Practical Manifestations of the Theories of Mediating Objects

Creativity is a basic human urge (Kempster et al. 2017). From the revelations of what British listeners to Jo Whiley's Radio 2 programme get up to in the evening to the ideas of creative collaboration (Clements, 2004) there is an urge for many, if not most, humans to create. This creativity lies sometimes outside of work as the constraints of earning a living force an individual to express themselves more authentically at home or outside the work setting.

Recent articles in the coaching literature provide a framework for both the neurophysiology and the practicalities of creative interventions in coaching (Seto and Geithner, 2018) as well as some of the inherent human behavioural tendencies towards playfulness and the use of humour (Wheeler, 2020).

The theories that have helped me to understand how to engage in the learning beyond explicit coaching models and approaches can be applied to, and help to explain, progression in the coaching ‘space’, in principle at least. Many of the intellectual theories supportive of these ideas are deeply contested (see Jane Bennet's Vibrant Matter and Graham Harman's Object Orientated Ontology). However, even these competing theories can lead the executive coach towards creative and flexible interventions with their clients. Further understanding of this aspect of human creativity can be gleaned from sculptures; Antony Gorman in his recently collaborated book with Martin Gayford, Shaping the World (Gorman and Gayford, 2020) articulates the view, through conversations with his art critic friend, that sculpture (aka human-formed objects) has formed part of human thinking since prehistory. This is where prehistoric human species learnt to represent the world they lived in through the creation of things (often, but not always, useful artefacts or tools). Ideas of working with internal thoughts through the representation of these things is something that is ‘solid’ and external. Thus, the coach and their clients can be seen to be instinctively able to use objects to mediate their worlds and views of their own circumstances using creative interventions and ideas.

Much of my own work in this field started with a chance meeting with my erstwhile colleague Dr Jodie Allinson and her work about the emergence of knowledge.

This book, The Theory and Practice of Creative Coaching, seeks to discuss and review new and exciting ways of coaching individuals in organizations and communities. Although this book predominantly focuses on the field of executive coaching and executive coaches, it covers the wider field of practical coaching in all its spheres. Coaching is interlinked with many other organizational study topics (e.g. leadership, team working, motivation and modernization of the workplace). Much of the theoretical and practical writing about coaching could be dominated by the use of coaching models and their application to goal-orientated coaching and similar solution-focused approaches. Less work has been undertaken to explore the human basis for this work. Taking its inspiration from a wide range of sources, such as philosophy and the practical joys of nature, this 11-chapter book will seek to address some theoretical and practical gaps in the ways in which practice unfolds. This is not a coaching manual as such but more of a personal description of a journey of learning both from an academic point of view and a deeply personal view of coaching, leadership and learning. It is also a guide and stimulus to thinking about individual approaches to coaching practice. By outlining and stimulating thinking about the ‘nitty-gritty’ of this very human activity, this book aims to influence practice by offering a plethora of new or adapted ideas. These new ideas, approaches and ways of thinking can then be used by the reader to develop flexibility in their approaches in a way that is conducive to unleashing the potential of other human beings. In addition, this publication will challenge some commonly held views in the coaching world and encourage experimentation, debate and alternative approaches to the art of executive coaching, and coaching in general, as practised in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Much of study and thinking that fuelled this approach has been undertaken against the backdrop of exploiting theory in the context of ongoing practice (the author is a UK-qualified executive coach at Level 7 and a senior lecturer in a UK university). A creative approach to coaching has been undertaken while working with individuals in a broad range of organizations, both large and small, in the four nations of the United Kingdom as well as with a wider audience in large multinational companies across Europe.

The concept of reproductive justice is currently receiving a lot of attention in counterhegemonic feminisms. The concept emerged in clear opposition to an individualizing understanding of reproductive rights that characterized the U.S. pro-choice movements and also the post-Cairo international antinatalist population programs. Transnationally, feminist movements refer to the concept when challenging structural inequalities related to reproduction and parenthood. For these reasons, the concept of reproductive justice is also a landmark in the critique of Malthusian crisis narratives and demographic governance strategies.

This chapter explores how Black and popular feminism are adopting the concept currently in Brazil. In the first section, the chapter deals with implications for agenda setting and reflects the movements’ strong reference to necropolitical dimensions of reproductive relations. Three elements of agenda setting are explored: addressing structural inequality within ‘classical’ reproductive health issues; the attention to antinatalist strategies, such as a continuous policy of sterilization; and experiences of motherhood/parenthood being stigmatized or attacked. In the second section, the chapter explores another level of meaning of reproductive justice, namely that of being a framework for intersectional feminist alliances. Therefore, it deals with how the movements negotiate different positionalities and the question of allyship within their everyday convivialities. The movements negotiate these organizational challenges by reflecting processes of collective repositioning in a complex way and by referring to important concepts of contemporary antiracist and social movements in Brazil, such as não lugar, aquilombamento, and bem-viver.

Introduction

Reproductive justice, or in Brazilian Portuguese justiça reprodutiva, is a traveling concept that has recently attracted strong attention within those transnational feminist movements currently on an upswing that are engaging in counterhegemonic feminisms. The broad framework for politics around abortion, contraception, pregnancy, birth and childraising aims to analyze and oppose complex and structurally embedded reproductive inequalities and oppressions. It is also conceptualized as an intersectional framework for multivocal alliances.

This book refers to executive coaching as a practice that has grown and developed in Europe and has distinct cultural differences and approaches to the coaching that is prevalent in America and Canada. Frameworks and models, in this European mode of executive coaching, are helpful in understanding the essential processes within a contracted executive coaching relationship. Good examples of frameworks and models include those espoused by David Clutterbuck's lifelong research into coaching and mentoring effectiveness (see The Mentoring Life Cycle – Best Practice, by David Clutterbuck and Gill Lane, 2004) whereby a coaching session or coaching relationship can be outlined with the reference to key parts of that time spent together. Such frameworks include many of the common factors (constituent parts) in coaching such as building rapport, contracting, agreeing on action and the ways forward. The ethical guidelines, published in June 2021, which is a code regularly updated by the European Council for Coaching and Mentoring and the Association for Coaching, are also helpful in this respect as they outline, in great detail, the behaviours and approaches deemed to be compatible with a coach following professional standards. Yet these guidelines and frameworks reveal little about what exactly happens within a coaching relationship. The episodes, insights, puzzlements, curiosities and moments of revelations that colour many executive–coaching interactions often emerge from an apparent muddle of ideas and reflections. The skill of the coach, therefore, lies in precipitating an understanding (an awakening, perhaps) on the part of the client/coachee – creating a ‘space’ for deeper thought and a more significant reflection on behaviour (Passmore et al., 2017). Creative techniques and a multiplicity of art-based approaches allow the coach to change tactics and apply methods (both spontaneously and intuitively) to both challenge and support the client's journey of discovery and development. This also has resonance in the field of leadership development and how ‘facilitators of learning’ can help by using a variety of approaches and ideas (Turner, 2019b).

During the past decade of research and discovery, when I had been working in the field of executive coaching and developing development programmes for aspiring coaches and mentors, four main ways emerged in which coaches could begin to introduce alternative approaches.

The next five chapters, in second and third sections, are detailed accounts of techniques that outline some of my favourite alternative approaches to coaching. Section 2 highlights two very important and often-neglected topics in coaching: the use of silence and the role of playfulness and the use of humour in sessions with clients. Section 3 focuses on the more detailed treatments of specific techniques, that of walking, using finger puppets and the use of music, all presented briefly in Section 1. Inevitably, these techniques are presented as separate entities to focus on each one but the principles and permeating ideas, in each technique, often overlap. This overlapping and interweaving call for the practising coach to use these interventions not as a discreet consistent approach but in a way consistent with both flexibility and sharp attention (intuitive responses to what the client is offering) to that client at that particular moment. The use of metaphors in an ambient backdrop creates the potential for a narrative that is rich, diverse and transformational (Seto and Geithner, 2018). A lot more is waiting to be discovered in how these alternative approaches interface with more standard techniques as more and more practitioners adopt creative and unusual ways of engaging their clients in meaningful dialogue. The link between the models and more creative approaches can be summed up by exemplifying a modern jazz musician. These musicians spend a lot of time practising their scales in order to play their instrument in a way that is expressive and so that the player remains true to themselves with their musical integrity intact. In many ways, this also has links to the world of improvisation and stand-up comedy. The following chapters will shed light on how a variety of coaching activities can be called into action to augment the coach and their client(s) (Read, 2013).

In the last two decades, there has been a backlash within global population and reproductive health policies. While the vocabulary of individual reproductive rights established at the UN Cairo conference 1994 has remained ever-present, there has been a discursive and financial shift once again toward more explicitly neo-Malthusian approaches and stand-alone family planning. Moreover, a return to formerly discredited long-acting reversible contraception is evident in major public-private partnerships. Drawing on policy papers, interviews and statistical data, we researched this shift in the aftermath of the “Family Planning 2020” conference 2012 in London, where multilateral population agencies, national development ministries, philanthrocapitalist foundations and Big Pharma met in order to expand and transform antinatalist policies within the Global South. And we found considerable interplay between a reoriented development policy under the name of ‘population dynamics’ and the interests of pharmaceutical companies in conquering and expanding contraceptive markets. While antinatalism had never disappeared as the main frame of the Cairo agenda, the aim of avoiding a maximum number of births, especially in sub-Saharan African countries, has once again become a more explicit target, driven both by simplistic crisis narratives and market-oriented interests.

Introduction

In 2011, the media applauded the German government for its successful development policy with regard to Rwanda's health sector. It had helped to reduce the birth rate from 6 to 4.5 children per woman, and had contributed to increasing the rate of users of modern contraceptives from 10 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2010 (Haefliger 2011). Rwanda was considered a “model country” for tackling the problem—“Africa's population is exploding”—and its effects—“hunger, poverty, environmental destruction” (Knaup 2011). While the rhetoric of international development agencies is expressed in less sensationalist terms than that of the media, neo-Malthusian rationales of population policy are officially back on the agenda, not only as the hidden background behind ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ (SRHR), but as a more explicit field of action in international development cooperation. One important new actor within this field is the family planning initiative FP2020, recently renamed FP2030. Created at the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012, FP2020/30 is a public-private partnership (PPP) that includes pharmaceutical firms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments and multinational agencies and aims to address ‘population dynamics’.

Arthur undertook the initial research between 2009 and 2014 looking at how managers, at a pivotal part of their career, learnt about leadership. Arthur's thesis, entitled ‘How Middle Managers Learn about Leadership’, originally looked at managers in transit from the purer forms of administration and management to work in which there are more responsibilities and a real expectation of an understanding of the different (and complex) elements of leadership and more responsive management. Moreover, as part of this Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA), Arthur came across an emergent theme of creativity (alternative ways of engaging in learning and development) which persistently came into view and Arthur began to notice these alternative ways of learning for adults which he started to use in his own practice as an executive coach. These creative techniques have included the use of walking, the additions and deployment of mediating objects and the use of narrative and a focus on metaphors. During the research period, Arthur took a basically Social constructionist approach to the collecting of data and utilized the philosophy of phenomenology to observe what emerged from his observations of 75 participants (in various ‘middle-management’ positions) undertaking an Institute of Leadership and Management Level 5 Leadership course. In order to do that Arthur (and his very supportive colleagues) utilized a number of creative techniques of data collection and developed several unusual approaches of facilitation and working one-to-one throughout the initial 18 months of inquiry between 2010 and 2012.

These research techniques were deployed with three consecutive cohorts working in the Brecon Beacons in South Wales/De Cymru.

• 1. The philosophical idea of phenomenological bracketing (and accompanying challenging activities) whilst observing participants as they experience the realisation that what they are learning is not necessarily clear, obvious or linear in nature

• 2. A silent reflective space provided by being in an area of natural beauty

• 3. Walking as a means of supporting adult learning

• 4. The use of a freely available reflective video booth

• 5. The use of space, place and pace as ‘marker’ for design of interventions (for more detailed explanation of this, see Critical Leadership Heneberry, Turner and Pardey, 2019)

Between 2014 and the current time Arthur has been broadening his conceptual ideas around creativity in coaching practice and adult learning.

This chapter looks at techniques and ideas of creative coaching in more detail. The reader will have more ideas on how to become a successful musical coach.

Use of music with coaching clients or as part of the development of alternative coaching approaches, along with other topics in this book, such as walking coaching and mediating objects, is a little explored topic. In this chapter I explore a number of interrelated subjects that have been encountered such as music theory, jazz improvisation, duets and the use of musical interludes in both the training of coaching and the use of music within a coaching session. I will look at exercises that have worked in both coaching development programmes and recently with music-related approaches. I will also make links between theories of how the brain works and its connections with human emotions and the ways in which music can help to enhance engagement, build rapport, promote deeper thought and add to the growing field of creative coaching interventions.

This chapter provokes thinking, rethinking and reflection on the use of music in understanding the coaching process, linking to the co-emotional aspects of working with the challenges of personal development as well as giving some practical examples of types of music that could induce different client interactions

Previous chapters have focused on walking, use of silence and the use of historical and contemporary finger puppets (Turner, 2016: Turner, 2017: Turner, 2019a). These papers reflect my overall interest in creative techniques of learning within coaching relationships summed up in my 2019 article published by the Institute of Leadership and Management (Turner, 2019b). All these topics can be considered as sitting outside of the coaching mainstream with the articles examining, in detail, the complex creative theories and models emanating from neuroscience and psychology (Seto and Geithner, 2018). In addition, this chapter does reflect an interest in psychological and creative aspects of the coaching process (Cavanagh and Lane, 2012). In particular this chapter ponders on the early aspects of the coaching ‘life cycle’ (Clutterbuck and Lane, 2004) such as building rapport and linking to the emotions involved in the stimulation and curiosity of the client's mind and their own executive behaviours.

This is one of the least explored of coaching topics but is centred on some of the very real factors that separate humans from other primates. The ways in which we can utilize humour in our practice and can, as humans, be induced to be playful, experimental and ‘lighten’ in our approaches suggests that this topic is important in the work undertaken between two people through medium of coaching.

Over a decade ago, with my original research into the development of leadership in organizations, I started to discover the role play (although I couched it in slightly different terms believing the creativity and sets of different exercises and the use of objects was important) and playfulness have on the acquisition of new skills and ideas.

Here is an extract from my original thesis which highlights the use of artefacts and the ways in which playful stimuli can be introduced into formal developmental interventions.

I have been writing about the use of finger puppets for the past six years, based largely in the context of leadership development, group work and classroom sessions with colleagues in the field of executive coaching. More recently (Turner and Kempster, 2022), a recorded podcast has explored the use of finger puppets in the broader context of playfulness in leadership development. This development work has led to their use in one-to-one coaching (see Kempster et al., 2014, Turner, 2016). The use of these specific artefacts is discussed in this chapter and fits in well with the more general idea of creativity (Page et al., 2013), in general, in and around the evolving coaching relationship (Maisel, 2020).

The use of puppets is an unusual technique and represents a more keenly aesthetic and experimental approach to coaching practice and fits in with the whole idea of arming the coach with tools in the spirit of experiential variety (Nelson, Zaccoro and Herman 2010). That (arming the coach with tools) is the notion of an executive coach who utilizes a wide range of approaches and techniques in which to engage their clients to elicit reflection. In their use the puppets are a humanistic rather than a mechanical concept and is one of those tools that edges the coach towards the coaching maturity that David Clutterbuck has underlined in a move away from linear, model-focused coaching (Lowe, 2021, Clutterbuck and Megginson, 2011).

This approach of using types of finger puppets was partly the start but also the continuous thread in my investigation about coaching practice that has led to looking beyond models, official approaches and more structured instructions on ‘how-to-do-coaching’ to a more dynamic and emergent style that depends on techniques and props. The use of finger puppets is an age-old human tradition that acts as a catalyst for change in human behaviour and thinking.

Although there are many finger puppets on the market, mainly aimed at children, the finger puppets I have been using come from two sources. The basic idea is a simple one. The puppets are small enough to fit on an index finger (although there is no reason (other than bulk) to using hand-puppets, or puppets on strings, although I have never tried string-puppets as a technique).

Researching reproductive racism leads in many directions, as the work on this book has made very clear. Reproductive racism involves pronatalist family policies in so-called welfare states that primarily support the wish to have a child of those parents who are better off anyway. At the same time it includes a political focus on migrantized people as a segregated population with an ‘inappropriate’ birth rate, and not as subjects with reproductive desires. Reproductive racism is at work in efforts to combine the imaginaries of ‘shrinking and aging nations’ with continuously exclusionary racist and class-selective migration policies. And it becomes obvious in the revival of antinatalist agendas for the Global South, which are once again becoming more explicit. Moreover, there are myriad other ways in which the aim of protecting the dominant status quo is translated into the imaginaries of governing population, with all the violent consequences these agendas have for those whose lives are interpreted as less valuable or even disposable. In this epilogue, I will start by summarizing some crosscutting insights of the research findings on migration, birth control and the conjuncture of demographization that have been presented. I then address some more recent challenges, taking into account new conjunctures of demographization. As is typical for long-term academic research, the studies in this volume revolve around developments in the 2000s and 2010s, despite some updates. However, the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 and the Russian war in Ukraine, which has ushered in a new phase of war and has reinforced militarization and imperial bloc formation, raise new questions about the bio- and necropolitics of population. Moreover, the ways in which diverse political forces are currently referring to Malthusian narratives in the context of the climate crisis also bring in new challenges, as I will discuss in the following. However, beyond these worrying observations, I will end by reflecting the new visions of resistance. The framework of reproductive justice as addressed in Chapter 6 will be referred to as a clearly anti-Malthusian intervention. Current counterhegemonic feminisms are exploring the potentialities of this framework, thereby also remembering a history of likeminded struggles which have often been marginalized or forgotten.