ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on a number of perspectives on coaching and organisational life that come into particular relief with a relational orientation to living and coaching practice. It considers the nature and impact of shame, an experience which is profoundly interwoven with our human vulnerability and fundamental need for connection. The fixation on image and the discounting of deeper, painful experiences of emptiness and vulnerability are at the heart of the personality style of narcissism. As In his seminal work Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay has shown that the individual tendencies we have to create our identities based on identification with self-images gives rise to a phenomenon whereby individual ego ideals become fused with the ideals of the organisation in which people work. The chapter proposes that a relational orientation to coaching offers the possibility to explore the relationship the client has to her organisation.