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A lot. Philosophy is at the source of everything, after all, including coaching.
Philosophy is everything and nothing, and it has an immense influence on coaching.
Let me explain.
Philosophy as everything Philosophy is the source of all sciences and modes of thinking.
If you go deep enough or sufficiently back on any given field, you will reach philosophy. In Ancient Greece, when philosophers were conducting experiments about the world and, among other things, calculating Earth’s circumference with incredible accuracy, philosophy was about discovering how the world worked.
Philosophy means “love of wisdom” (what a beautiful name!) in Greek, so ancient philosophers were obsessed with knowing more. After Socrates introduced morality as a subject of study, a distinction could be made between moral and natural philosophers (although all called themselves just philosophers for centuries afterwards). The former would concern themselves with morality and the mind, what it meant to live a good life, or the nature of virtue, for example, while the latter would focus on the workings of the natural world, animals, stars, plants, and the like.
Thus, philosophy is everything.
Philosophy as nothing Philosophy’s enormous success was also the source of its demise. As humans learned more and more about the world surrounding them, they had to specialise to go deeper into their knowledge fields. This is how physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, geology, and all the other sciences were created.
Natural philosophy, and to a lesser extent moral philosophy, branched out into ever more specialised and smaller corners of the knowledge tree, thus creating the amalgam of sciences we have today.
This has reduced the scope for philosophy to have a meaningful impact on society. Since the 20th century, some voices, like Stephen Hawking for example , have risen to pronounce philosophy dead or to state that it should only concern itself with matters of language and logic and leave all the rest to science.
Hence, philosophy is also nothing.
Philosophy is both everything and nothing.
But what does this have to do with coaching? Everything and nothing, of course.
Coaching and philosophy as midwives In this paper , Joel Steinmetz uses the metaphor of midwives to describe both philosophy and coaching.
Midwives do not give birth themselves but help pregnant women do so. The same is true of philosophers and coaches.
Steinmetz says that Socrates saw his role as a philosopher as being a midwife of the soul. Through his questioning, he helped the people he interrogated to find their moral compass and the best way to live a virtuous life.
Socrates only knew he knew nothing , but he was wise in his ignorance. He didn’t have the answers, but helped others find the answers that worked best for them.
In that sense, he behaved a bit like a coach. A coach, whether an executive or a life coach, doesn’t have the answers that work best for their clients. The clients have to find the answers that work best for them, and they do that through questioning.
Midwives use other tools, but the tool of choice for both philosophers and coaches is the question.
The art of asking powerful (or the Big) questions A few years ago, I wrote a post entitled Coaching or the Art of Asking Powerful Questions , in which I argued that coaching was, above all else, about asking the right questions to spark insights.
Asking good questions is a difficult and cherished art, and coaches must be authentic masters in it, but they aren’t the only ones.
Since then, I have also seen philosophy defined as the art of asking the Big Questions. This is something coaching and philosophy share then, but with a clear difference. Philosophers ask general questions about life, the universe, knowledge, the mind, virtue and what it means to live a good life. Coaches, on the other hand, ask more specific questions concerning the life, job, behaviours, values and beliefs of their coachees.
They may crossover on some occasions, and a coach may talk about philosophical questions such as meaning and purpose with their client, but this won’t always be the case. Some types of coaching approaches, like existential coaching , for example, will be more inclined to explore philosophical questions during the coaching session than others, like for example, skills or performance coaching.
Asking questions is an art / Photo from Shutterstock, authorised to author Existential coaching as a philosophically oriented coaching approach Existential coaching is the philosophically oriented coaching approach par excellence .
Its foundation is existential therapy, which is itself based on existential philosophy. The existential coach uses the teachings of philosophers like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, or Heidegger in the coaching session to serve the coachee.
Existentialism is based on the power of individualism, and no existential philosopher is alike, so the same applies to existential coaches. Each has his or her own style and approach, but they do have some commonalities. One of them is that they will all explore profound philosophical themes such as meaning (or meaninglessness), death, freedom, uncertainty and existential angst with their clients.
Having an existential coaching session is like exploring philosophical questions, like Socrates did 25 centuries ago, but not applied to humankind in general, but to oneself specifically. It can be very uncomfortable but enlightening.
Existential coaching is where philosophy and coaching most clearly merge together, but this isn’t the only place where this happens.
The consolation of philosophy Boethius was a Roman senator and philosopher who was sentenced to death for denouncing the corruption of the Ostrogothic court of the time. While he was in jail waiting for his execution, he sought consolation in philosophy, so he wrote his most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy. In it, he had a conversation with philosophy, who was personified as a woman.
Boethius thought philosophy had a therapeutic effect, and he found solace in it in his darkest hour. Fairly or not, coaching is often associated with therapy , too, so can this be another way in which these two disciplines are alike?
Boethius was a pioneer, but many others have sought consolation in philosophy since then. Existentialists themselves, even if they have a negative and pessimistic aura, sought to learn to live better with the uncertainty and anxiety that are part and parcel of being alive. In that sense, their teachings were also therapeutic.
Skills or performance coaching can be rather limited in their scope, but other more developmental or existential modalities of coaching seek to accompany coachees in their transformation journeys. These modalities of coaching focus on the achievement of goals but also on the pursuit of self-actualisation , empowerment of the coachee and, consequently, on their well-being.
Therefore, developmental coaching is also therapeutic.
Philosophy as having a worldview We all have a philosophy, even if many of us aren’t aware of it.
Philosophy is everything and nothing, after all, and the everything part means it is everywhere. You may not want it, but you still have it.
You have a philosophy of life. You have an ontological and epistemic view of the world, even if you don’t know what those words mean. You have a view of what is and isn’t (ontology) and about what constitutes knowledge or not (epistemology). For example, you may think science and experimentation are the only ways to acquire new knowledge or to ascertain what exists in the world, including something as complex as the human mind and behaviour, in which case you may be a positivist or neo-positivist.
Or you may think that the human mind is so complex and rich, we are all so different, and we construct reality through language and other cultural means, in which case you may be an interpretivist or constructivist.
None of them is right or wrong, they are different ways of looking at things. The thing is, we all have our own worldviews. We all adhere to a philosophy of life, even if we don’t pronounce or articulate it coherently.
This philosophy impacts everything we do, including how we deliver coaching if we are coaches or maximise our coaching sessions if we are coaching clients. This is the ultimate link between philosophy and coaching.
Philosophy is nothing, but it is also everything, and that includes coaching. Believe it or not, coaching has a lot to do with philosophy.
