“All the world’s a stage“, wrote Shakespeare, “And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts“.
A coach helps the client to identify his or her goals, clarify them, work out how to achieve them, and gives support and motivation while they strive to achieve them.
So a discussion might run along the lines of a client setting a goal of earning £100,000 a year, in response to which the coach might recommend talking to an accountant. In the UK (hypothetically, I’m not giving financial advice!) that might reveal that the client would have the same take-home pay if he earned £80,000 and the balance would just be extra tax. So does the client want to change their goal?
Either way, more work remains to be done. Earning a certain sum of money isn’t really a goal in itself. Why does the client want to earn that figure? What would it bring them? What would it mean to them? And why does the client want that? Do they want a certain lifestyle? Do they want to impress someone?
Always: why? Why? Why? And what then? Until the real motivation has been identified – and it may be that the client had never really gone through that process in their own mind and hadn’t really known what their motive really was.
What’s my motive?
A question which brings us back to Shakespeare, and the craft of acting.
Actors play many parts during their career. They need to convince the audience that the character they see on the stage or screen is a real person. (Of course, some actors have very successful careers playing themselves in every role, but let’s leave that aside!). But how is the actor to do this, when all they have is the script?
In the actor-training method developed by Konstantin Stanislavski (sometimes transliterated as ‘Stanislavsky’), actors are expected to do background research into the historical and social context of the story, using what they learn to help them understand what’s really going on in the character’s mind – even things that the character themselves wouldn’t have known about themselves. They may have fears, desires, past experiences which they aren’t even aware of. These will influence everything from the way the character speaks, to the way they use their hands, to the way they hold themselves as they stand and walk.
I’m currently developing a book project on the wider ramifications and applications of Stanislavsky’s work. It leads into some quite unexpected topics! (Any agents or publishers who think this sounds interesting, please get in touch!).
One of these involves questions for actors prepared by Uta Hagen, who was both an actor and a trainer of actors. She developed a list of nine questions that actors should ask themselves about the character they are portraying:
- Who am I?
- What time is it?
- Where am I?
- What’s around me?
- What are my circumstances?
- What relationships am I in?
- What do I want?
- What obstacles do I face?
- How can I get what I want?
These may seem to be simple questions – but the answers may need to be very, very detailed, and involve a great deal of soul-searching.
You’ll probably see immediately that a coach will want to ask their client many of these questions. In fact, we’ll want to ask all of them. Coming up with answers to them may force the client to engage in a self-evaluation more rigorous than they’ve ever gone through before, and to look at their life more honestly than they’re comfortable doing – especially with the coach asking why? Why? Why? And what then? I’ve done it myself, and it’s not easy. I should probably do it again, to be honest, as I know that the experiences of the last couple of years have changed me in many ways.
Whenever we change jobs, we are changing role and, at least to some extent, we’re changing our character. If we’re facing challenges to the extent that we’re thinking of engaging a coach, then these are definitely questions that we need to investigate it – and having a coach pressing for more detailed answers, not letting us off the hook when it starts getting uncomfortable, is an important part of the process.
The world of work is changing very quickly these days. Changes in geopolitics, higher prices for energy and commodities, rising prices, supply-chain disruptions… All of these things and more are affecting economies, jobs, families, and our health. Even without these factors, new technologies such as AI are disrupting employment in ways we’re only just beginning to understand.
It’s been a truism for many years that there’s no such thing as a job for life any more but, as the world we live in changes more dramatically and more quickly than ever before, we’ll need to switch to entirely different industries and ways of thinking. It’s becoming more and more important for us to be able to be in charge of our life’s performance and the roles we play. We need to be director and scriptwriter, not just a jobbing actor trying to be characters that other people have defined for us.
And we can only do that if we fully understand who we are, and can give a fully thought-out answer to Who am I? What’s my motivation?
Traethiad 