Here’s a book that had an impact on me. It’s nothing but a critique, violent, exclusively prosecutorial, against coaches.

“We have accumulated enough evidence for the prosecution,” the authors tell us, “in our case against coaching to avoid falling into the trap of nuanced criticism. Coaches are the first to suggest that coaching has its excesses, that we must know how to distinguish between good and bad coaches. There is no worse way to combat coaching than to say we must be vigilant against its misuses, as if there existed a pure essence of coaching only sullied from the outside by a few impostors. We advocate, for our part, wholesale rejection of this sports soup remixed with managerial sauce.”

Violent Attack

For me, reading this book is like asking a close friend who knows my activities well to highlight all the negative aspects, risks, or excesses of them. This close friend doesn’t pull any punches, he hits me with undeniable arguments, he opens wounds that will be hard to heal. Notwithstanding my sadomasochistic side, what pleasure, or rather what a source of improvement! Here are laid out at low cost many pitfalls into which I could have fallen, or which I’ll need to avoid. So this is a reading I recommend to all who have any connection near or far with coaching, in my case agile coaching.

If I summarize the authors’ thinking, coaching is ultimately just a sort of psycho-managerial mystification whose hidden objective is a neoliberal uniformization of people under the guise of a pseudo humanistic emancipation. Nothing less.

“Individualistic conditioning in service of generalized conformism,” the authors tell us.

Or again (I’m citing chapter titles here) “Coaching as falsification of the ethical relationship to others.” And again “individual growth soluble in economic growth.” Or finally: “The fundamental question is whether coaching isn’t a remedy worse than the evil it claims to ward off.”

What’s very disturbing in this reading is that the explanations, analyses, concrete cases highlighted by the authors are familiar to me. As if they were analyzing part of my work but only from a negative aspect. It’s fascinating, I cannot deny that their analyses are false, but they are exclusively negative.

Let’s Nuance

Because we must nuance. One of the wrongs of this book is precisely that it’s only prosecutorial, one-sided, that it only highlights the negative aspects. Yet even if the authors insist on making only a prosecutorial critique and especially on not leaving an ounce of credit to this role, we remain dubious before such a bleak picture. If yes, I could fall into the pitfalls mentioned at times, and despite my best efforts, this was also accompanied by quite a few positive things (I dare hope). So perhaps we must nuance after all (reread the first quote at the beginning of the article to see that I then disagree with the authors).

The second thing on which to bring nuance is precisely the definition of coach. In the authors’ mind it seems to me they’re addressing “real” coaches. Those who are coaches before being anything else. For my part I am an agilist, or computer scientist, well before being a coach. Coach is only the formulation that until reading this book seemed to me the best fit for this glue that extends all around the heart of my profession: agile values and principles.

And yes, we are here to help organizations succeed in their projects.

Finally the discourse is somewhat weakened by the vengeful side that shows through concerning financial aspects. One of the authors (Gori), a psychoanalyst, constantly criticizes the exorbitant rates of coaches (and just by reading the rates I know consequently that I’m not really a coach). We sense a real resentment about this “American-style dime-store psychoanalysis” (that’s my expression not the book’s) that charges highly and diverts “clients” from real psychoanalysis. It’s unfortunate.

Psychology & Conformism

One of the strong criticisms of the book is the annexation of the field of psychology by coaches

In my opinion yes we must address psychological aspects in our profession but with great caution. Can we do without it? Probably not. It’s about human relationships, therefore psychology and not other colder sciences. But it’s not my profession, so we must be very careful and especially not become a sorcerer’s apprentice.

Another strong criticism is that of erasing differences in favor of a conformism convenient to businesses. I very much agree with this critique. We must accept difference, and especially preserve it. Stop conformism.

Philosophy

I appreciated the philosophical reminders (the second author is a philosopher - Le Coz): the makeover of Socrates’ maieutics by coaches. Yes, we must know this when doing agile. Or the reminders around Descartes, Nietzsche or Heidegger: the importance of language. It’s on this last point that I wish - like the book - to conclude.

Power of Language

I quote the book: “Man, writes Heidegger, behaves as if he were the creator and master of language, when it is language on the contrary that is and remains his sovereign.” Gori & Le Coz add: “Language is the matrix and not the tool of thought.” or further on they quote Victor Klemperer: “[…] Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: we swallow them without paying attention, they seem to have no effect, and then after some time the toxic effect is felt.”

Words, language construct our world. They also potentially confine us within it. So they can poison it.

We must question the word coaching or coach and what it contains. For my part I see in it an inversion of objectives: If I am only a coach I have lost the meaning of my action. The meaning of my action is to try to apply agile values and principles. Why: so that projects succeed. And a successful project is also measured naturally by the pleasure and satisfaction and emancipation of all stakeholders. All of them.

I hope to be agile before being a coach. And this book pushes me to think that coach is no longer the appropriate word. And moreover is “agile” still appropriate given the confusion that now accompanies it with the enthusiasm of which it is the subject?

In short I warmly recommend reading this work. It can only push you to question yourself if you’re in my situation. So it’s only beneficial. For my part I’m launching into the quest for the right words, the right language.

Would You Like a Little More Flamethrower?

“A critical analysis of the coaching phenomenon must lead to an attitude of radical insubordination. Let us free ourselves from coaches! would be the natural expression that this new ideological potion with opiate scents inspires in us. This contribution calls for a surge of collective pride. It intends to provoke a real societal debate on the subject. There are good reasons to show no leniency toward coaching. Starting with this sinister managerial anthropology that it conveys behind its pretension to draw upon humanistic psychology.”

Happy reading.