Among the many things that regularly permeate the coaching and facilitation process, the varying tendency to collude or collide with clients are two behaviours that haunt yet somehow also fascinate me. It seems that coaches and facilitators are constantly being reminded of the dangers that accompany these behaviours, while equally aware that such behaviours are in some way intrinsic to the collaboration and compassion that we strive to model.
I wonder how it’s so easy to inadvertently aid other people’s poor habits or destructive thinking. On reflection I berate myself for at times letting that fearful part of me intervene and stop me from challenging the limitations of another’s behaviour, knowing that at times it’s equally inappropriate to collide with others’ values. So I swing, like many others I imagine, between going with or against, between being Mr Nice and Mr Nasty, challenging and comforting clients, trusting that collusion and collision are not only unavoidable but also necessary to some extent.
And of course, long before coaching or facilitation occurred to us as a choice of work, we have all been collaborating, colluding, colliding and trying to show compassion ever since we had a sense of being part of a group, ever since the family dynamic took on a reality. We might be tempted to think that these behaviours are peculiar to coaching and facilitation, but really they are the stuff of life. They constitute the operating core of relationships and groups.
But this juggling of contrary feelings and responses is also part of a particularly South African story. That story is the country’s painful past and challenging present. In case that sounds too sweeping and grand, let’s see how it looks on the ground.
- Whites collaborated and colluded in each other’s fear and assumption of superiority to maintain a lop-sided society that kept them in power and privilege.
- White South Africans privately or publicly collided with the NP government, but not so much as to make them cut ties or to collaborate authentically with black South Africa.
-The struggle was a protracted collision with an unethical system of social engineering, while a small minority of blacks colluded in capitalism to get ahead.
- Those who collaborated in the struggle are now colliding as political foes.
-The TRC was a flawed process of collusion, collision, collaboration and compassion on a grand scale.
- MPs collaborated in the travel scam and then the previous speaker of parliament colluded in the scam by excusing them from being accountable.
- Business Against Crime is a collaboration.
- Men and women necessarily collide about daily emotional needs.
- Children are often compassionate towards their parents’ shortcomings, which at times can look like collusion.
- People are making courageous changes in their lives every day, but change is a slow process. It often requires others’ acceptance and non-judgement to encourage this slow transition. This can easily be considered collusion.
- Daily debates within families, between couples, in classrooms and parliaments depend on a healthy dose of collision moderated with compassion.
- Lovers collude in each others’ insecurities every hour.
- The constant loneliness and stream of blaming that you can observe in boardrooms, offices and households means that collaboration is often absent.
It’s everywhere. People trying, succeeding and failing at setting and maintaining boundaries, believing in being responsible for and accountable to others but not having the energy or will, trying to help without saving other, supporting without disempowering, challenging without crushing, setting standards while staying humble, trying not to let the voices in our heads deafen us to those we are listening to. So at the heart of the struggle to create authentic relationships is a nobility that is found in the space between the beguiling peace of collusion and the habitual fight of collision.
One more stab at the truth: Facilitation is the noble role of encouraging consensus, coaching a process whereby habits collide with ambitions.
