Lorenza Clifford

Master Executive Coach, Leadership; Coach Supervisor

Equipping leaders and coaches navigate turbulent times and account for realities. Raising awareness and preparing to take appropriate responsibility.

AC Accredited Master Executive Coach; CSA and AOCS Accredited Coach Supervisor. A track record of successful coaching interventions with board-level executives, VPs, practice leaders and heads of site/function/business line.
Climate Conscious Coaching around creating a new Leadership response to the Climate Emergency is a specialty. Supervision of coaching in this area is an emergent new service I am providing for 2021, based on field research in 2020.

Innovative leadership development professional with senior-level, multi-sector experience. Combines a growth mindset with a deep understanding of leadership, coaching psychology and innovative learning design to enhance how leaders think about their work.

Coaching: Thought-provoking, co-creating new consciousness, valuable results in 3 dimensions Facilitating: Effective leading groups to authentic dialogue, creates experiences that bring insight Design: Innovative and practical, a wealth of knowledge in human development, psychometrics Leading: Encouraging, insightful business partner, leads experts through co-creative influence Consulting: Strong client focus, relationship building and communication with honesty for growth Engaging others: Applies human systemic and viral change methods for inspiration and sustainable change

Accounting for Reality in Coaching

Context

Two highly relevant current themes of interest to many in the coaching profession are Climate Coaching and Supervision. They are linked for me in how we account for reality in coaching. Lorenza gave a short exploration of these, provided her viewpoints, and signpost the places coaches can go for the next steps in exploring and coming to their own views on these essential themes.

Accounting for Reality in Coaching: Why Coaching Supervision matters in the age of Climate Crisis.

Keynotes

Co-constructive Approach

The philosophy behind my coaching: Encompassing the systemic and human-relation perspective.

Stepping back and seeing the wood AND Stepping in to appreciate the trees.

• Helps coaches to navigate when you should be stepping back and when you need to be stepping in.

The Role of a Coach

• Defined Accounting in 3 time formats for: what is in the past, now and future.
• We reflect on the past. We inquire. We acquire information on what has been, and we apply curiosity to uncover the different valued aspects and perspectives of learnings from the past.
• In Now, we’re accounting for what is in here and now. We’re being present with everything that client brings, including their feelings, agenda, context and worldview. And we’re accounting for those aspects in the present with them.
• An aspect about the future is inspiring, envisioning with your client about what might be, what could become and empowering choicefulness about and creativity with the future to meet people’s needs, to be aligned with what they’re valuing. This is maybe a particular role of the coach.

Reality Tunnels

• Reality tunnels are normal but problematic.
• When we focus on something with our coaches, we lose sight of the wider perspective. We need to be mindful of that and return to it at later stages. 
• When we simplify, we lose something of the whole. 
• These are normal human learning processes we simplify to transmit information to communicate.
• In all these simplifications, we always lose something. There is a temptation we can later think we can have a handle on something difficult to the complex where we’re only using our simplified view.
• When people are working alone, they might need to be widened, broadened and find people to work with that will help them.
• When you’re working in a silo away from other parts of a connected system, you can give us tunnel vision that’s hard to break out of. So, collaboration, diversity, open-hearted dialogue are great ways of breaking out of tunnels into the light within organizations.

Reflection in coaching supervision practice

• It can allow us to break out of reality tunnels and into the light and make sure that our practice is safer for our clients. 
• There are so many human biases that have been named these days.

Capabilities for coaches to nurture are:

• Noticing discounts: what is ignored or left in the shadows, seeing reality tunnels.
• Informing about other systemic perspectives
• Demonstrating the consequences of what has been given too little attention
• Uncovering hearts and minds to what else might be there, yet to be seen.
• Opening hearts and minds to what else might be there, yet to be seen.
• Defusing shoulds and shame responses e.g. might be there, yet to be seen.
• Engaging creativity around a regenerative future vision and action orientation with appropriate urgency.

Don’t underplay

• The relationship between coach and coachee is influential.
• Don’t stay in the shadows. It’s not possible to be neutral. You’re a human being, and when you’re in contact with another human being, that does shape things.
• Instead, invite your client to see with their many selves, rather than with a single aspect. 
• To know issues from all angles is meaningful. You never know which angle is going to be important. This angle may come from you or within the coachee.

What is Coaching Supervision?

• Coaching supervision is a professional developmental relationship for understanding how you are looking/thinking, developing your coaching philosophy, and preparing your ground for the work. 
• It is for recognizing what seed you may need to sow or how something may need to be nurtured differently for the client in their ecosystem to flourish regeneratively in the future.
  • Quality of our coaching
  • Resourcing ourselves
  • Developing ourselves
  • Systemic function

Global statement on climate change

• 11 professional bodies for coaching around the globe have come together in a historic joint global statement on climate change.
• There are two new responsibilities:

1. Bring the climate crisis to the awareness of our clients, where appropriate to the contract and to the client, and to account for where we might be part of the problem. 
2. Invite clients to take responsibility in their responses to the climate crisis to become part of the regenerative future rather than part of the problem.

How do we use our relationship?

• Our coaching relationships can be learning and active hope instead of shoulds and shame responses.
• We can invite a more realistic broadening of scope.
• Increasing awareness naturally to redecision around extractive and or exploitative survival habits without any explicit directional work.
• Providing safe space for planning and building regenerative habits of responding, encompassing the ecosystem needs.
• Climate change: Do you care about it?
• What does it mean to you?
• How might you respond regeneratively as an individual, a professional coach, or as a family, team, system?

Looking at your coaching

1. Where have you come across reality tunnels with your clients so far?
2. What helps you to work with what your client is discounting?
3. What are you becoming aware of: where your own scope of vision could be widened?

Nuggets from Lorenza Clifford

• The personhood of the practitioner – our humanity matters, as does our maturity, our open-heartedness and our generosity of spirit. – Murdoch, 2013.
• The twin areas of climate and social crisis are leading us to realize that our focus on profit has led to the overexploitation of people and resources.
• All these experiences have one thing in common, our normal human learning process, leading us to give too much focus and value in a too narrow area.

💯 Invite clients to take responsibility in their responses to the climate crisis to become part of the regenerative future rather than part of the problem. – Lorenza Clifford

📣 A big shoutout to Lorenza Clifford for talking and sharing about one of the biggest challenges for all.❤️

🎧 If you missed or want to re-watch, catch up now! Watch Lorenza Clifford in action talking about how coaches can make their clients aware of climate change and contribute towards tackling this global challenge.

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