Coach as Instrument: Advocating for the Hero Self of the Client

This Week's Attunement

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth; the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know.”
— Joseph Campbell

 

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.  If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened.  But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Throughout his works, author and mythologist Joseph Campbell forwarded the notion of a "hero's journey," a journey that every human is on, consciously or unconsciously, to know and experience themselves fully. He believed that inside each of us, there is a "hero" who seeks to discover who they are and who they can become.

In my work at Learning in Action, using our instrument, the WE-Q Profile, I have learned that we humans tend to lose what Joseph Campbell might have called our "Hero Self" along our life's journey. When we are born, to survive and adapt to our families, we shape ourselves to fit what's available, what's allowed, and what's tolerated.

Later, we shape ourselves to fit in with our peers, our communities, and our societies, all to survive physically, socially, or emotionally. However, after shaping to fit in with so many people in so many ways and in so many places, we can thoroughly lose our connection to our Hero Self.

This tendency we have to lose connection with our Hero Self shows up in the dimension of the WE-Q Profile called Self/Other orientation. This is the dimension of the WE-Q Profile most directly correlated with attachment style.

Our orientation, Self or Other, reflects where we tend to focus, inwardly or outwardly, particularly under stress. Ideally, we focus evenly, inwardly and outwardly, taking in all of our experience. However, our shaping tends to tilt us to becoming more Self-oriented or more Other-oriented.

When we are more Self-oriented, we tend to give ourselves away. Because, at some level, we don't value ourselves fully, we will say "yes" when "no" would feel better. We will not speak our truth due to a fear of hurting someone else or becoming disconnected. We will blame ourselves for what's not working as a means of keeping ourselves in check and staying safe. We will take responsibility beyond what is ours to take. We will become overwhelmed. We will short-change and lose our connection with our Hero Self.

When we are more Other-oriented, we will tend to place our focus outside of ourselves. We can tend to focus more on what others think of us or on how well we compare to others, or on what we could do for others. And as we focus on others or the world around us, we tend to lose our connection with what we think, feel, and want. And as we lose connection with our own experience, we lose our connection with our Hero Self.

Every person I've ever coached has lost connection with their Hero Self in some way. Either as described above or in some form of their own making.

In our human journey to "become "the hero of our own life's story, we are drawn off the path to "belong" (to survive). As we grow into adulthood, we don't recognize how we "shaped" ourselves to fit or realize that we no longer need to.

I believe that our work as coaches is to advocate for the Hero Self of our clients.

What does it mean to advocate for the Hero Self of our clients? It means helping them see how they've shaped and constructed themselves to fit in and reconnecting them with their Hero Self.

We use the WE-Q Profile to help clients see the ways in which they've shaped themselves to fit their lives. It allows them see the unique ways they tend to disconnect from themselves and the parts of themselves they find difficult to tolerate (because it was tolerated in them). It reveals the inner world they constructed in order to get their needs met.

When we connect clients with their WE-Q Profile and share with them how they are still protecting and defending themselves to fit, they can see their constructed self more clearly and then have more choice in who and how they want to become - empowering the Hero Self.

We can connect our clients with their Hero Self more directly by:

• Creating deeply rooted relationships with them
• Connecting them with what gives them joy
• Supporting them in developing self-love and compassion
• Noticing and encouraging the Hero Self that always emerging

This last point is what we explore with the Emergent Coach program. In this program, we train coaches to notice how the Hero Self of the client is emerging through their stories, expressions, and actions. And we teach the coach how to:

• Notice and work with what's emerging for the client
• Notice and work with what's' emerging for the coach
• Tune into the energetic field between the coach and the client
• Support the client in knowing themselves
• Work with silence as energy which is generative for the coaching

If you'd like to learn more about how to advocate for the Hero Self of your client, you can learn more about the Emergent Coaching Certification program here.