Coach as Instrument: Why to Empower Leaders Through Emotional Literacy

This Week's Attunement

The greatest gift you can give to anyone is the gift of emotional literacy. It is the foundation of all healthy relationships and the key to a fulfilling life."

— Evelyn Kennedy-Moore

Perhaps the most rewarding affirmation I can receive from a client goes something like, "My life is better because of our work together." My heart sings when I hear that. I'm betting you've heard something similar from some of your clients.

But most of us aren't hired to make our clients' lives better. Most of us work with leaders in organizations that are paying for our coaching with the expectation that their leaders will be more effective in their work as a result. However, when we coaches focus less on how our clients can be more effective in their work and more on how our client is relating to their work, we can do work that is literally life-changing (and, oh BTW, performance-enhancing).

A critical dimension of how our clients relate to their work is the emotions they are experiencing it through. And empowering them with emotional literacy can support them in enhancing their communication, informing their decision-making, and improving their relationships.

What do I mean by emotional literacy?

Emotional literacy is a compact term that encompasses a great deal, including:

• Recognizing emotions in oneself and naming those emotions
• Using the information of emotions to guide thinking and behavior
• Expressing emotions in relational ways
• Recognizing and responding to emotions in others

Yeah, that's a lot. And what a fulfilling gift to give our clients.

Introducing emotional literacy to our clients can be dicey.

The organizations our clients work in often discourage the discussion of emotions in the workplace. They may not be equipped with the resources to support workers in managing emotions effectively. They may fear legal consequences. They may believe emotions are private and personal and should be left at home.

Perhaps more than anything else, many leaders and their organizations simply don't understand that emotions are at play whether they know it or like it or not. They can't see that the level of emotional literacy of its executives can mean the difference between an organization that is led through conscious intention and one that is driven by the unresolved past of its leaders.

Further confounding the situation, most coaching schools (IMO) don't prepare coaches to develop the emotional literacy of their clients (or themselves). Coaching schools can be ambivalent about a coach "educating" a client on anything with the platitude that "the client has all their own answers ."(One of those statements that's equally true and not).

Emotional literacy is taught. Parents or caregivers teach it to children. In rare circumstances, it's taught in schools. If emotional literacy were something that we picked up along life's journey, we'd all be emotionally literate by now.

I imagine at this point, you may be hoping that I'll tell you all about how to develop the emotional literacy of your clients. That's reasonable.

However, I believe that's something that is better experienced than read.

I hope you'll join us for our free experiential and interactive course — Creating Emotional Literacy (In Yourself and Your Clients) on Friday, February 17. Learn more and save your spot here.

When we educate our clients about emotional literacy, we not only empower them to be more effective leaders and workers, we equip them to live fuller lives with better, more enriching relationships.

According to Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse who cared for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives, one of the top five regrets of the dying is "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

When we help our clients to better experience and express their feelings, we are helping them to live a more regret-free life.