Who benefits from our work? Reflections for consultants and coaches
The hymn of transformation is often sung. After all, what is subsumed under this much-used term is the field of activity, the business basis and sometimes the passion of many consultants and coaches. Despite our desire and offer to drive change, we sometimes have to ask ourselves how we contribute to keeping things the way they are. Despite our work, everything can stay the way it has always been. Or is it because we’re involved?
As service providers, we depend on orders from clients. These orders come from the status quo of a system that we are supposed to help change. There is a latent chicken and egg problem here.
Sometimes the system already knows exactly where it wants to go and hires consultants, for example, who are well paid to announce and enforce unpleasant things. That way, management believes it is out of the line of fire. And they can get on with what they do best: maintaining power. Joana Breidenbach writes:
‘We see time and again that companies only accept coaches in a specific role: they are allowed to cushion problems and imbalances emotionally and thereby introduce elements of the new regenerative paradigm into organisations. But the real power is still firmly anchored in the old paradigm.’
Sometimes, however, organisations do not even know where the problems lie, let alone in which direction they might be heading. In these cases too, external people are brought in to help analyse and structure the situation.
This is where we, as consultants and coaches and advisors, have to take a very close look. After all, it is important to know the purpose of the assignments that are brought to us (or proactively proposed by us). And this is often not so easy to see through.
Sometimes what we think is necessary, right and expedient is not necessarily what clients expect of us, or what they engage and pay us for. Clarifying the brief is therefore one of the most important steps at the start of any process. Together with the people who hire us and who work with us, we try to define exactly what the job entails (and what it doesn’t) and what should ideally happen for the project to be considered a success at the end.
Ventilators in a dying industry
In most cases, this clarification of the task is successful. However, there are also cases where it quickly becomes clear that we are being hitched to a wagon that we, for various reasons, did not want to pull. Then our beliefs, values or experience come into conflict with a potentially lucrative assignment. What happens then?
Of course, it is a privilege to be able to say no to such an assignment. Not everyone can do this so easily, the financial dependencies are too great. But if it is clear that I am being asked to support a dysfunctional system against my better judgement, and if I can afford to say no at the same time, then I should consistently refuse such an assignment. Otherwise, I am complicit in the stagnation — or worse.
Joana Breidenbach already described the problem that we may allow ourselves to become complicit in in an article from 2021: ‘So is it possible that coaches and consultants are keeping the old system alive, contrary to their intentions? Are they the ventilators of a dying industry?’
Model of system change
The Berkana Institute’s ‘Two Loops Model’ (as presented here by The Moment) illustrates very well the systemic level on which counselling and coaching takes place or should take place. In the currently effective system (‘The Dominant System’), which is already beyond its peak and thus in a downturn, people are needed to prepare and accompany the end and to help preserve what we want to save into a new system. Deborah Frieze describes the context in a TedTalk: ‘All living systems rise, peak, and move into decline.’ This is why the model also talks about ‘hospice work’ on the way to the end of the system.
At the same time, a new system is emerging (‘The Emergent System’), the impact of which can only be glimpsed at first, for example when individual communities and pioneers around the world set out to try something new and do things in a fundamentally different way. Their work is complicated by the fact that the existing system is still the main point of reference and orientation for the vast majority.
Powerful forces are fighting to preserve the system, partly out of self-interest. As Deborah Frieze says: ‘Every living system has a tendency to self-preservation.’
It is important for consultants and coaches to explore their roles according to their own effectiveness and the needs of the system: What does the existing system need from us, what does the new system need? In her first newsletter “The Big Shift” (12/2024), Emilia Roig describes how, after ‘years of dissecting, analysing and criticising the society we live in’, we are now entering a new phase:
‘This next phase is about divesting our energy from the systems we need to leave behind and focusing our attention — our power — on creating the world we want. It’s about allowing ourselves to imagine a reality outside the frames and structures familiar to us.’
Shaping transitions
Between critiquing the existing system and working on completely new structures and paradigms, there is another very important task for transformation facilitators. The Berkana model calls this task ‘The Transition’. We need to build bridges that point to a different future. This is because many parts of the dominant system have to make the transition from the old to the new system, adapting to the new paradigm and finding their place in the emerging system.
People who accompany these transitions need to identify and strengthen ‘pockets of the future in the present’ (as described in the “Three Horizons Model”) so that new paradigms can manifest. This goes far beyond highlighting examples of best practice, as the manifestations of the future generally defy a linear logic of deduction.
The stories we tell are crucial to the emergence of a new system. At the same time, we must not forget how painful and anxiety-ridden the processes of breaking away from the familiar paradigm are. However, there are a number of roles we can play in these processes. A contribution from the ‘Innovation Unit’ reads as follows:
‘There are roles for convenors, connectors, and storytellers who weave new elements together into a coherent emergent system. There are roles for transition guides and brave old-system leaders ready to inspire change. There are critical roles in stabilising the old system as it dies and containing the damage of collapse, especially for the most vulnerable. And there are roles (…) in ‘hospicing the old system to midwife the new.’
So if you are part of such processes as a coach or consultant, you should always be aware of the system you are working in. Otherwise we run the risk of serving the needs of the system’s profiteers rather than becoming facilitators of transitions and midwives for a sustainable and regenerative future.
This article has originally been published in German at Digitale Tanzformation.
