we’re not willing to grasp the nettle and speak up about an unskillful pattern that is happening, either in our personal lives or in our coaching lives. So I think, idiot compassion has a component of lying to ourselves. Like we wanna be good people so, or we wanna be the best, the most compassionate kind of coach. And I think this particularly happens in ORSC because there’s an emphasis in the research and in our work, because it’s in the research, on positivity. Sometimes it’s positivity at the expense of addressing something painful that needs to be addressed. So there’s a kind of self-deception when we’re, that we’re being forgiving or supportive, we’re actually just supporting a toxic behavior. 

 

KC – That’s really interesting, so in our desire to be helpful and to help others we can sometimes get in our own way and perhaps create even more damage through not revealing fully what’s going on. 

 

FF – Absolutely, yeah. And I don’t think this is a foreign idea to people, most of us know this. And I think compassion takes a couple of particular forms. One is what I would call an enabling pattern and that’s when we’re helping somebody to hurt themselves somehow and not setting a limit. So sometimes we’ll see that in addiction or abusive behavior or protecting somebody from consequences of their behavior. So in this particularly situation, true compassion has to do with setting a, basically saying I’m not going to give you a bottle if you’re an alcoholic, I’m not going to allow my child to repeat dangerous behaviors over and over again without confronting them with what’s going on. Or it could be consistently bailing somebody out when they get into trouble so that the never learn from their behavior because we’re buffering them from the consequences of their behavior. So some kind of enablement of a thing that is neither good for them or for the relationships in their life. 

 

KC – So it seems this idea of idiot compassion shows up in our personal lives as much as it does in our coaching practices? 

 

FF – Yes it does. It absolutely does. And it shows up even more in the personal. I mean I sit here and I just think about different ways in which I will enable something, and often, to be honest, when we’re enabling it’s because we don’t have the energy or the oomph to do something about it. So we, it’s easy to say well, you know, I’m just taking care of this person, but really we just don’t want to have to have the energy and the effort and the unpleasantness of having to change something. And I think we see this all the time in coaching as well, actually. It’s that time when you know you really should, you’ve seen a pattern now, in your client, over and over again, and your clients, a couple that repeatedly fights, and nothing you do seems to make a difference, and yet you somehow decide well this must be because I’m not good enough. And it might well be I’m not good enough. But there’s also a place where we’re not saying look, this is a pattern now, every time we get to this topic it’s almost like you escape to a fight and I’m, we’ve used some tools on this, but here’s my question for you – it’s gotta be up to you. What change is going to happen that’s gonna make a difference this time? How are you going to be different the next time this comes up? So putting the responsibility back on them, and to do that you have to risk something. When I think about it you have to be willing to risk your client, to call them on patterns that they really need to change. And, you know, I’ve actually lost clients, I’ve done that, so the fear is oh my god, if I confront my client or show them, hold up the mirror and they see the pattern they won’t like me anymore or they’ll quit my practice, and God knows I need the money! You know, I think we’ve all been there! Of we’re afraid to lose the client. But, I had a supervisor tell me something absolutely horrifying once. She said when you hold back it’s because you want to be nice, you don’t wanna anger the client, you’re prostituting yourself. 

 

KC – Wow! Wow, oh my gosh, that’s a provocative statement. 

 

FF – It was shock, and you can tell, I’ve never forgotten it, this was years ago! But you can see it, it’s like you are, you’re not grasping the nettle. Because you don’t want to lose something for yourself, and you are basically denying that client the insight and perceptiveness that you have about those situations so you are selling out for the sake of pleasing the client or not losing the client and that term prostituting is such a shocking term, but it was very effective with me, she did not hesitate to grasp the nettle with me! Tell me that. 

 

KC – Yeah and it worked! 

 

FF – It worked! 

 

KC – And it’s stuck with you. There’s something about selling out both ourselves and the coaching profession and what it can do, because I notice when I try and fix, which I think we can all fall into that trap of trying to fix, we then maybe are fearful of saying I’ve noticed this pattern where you commit to something and then you don’t actually do it. And then, I think when we’re in that fixing mode it’s hard to reveal the ugly stuff or the not so nice things. We just wanna reveal wow, you’re doing great, amazing progress, which is easier! 

 

FF – Yeah, there’s a bias in coaching towards positivity. You’re so right. We’ve all had clients that don’t do what they say they’re going to do and sooner or later you have to say so what’s the, here’s the pattern, what do you make of this? And you have to hold the mirror up so they can see it and not help them find the easy answer. I think we see that when we do alignment coaching, when, there’s a stage at the very end of alignment coaching where basically you’ve brought them into a certain amount of alignment and now the question is of how, now that there’s some basic alignment, how do they want to move forward with a future that’s gonna be different? And often when we teach this technique, the coach actually gets up and goes and stands behind the client in supportive posture because, basically they’re saying problems out in front, it’s your job to figure out how to solve this now, so how do you want to be together in this? And it’s the hardest place for coaches that are doing alignment coaching, not to jump in and make suggestions or to, you have to tolerate the silence, because they have to cross that edge themselves, as long as you cross it for them and say you could try this or maybe you should do that, they will not make the big cross, cross that edge of turning to one another and having to solve it themselves. So that’s a great example of you don’t want idiot compassion there, you need to stand back there and say look, we’ve just used this tool, it’s the best I can do now you need to move it forward from here. And placing the responsibility, empowering your clients by placing the responsibility back on them. 

 

KC – That’s such an interesting point, so talking and filling space sometimes is idiot compassion? Because it’s not creating that space? 

 

FF – Boy that is so great. Yeah. Yeah, it’s asking the difficult question and then sweating it out. Let them sweat it out, you know. And there’s another form of idiot compassion that I see both in coaching but primarily also in one’s personal life and that’s not setting boundaries. And we see this a lot in addictions, when you’re working with somebody who’s working with addictions. And basically it’s when somebody has a behavior that’s abusive in some way, could be alcoholism or gambling or aggression, but we don’t have the courage to set a firm boundary. So it could be forgiving somebody over and over and over again who basically hasn’t changed, or if you see a client that repeatedly goes back to the toxic relationship, even though it hasn’t changed in 15 years. You also see it, frankly, in breakups sex – you know, you’ve broken up but you miss each other really bad, you get back together and you’re going to have sex but it doesn’t help one bit. In fact it makes it worse. And it’s like why did you do that? You couldn’t tolerate the pain of being separate for a little while. So the thing about setting boundaries, particularly in a personal relationship, is you are already part of the dynamic. So if someone is aggressive with you and you’ve tolerated it 17 times, there’s no reason for them to change your behavior. It’s a third entity situation, only by your sometimes setting out of that pattern, we shift the third entity to a new behavior. And that’s also true with approaching clients. If you are not confronting the setting a boundary around certain things, like somebody who doesn’t ever pay their bill, then you’re not, again, holding them responsible for their consequences.  You’re not help holding up that mirror to set a boundary, this behavior is not useful for you, or me, or anybody else. 

 

KC – I’m wondering then, in coaching, could it be that sometimes we need to let a client go, or refer them onto another coach, because we’re not seeing any sort of movement. They’re staying stuck. Is that potentially, keeping them on is idiot compassion? 

 

FF – Absolutely. Yeah. And that makes me think of that painful concept of prostitution, that because we don’t want to lose the money we don’t refer that client on. And I can’t say this more strongly. Not every coach is good for every person. There is a match in stylistic thing that is important. And if you don’t have what your client needs, or your style doesn’t match or, frankly, you don’t like that client, chances are you’re not going to serve them well, if you can’t find something you can appreciate about them. So not letting a client go or referring them on in a useful way, or if they really have a psychiatric issue, red flags and so on, you need to refer them onto somebody who can help them and not keep them, you bet. 

 

KC – In terms of when a client, it starts to feel like they’re stuck, have you noticed in your own practice that sometimes they’ve been the right client for you and you’ve been the right coach, but then over time it’s not necessarily working anymore. Can that also be true? 

 

FF – Yeah, I think what you’re saying is you should lose your mojo? 

 

KC – Yeah, exactly that! 

 

FF – Yeah, I think it does happen. I think you get familiar, you’ve sort of used all your tricks, that’s an awful way to put it, but all the things that you’re particularly good at you’ve used and you just have a sense that you’ve used up everything you know. And that does happen sometimes! We use up everything that we know. It may, you’ll just have a sense of staleness, nothing new is happening. And I don’t think it’s a failure, I think it’s that it’s time to move that client on. I mean, I have had so many different coaches, and for that matter, therapists in my life, each one gave me something different. And so pass that client along to the next person. 

 

KC – I guess that’s very systemic as well, to say to your client we’ve been together a long time and I feel there are many other coaches out there who’ll be able to take you to where you’re looking to go, that’s a very systemic way of holding a coaching practice and leaning into that wider system. 

 

FF – Absolutely, you know, and I also think that one of the ways that Marita and I like to do this, particularly with couples, is to just set a short number of sessions and then re-evaluate. So rather than sort of yes, we’re going to work together, with couples we usually say we’ll do six sessions, and then we’re going to evaluate. So on the sixth session we sit down and say where have we come from, where did we go, did we meet the agenda, how did we meet it, how didn’t we meet it, how did it change? So you evaluate how you’re doing before you sign up for the next six, so every six sessions we evaluate how we’re doing. And it’s been incredibly useful for keeping the coaching discussed, or knowing when it’s time to end. 

 

KC – Mm. Because I guess otherwise, to use Simon Sinek’s term, you’re sort of playing an infinite game, you don’t really know when the end is or what success looks like and there’s no measurements or metrics to know if you’re doing well or not. 

 

FF – Exactly. You know there is one other situation that I see sometimes in coaching, and that is a problem with what I would call niceness. And that’s when you’re forgiving somebody, the client or somebody in your private life, something that they want because you can’t bear to see them suffer. So basically you’re doing it for yourself more than you’re doing it for them. So a couple examples of that is, I had a client that didn’t wanna hurt her elderly father by telling him he couldn’t drive anymore. Driving was really important to him, you know, he got very upset when there was the suggestion that maybe he shouldn’t, so she basically just didn’t deal with it because she didn’t want to see him suffer, until he had an accident. Fortunately, it wasn’t a really severe accident, he went right through a red light, avoided a car and went into a ditch, but at that point, fortunately, she could then deal with the department of motor vehicles, you know, that investigated and it did determine that his eyesight wasn’t good enough, anymore, to drive, so it got taken out of her hands. But that’s an example of, or if your child says no I don’t want to go to the doctor because I don’t want a shot, routinely we know it’s not going to be fun for them to go to the doctor, but we have to take them. So some kind of niceness where we can’t bear to see them suffer, so we’re not doing what they really mean in a difficult situation. 

 

KC – It sort of makes me think of the term that’s been thrown around a lot in the corporate space around toxic positivity, and it’s sort of that forced niceness gets in the way of what needs to happen here, what’s really going on here as well. 

 

FF – Oh boy, yeah, you know, I can so understand that. You know I, Katie, a little anecdote of one of the most difficult but profound coaching sessions that Marita and I ever did, and this was when we were coaching a management team for a small IT company and they had, one of their VPs was a toxic employee, she was very degrading and bullying and confrontative, and the problem was that she was incredibly successful at sales, but she was so toxic that everybody talked about her behind her back and in fact she had a nickname – I think you may know this story – they called her the beachmaster. And if you don’t know what a beachmaster is, a beachmaster is an enormous elephant seal that glumps up and down the beach beating up all the other males and sometimes crushing, you know, the pups under him because he’s so oblivious and aggressive, and it’s sort of the exact metaphor for throwing your weight around. And we did an assessment with them and we were reviewing the assessment and it came up that she got very poor assessment, in terms of her hostile and toxic behavior, domineering behavior, and she lost her temper and she said ‘you think I don’t know you call me the beachmaster? How do you think I feel about that? But the truth of the matter is I’m the only one that’ll say anything about bad reports, I’m the only one that’ll ever bring up difficult topics’, and then she swung around to the CEO and said ‘you know what? You make me do your dirty work. I am your attack dog because being, you know, confronted makes you uncomfortable so you send me out to do your dirty work, and I don’t appreciate that!’ 

 

KC – Wow. 

 

FF – Wow, yeah. 

 

KC – Wow, where do you go from there? 

 

FF – Well that was one of those times where you sorta go maybe we should take a break. Everybody was blown away, and so with the coaches, we were all like oh my god, you know, this intense moment. And so we sent everybody out and said let’s just reflect on what’s happened, you know. And went away to try and pull our own selves together, and when we came back, actually, the CEO stepped in and he was wonderful, he said you know ‘you’re right, I do send you out to fire people sometimes or make a difficult assessment because I know I’m not that comfortable with conflict and you’re very comfortable with conflict, and so I do use you for that. I didn’t realize you felt used and so I wanna work on that with you.’ But what we knew as coaches was yes, there was an issue, an individual issue with the VP, with the beachmaster, but there was also a pair issue between the CEO and the beachmaster, but finally we had to also address the entire team because we had to ask the team, so what’s been going on with you guys that there’s been talking behind this person’s back or why has nobody brought the issue up? We’re wondering what your relationship is with anger or confrontation, why is she the one that seems to be doing it all for everybody? So we asked a lot of really difficult questions about that team’s relationship with aggression and/or conflict, directness, and because, basically, she was doing all the aggression for everybody who’d sit back and feel like good about themselves, have idiot compassion for themselves that they weren’t like that, but they basically were not good at doing conflict and we needed to work with them around how to not have this one person be the voice of the system in all the aggression in the system. So we had to confront our own idiot compassion of not wanting to deal with the difficult, everybody had to deal with the difficult that day. But here’s the thing, it’s the only way to move forward is, if you move forward and stand in a lions roar, the confidence that this is just the beginning of something that needs to happen, and there’s something useful in this situation, then you can move forward into it and then go through it, hopefully. 

 

KC – That’s so powerful as an example of both stepping out of idiot compassion that might have shown up in your coaching relationship, the want to run away maybe, and also revealing it to them. It makes me think, when we normalize which is obviously a super power, we need to yes and that normalization some moments, otherwise it can get stuck in that idiot compassion space, if you were to go oh yeah, this is happening in a lot of companies right now and then just leave it there, nothing’s shifted. You’ve normalized but you’ve not moved. 

 

FF – Yes. It’s also possible to normalize and confront. So it might be entirely possible to say we see this a lot in companies around here, these days. And, you know, what’s the impact of you on this? The impact is, whatever that it is, so it’s possible to normalize and say this isn’t working. 

 

KC – Ah. I love that. Normalize and confront, that’s a brilliant way of making them feel a little bit more safe and also holding up the mirror and confronting them with the issue. 

 

FF – Yeah. I think so. But I think the idiot compassion would be to lie about it and say well, everybody does this. No, it’s not true. Not everybody hits their wife. You know? Or whatever it might be, not normalizing when it isn’t true, I think is important. In other words you have to stand in your own lions roar or your own experience about how other teams behave. 

 

KC – Yeah, teams, and it’s making me think of friendships as well when we have the same conversation and you keep on saying the same thing – so I’m sorry you feel like that, and you do that friend thing to stay in the nice, to be that good friend, but its’s not necessarily helping them to change that pattern. And maybe, to your point, it’s partly because it’s pattern and it’s partly because it’s more energy to be disruptive, but as coaches that’s our job, isn’t it? 

 

FF – Yes. Yeah. You know, I really think it is, and although I have to say, it’s always scary and hard. I was working, and don’t expect for a moment that your clients are going to, at least initially, thank you for it. You’ve gotta go through a rough time with a client to stay with a topic till you’ve worked it through, and it doesn’t always work easily. I remember one time I was working with a couple where one of the couple really wanted to break up and the other person didn’t. And we’d been going around and around and around and around and it was really clear that the one that wanted to break up was absolutely certain that she wanted to break up, and after going around and around, you know, I needed to finally say to the partner that was not wanting to break up that I felt like she didn’t seem to be hearing what her partner was saying, and that blew up the situation hugely, and she left therapy, refused to come back, and at some point threatened to sue me for alienation of affection. 

 

KC – Wow. 

 

FF – Yeah. And who knows, you know, it was a simple thing of saying I feel like you’re not hearing what your partner is saying, and you know, there was no thanks there, ultimately of course they broke up. But just don’t expect that your clients will always thank you for it, it’s a matter of your own integrity, what do you need to do to feel an integrity? And if you’re feeling kind of dingy about what you’re going with your client, start with yourself. Look there, if you were really honest with yourself what are you not saying, not looking at, not wanting to admit? 

 

KC – So, I wonder as well if it can show up if we’re not coming from a place of neutrality, if we have a preference or a bias to how that ending should look, or success should look. 

 

FF – You know, that’s a tricky one isn’t it? For me, I think, my job is to always show the truth. What I can’t say is you should just break up, I think you should break up, clearly this is a really toxic relationship – that’s a bias. But I can hold the mirror up of the sixth time that this person has been telling you this, or however many times it was, and every time you push it away. I feel like you’re not hearing. So that’s just an observation, it’s not a bias. Just an observation that’s returned many times and you don’t seem to be able to hear it. But what I can’t say is you should break up. Clearly you’re on the way to breaking up. That is putting my finger on the scale. 

 

KC – Yeah. Or steering them towards staying together. Which I guess is why, yeah, reflective practice is so important for us as coaches because we do get hooked and we’ll continue to get hooked, so how can we stay in that neutral feeling space that sometimes disrupts the system, and isn’t kind and nice and actually says what needs to be said? 

 

FF – Absolutely! And thank you for saying that because more often I see couples that are fighting to preserve a relationship. I feel like couples work means that you’re fighting to keep the couple together and somehow you you’ve failed if you didn’t keep the couple together. But the fact of the matter is that your job is to meet, reveal, align and act so that, in the meeting and revealing it may become clear that it’s time for this couple to move on. They may get there on that, and if we’re trying to fix them to keep that elephant, you know, that great proverb you can help an elephant that’s trying to  get up but you cannot help an elephant that’s falling down, all you can do is get outta the way. If this is a couple that’s trying to find a safe place to break up, it’s a disservice to them for you trying to keep it together because you think that’s your job. Our job is to help the couple to emerge into the process that is right for them at this time. 

 

KC – That’s such a great prophecy, I love that. And actually idiot compassion probably has us sometimes standing in the way whilst the elephant is falling down. 

 

FF – Definitely. Definitely. And it’s so hard not to take it personally that you’ve failed. Because, you’ve failed because you got fired or you failed because they didn’t stay together or the company went bankrupt, and we have to think about that and we may have contributed to it, but a lot of the time it’s our difficulty in that that has us stay longer in a particular position than we should. 

 

KC – And I guess as well we’re working with one system in one time and if we, if we could zoom out and see that 20 years down the line that couple are in other happy relationships separately, you can’t see the wider systems that are being impacted by that moment. 

 

FF – You bet. Yeah. Absolutely. We have to stand, that’s where again, lions roar, that unconditional confidence that something is trying to happen here. And it may not be what we can see immediately in front of our face, which could look like destruction. But out of that destruction something new is able to emerge. 

 

KC – What helps you, Faith, to stay in that space? When idiot compassion is calling every ounce of your body to just be nice! 

 

FF – Well, if I’m really truthful I have to tell them I’m just nice! At least in my personal relationships I would say I have a real problem with idiot compassion. I tend to want to get along so I may not confront a situation in my personal relationships as it takes a lot of energy to confront a difficult situation and sometimes I just don’t, I’m not up for it. And I’ll go along, so to speak. So guilty, in personal relationships! I think when I’m coaching or consulting there is more, first of all I’m not personally as involved and I’ve got a certain amount of professional distance that really helps me to see I have a job to do here. And I do have a certain amount of lions roar that I can stand in, in confidence that I know the arc of things takes longer than the immediate session, whether it’s a couple or even more so with a company. So the arc of a change in a company has to go through a lot of gnarly stages of things being revealed and that upsets the boat and then there’s conflict or problems or difficulties, and then you slowly work that through. And then maybe that next issue gets revealed and you have to work that through. So if you gave up every time you had a bad session you’re going to be screwed. You have to understand the arc of change is long, and usually at some point you have to really drop into the painful stuff and stay there and resolve it. And that takes time and is painful and it’s important, but if you just skate around the surface and white wash everything that’s sort of crap underneath you’re not serving that system. So I do have confidence also, from being a therapist, of knowing that the road to recovery has to do a going through a lot of painful revealing and healing. 

 

KC – Such an interesting point about the arc of change and we often say with the benefit of hindsight or the beauty of hindsight, and I’m sure the more you’ve seen those arcs of change to completion, the more you have confidence that yep, the gnarly stuff’s part of the process. 

 

FF – Yes, absolutely. And you know, I don’t know any significant change that doesn’t have to do, usually, with some kind of painful revealing of what’s going on. Some kind of honesty has to occur which is often uncomfortable. 

 

KC – Thank you so much, Faith, for this gorgeous conversation. I’m definitely thinking about the many moments in my life when I’m stepping in idiot compassion and how I might stretch a little bit out of that for the benefit of myself and the systems I’m in or working with. Thank you. 

 

FF – Thank you Katie, it’s a pleasure as always. 

 

KC – Take care and speak soon Faith. 

 

FF – Bye bye.

 

[Music outro begins 32:43] 

 

KC – Thanks to Faith Fuller for that insightful discussion around idiot compassion. Here’s a recap of the four key characteristics of idiot compassion that were mentioned in the episode. Number one: enabling. So this could be helping someone to hurt themselves, not setting limits, protecting people from consequences, bailing people out. Number two: not setting boundaries. This shows up when we haven’t got the courage to set a firm boundary around a pattern or a behavior. Number three: niceness. Giving someone what they want because you can’t bear to see them suffer. Number four: avoiding telling a difficult truth. Meet and reveal from the meet, reveal, align and act model is a way we can tell the truth in a skillful way and helps us to avoid coming in with idiot compassion. We meet our clients where they are at and then we reveal to them what we’re seeing, what we’re noticing. As coaches, the most difficult part is risking that you’ll lose the client if you tell the truth. But coaching presents a mirror and our clients will not change unless we meet them where they are and reveal the truth. Thank you for listening to the Relationships Matters podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your colleagues and friends so that we can continue to spread these ideas across the globe, and if you haven’t already, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more information on the ORSC courses please visit CRRGlobal.com. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole. 

 

[Music outro 35:01 – end]