ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts the experiences and attitudes of a 40-something female Sudanese coaching client, who felt she’d been assigned ‘the worst coach’ in her organisation’s international leadership development programme. The narrative investigates her psychological ‘attack’ on the quality and credibility of the coach she was allocated, me. It also explores the client’s underlying cultural conditioning against speaking about feelings, including work related challenges outside of the family.
This is a story of coaching across multiple cultures simultaneously, including considering the psychological baggage we may bring. Peter Hawkins and Carole Pemberton offer thoughts on cultural awareness and assumption in a Caribbean, African Muslim and Chinese-related context.
The author, Rachel Ellison, uses a psychoanalytic, beneath the surface lens to examine themes of cultural assumption, prejudice, judgementalism, conscious bias, unconscious bias, and defensiveness. The chapter also examines positive regard, the building of rapport, reflecting back rather than solving or imposing beliefs, issues of credibility and collusion. Constellations theory is also explored.
