Carl Rogers - a Key Influence on the Coaching Field?
Coaching is all of what Carl Rogers thought therapy should be. Carl Rogers was an Esalen psychotherapist who was a leader in humanistic psychology and the Human Potential Movement. His greatest influence on the coaching field was his client-centered approach, though he died in 1987 just before coaching took root.
His approach was about the client’s goals, the client leading much of the process and not about treating mental illness or seeing clients as having problems. He believed that people were perfect and he was there to serve the client. His philosophy was that the client is the only one that can heal themselves - love, support, and unconditional positive regard in an environment of total acceptance, without judgment, allowing them to speak and we listen more than we talk.
Sounds like coaching to me! What do you think? Does this tieback to the therapy world surprise you? Or is it more a commentary on therapy that therapy isn’t what coaching now is?
If you know his body of work, what else would you say Carl contributed to the coaching field?
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Comment by Lissa Bergin-Boles on 9 February 2008:
I’ve long thought that coaching was one response to psychology’s lop-sided and singular focus on the relief and treatment of mental.
As Dr. Martin Seligman of the Positive Psychology movement (and what I imagine Carl Rogers would have found himself supporting/participating in?) said in his book, Authentic Happiness, ‘People want to live lives imbued with meaning… the time has finally arrived for a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the ‘good life’.
Given that life will find a way when the time has come for a way to be forged, my take on both coaching and positive psychology is this: we’re kissing cousins, seeking many of the same things, two equally valuable and necessary sides of the paradoxic dance between critically investigative and causally intuitive processing.
For myself I say only this: I respect and admire my kin, even more now because during these time of tremendous change and great challenge, causally intuitive is leading the way. And that rocks!
Comment by Andrea J. Lee on 9 February 2008:
Hi Lissa, is it a little like what Julio Olalla said at ICF last November - and I paraphrase:
‘What was going on in the world, what needs were present in our world such that coaching needed to emerge?’
I’m curious - could you say a little more about ‘causally intuitive?’
Thanks!
Comment by Chris Owen on 9 February 2008:
It’s great to see this articulated. Back in my university days it was the Work of Rogers that most engaged me. No surprise then that coaching engaged me more than the counselling i originally studied.
Comment by Rey Carr on 11 February 2008:
The connection between coaching and the work of Carl Rogers helps to anchor coaching with historical roots, and thanks, Vikki, for mentioning this relationship. While I never met Carl Rogers, one of my early mentors, Tom Gordon, was mentored by him. Tom’s work modified many of the “Rogerian” principles, and the human effectiveness system that he created and disseminated around the world, made even a stronger connection to coaching.
One element that is a bit humourous in Vikki’s introduction to this section is calling Carl Rogers an “Esalen psychotherapist.” Carl Rogers, along with Micheal Murphy, George Leonard, and others, was involved in the creation of Esalen as a “retreat-type” center for the human potential movement and humanistic psychology. And while he did lecture and provide consultations at Esalen during its early days, he was really associated with a different and to some degree “competitive” organization down the California coast in La Jolla.
The psychotherapist who was really more closely aligned with Esalen was actually a theoretical rival to Carl Rogers. Graduate students (I was one of them) as well as therapy practitioners spent many a midnight hour and bottle(s) of wine debating the merits of these two giants. They, along with another rival, made a great movie about psychotherapy where all three worked with the same client. At the end of the movie the client, known as “Gloria,” is interviewed by the movie’s creator and provides a perspective on each of these three giants of psychotherapy. (I’ll leave it to other Coaching Commons readers to supply the names of the other two, and particularly the one who was the most well-known for being in residence at Esalen.
Incidentally, one of the coolest things about Esalen, besides its seaside beauty, was that it was possible to take a break from a seminar or lecture, sit outside, and find Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina playing guitars and encouraging wanderers to sing along. It was a very democratic place where students, faculty, visitors, and luminaries would study, have fun, and talk together as colleagues.
Comment by Vikki Brock on 11 February 2008:
Hi Rey, thanks for the clarification. I love it when I learn something! Stay tuned for Fritz Perls and the other rival as Hall of Fame influencers in the upcoming months. Maybe the debate will be sparked all over again, with a virtual bottle of wine and Joan Baez playing from a CD in the background I’m wondering who else out there experienced Esalen?
Comment by Jonathan Sibley on 11 February 2008:
I recently read Positive Therapy by Stephen Joseph and P. Alex Linley and it is an interesting attempt to coordinate positive psychology and psychotherapy. In the process, the authors refer quite a bit to Carl Rogers and the practice they describe has a lot to do with coaching.
The authors talk about the idea of synthesis, antithesis, and synthesis and suggest that pure positive psychology was originally an antithesis of the medical model of psychology, and that we are now moving into an integrationist synthesis phase.
The authors talk about how psychology was hijacked by the medical model, for a variety of reasons, but that one can go back to William James’ “healthy mindedness” and to Maslow, who criticized in 1954 psychology’s focus on the negative side of people.
I think that the more one looks at people holistically, along dimensions of what is working and not working for them in their context (and social work as a long tradition of looking at people-in-context), the more the distinctions between therapy and coaching blur.
Comment by Chris Owen on 12 February 2008:
OMG!!! Rey’s comment took me STRAIGHT back to the small library viewing room where I watched the three, Rogers (person-centered) Perls (Gestalt) and Ellis (Behaviourist), working with Gloria!
Thanks for the reminders
Comment by Linda Yort on 27 February 2008:
“Unconditional positive regard.” That’s what I remember from my academic degree. I believe this is one of the foundations of coaching — believing that the client has all the resourses to stretch and reach for what he/she wants. I have been a coach to Executives for over 20 years. Many, and many of them are caught in beating themselves up on a regular basis and have low esteem (even those who appear confident and arrogant). Holding the client in a positive regard attitue and going forward is incredibly powerful. Thank you Carl Rogers!