Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients. I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
00:00:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world. This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts. Let’s get started.
00:01:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
Today’s episode is a short one, but it’s a really important one. It’s about being ethical when it comes to power and the power that you wield inside of your coaching sessions and containers. I’m recording this one off the cuff without all of the usual preparation that I put into an episode. And it’s because I recently heard of another story where not so kosher things were happening inside of a practical
00:01:28 Joanna Lindenbaum
or client relationship, and I’m really fired up about it. So the topic of power and ethics inside of our client containers is one that doesn’t get talked about enough, but it’s one that is huge and has so many different pieces to it. And it impacts every area of our client work and business. Working through power and ethics,
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helps your work be more trauma-informed. It helps your work be more transformational and effective. And of course, it supports you to live a life based on your values. For me and for all of my clients and students, we would name integrity as one of our top values in business and in life. And I’m guessing that if you are listening to this podcast,
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you identify this way as well. One of your values is to minimize harm in your client work and in anything you do in your life. To know that you’re contributing positively versus hurting others. Inside of any of my trainings, whether it’s sacred depths or advanced depth shadow training, being trauma-informed and being aware of power differentials
00:02:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
And ethical coaching and business practices, that’s woven throughout pretty much each and every module that I teach in any program in one way or another. And that’s because being ethical absolutely needs to be part and parcel of every single coaching skill that you use.
00:03:09 Joanna Lindenbaum
every single transformational technique that you use, everything you say and write to clients, and everything related to the business aspects of your container as well. Whenever I train a practitioner on any skill or any technique, one of the foundations of it is the following question.
00:03:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
How do you co-create the deepest of the deep transformation with clients and do so in a way where you’re not wielding power, harming, or taking advantage? Now, this might sound easy enough to do this, but here’s the important thing that I want to say after doing this work for 25 years,
00:03:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
and watching the transformational industry for about 25 years. Here’s what I want to say. Just because you are a good and ethical person doesn’t mean that you know how to be ethical inside of your client containers and your business.
00:04:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
Just because you are ethical doesn’t mean you know how to be ethical. Ethical practices inside of business and inside of coaching and transformational work actually need to be taught. Even if you’re an inherently ethical person, there are rules of engagement that need to be learned.
00:04:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
There are skills that need to be learned in order to be ethical. And there’s also inner work that needs to be done on the part of the practitioner in order to be ethical. This is for a whole bunch of reasons, and I’m going to share two of the biggest reasons right now why we need to be taught these skills, even if we’re good people, even if we deeply desire to be ethical.
00:05:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
Number one, there just aren’t enough models of ethical coaching and business practices out there. There’s just not enough models of it inside of the industry. We see big name practitioners doing things that are abuses of power.
00:05:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
And these big name practitioners, by the way, I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus. They’re not doing it because they’re bad people. They are abusing power because they’re unaware of what they’re doing and that what they’re doing is wrong. And so when we don’t have a lot of great models for ethical practices,
00:05:56 Joanna Lindenbaum
we see what the big name practitioners are doing, and we maybe think, oh yeah, that’s how you’re supposed to do it, right? And then we fall into those unethical practices. Now, it’s easier to spot some of the more dramatic abuses of power that we see out there. You know, for example, shaming people into buying a program, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s much harder
00:06:25 Joanna Lindenbaum
to spot the more subtle things that are going on. And I’ll give you just a few examples right now out of hundreds and hundreds. So example number one, we’ve probably all seen a practitioner, and maybe this has happened to us, maybe we’ve done this as the practitioner, say to a client, close your eyes, right? You’re going into maybe a somatic
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process or some kind of visualization or some kind of meditation. And the practitioner says, close your eyes. That seems harmless enough, right? But the thing is, for some clients, not giving them a choice and just telling them to close their eyes can activate a trauma.
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response because of something they’ve had in their past, right? So just that what’s seemingly harmless, close your eyes, it can sometimes be an abuse of power. Instead, when I’m working with a client and we’re maybe moving into a somatic process or a visualization or a meditation, et cetera, I’ll say to them,
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close your eyes, or if it’s more comfortable, keep your eyes open and allow yourself to go inwards in the ways that are right for you. So just that’s one example, right? We just see this being done in the industry and we think it’s okay. There’s no way for us to know
00:08:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
that this is actually an abuse of power unless we learn the skill, right? I’ll give you another example of so, so, so many. A lot of practitioners are not taught how to listen to clients while checking their own filters. And if we listen to clients and we don’t check our filters,
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we are going to end up bypassing our clients. We do a full session on this inside of Sacred Depths because it is so important and it’s so pervasive. I’ll give you one example of what listening without filters can do. So let’s say you’ve got a client and this client
00:09:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
is generally committed to the work that you’re doing, but every second or third session, they show up four or five minutes late, or sometimes maybe even 10 minutes late. Now, you’ve maybe learned from your coach training or whatever training you’ve done, that when a client shows up late more than once for a session, it might mean that they’re not fully committed to the work or that they’re in resistance.
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And so maybe because you’ve learned this, you try with this client to work on their resistance because you want to support them to become more committed. But here’s where the filters come in. That might end up being an abuse of power. So let’s say
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that you as the practitioner, let’s say you’re single, you’re not responsible for other humans other than yourself. And that’s kind of your deal in life. But let’s say this particular client who keeps on showing up late is a single mother with two kids, juggling lots of things and still making time for coaching, but it’s imperfect. She shows up late.
00:10:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you’re not checking your own filters for you in your life situation, showing up 4, 5, 10 minutes late, it might absolutely be a sign of resistance. But for this client, the single mother juggling all the things, showing up 4, 5, or even 10 minutes late for a session might be called doing her best in real life.
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And trying to talk to her about resistance is actually completely bypassing her and the truth and the reality of her life. Plus, it has the potential to be shaming, right?
00:11:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll give you one more example of practices that we see all the time that are unethical, but because we haven’t been taught, we don’t know. Going over time in sessions. So I know for those of us that love to give a lot and over-deliver, you know, we want to sometimes go over time in sessions. Now, there’s nothing wrong with going over time in sessions.
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unless you go over time without first seeing if it’s okay with your client to spend an extra 5 minutes or 10 minutes. So how is this an abuse of power if you go over time without getting permission first? It’s because for some clients, because of their
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past and their past experiences, they have not had control in certain situations. They’ve been held against their will, et cetera, et cetera. And this particular client, if you don’t say first, hey, I know we, you know, there’s still this one other thing to iron out in the conversation. I’ve got 10 minutes to you. Do you want to hang on and talk about it? You know, for this particular client,
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They may not have the time. They may have maybe another appointment they have to get to. Maybe they have to really go to the bathroom, whatever it is. But they’re too scared to say to you, actually, you know what? I can’t go over time here. You haven’t asked them, and they’re just going to go with it. But it’s not right.
00:12:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
So that’s the first reason why ethics and particularly, using power ethically inside of client containers needs to be taught. Because we don’t, we just, we don’t have enough models. We see what other people do and they’re not totally kosher. But here’s the second reason
00:13:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
why ethical practices, even for ethical good people, need to be taught to coaches, practitioners, and therapists. And this is really important. So human beings, when they go into fear or they get triggered, their nervous system perceives that harm is imminent.
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And when the nervous system perceives that harm is imminent, it wants to protect at all costs. That’s how it works. So go with me here. If a coach or a practitioner goes, themself goes into a place of fear inside of a client situation, right? Let’s say it’s because the client is giving them negative feedback.
00:14:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
or calling them out on a mistake they made. So that’s happening, and let’s say the coach’s nervous system gets triggered. It perceives harm, and it wants to protect. Well, if the practitioner isn’t uber aware and hasn’t been working on their fears and their shadows,
00:14:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
then what might happen is that their survival strategy in that moment, in that moment where they’re being called out on a mistake that they made, their unconscious way of protecting their own system may be to wield power inside of that client container. For example, that coach then might end up denying that they did anything wrong.
00:15:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
or that coach may end up blaming the client for what happened or shaming the client in some way, right? Again, not because the practitioner is bad, but because their system went into overdrive and is trying to protect and get back power. So there are hundreds and hundreds of different ways that this has the potential to show up.
00:15:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
in client containers, and we really, really want to be aware. I also want you to be aware, and this is really, really important, of the inherent power issue inside of any coach-client relationship. And here’s what I mean by this. The way that culture or society is set up, unfortunately,
00:16:02 Joanna Lindenbaum
is that a coach, a therapist, teacher, leader, practitioner is in a place of power. They are considered the quote unquote expert. They are wise. They know what’s best. And what this does is it sets up a power differential that is potentially harmful for a client, a power differential where it can be too easy
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for the practitioner to slip into the abuse of power. And so that’s why from day one, from day one, please, please be aware of this, of just the way that culture has set this power situation up. And please set up your client containers and uphold your client containers so that there’s shared power.
00:17:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
so that no one in the container is better or higher, so that there’s no hierarchy. Yes, everybody has a different role inside of the container, but one human isn’t better than the other. One human doesn’t know more than the other. One human might know certain things that the other one doesn’t, right? Please, please set up your containers and learn skills so that your clients have
00:17:29 Joanna Lindenbaum
full agency so that their inner wisdom about themselves and what’s right about them so that their truth always, always trumps your ideas about them, right? Every day of the week. Power and ethics is one of those topics I am so passionate about because ethics aren’t just about doing the right thing. Although, of course, that’s so important.
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But power and ethics are actually what make the difference between a container that’s safe for clients and an unsafe container. And as it so happens, when you are using ethical skills and practices, they also help you to be much better at transformation and at business.
00:18:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
Because ethical trauma-informed practices inside of the coaching techniques that you use and inside of your containers are actually what creates the safety, vulnerability, trust, and self-empowerment for your clients. And all of those are the ingredients for true transformation.
00:18:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
You want ethical, trauma-informed power with, not power over, practices to be a part of everything that you do. Now, I want to be clear. When a practitioner abuses power inside of a coaching relationship or in their business practices, I believe it is almost never, ever
00:19:16 Joanna Lindenbaum
because they are a bad person or an evil person. No, I mean, every now and again, maybe, but truly, no. Again, it happens because we’re not taught the ethical practices. We don’t know better. And it also happens because, as I said, it’s so important to do the inner work around the fear and the survival strategies and also around
00:19:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
the shadow of power. Now, the shadow of power in and of itself is a huge topic. For today, I’ll just share that at its core, it’s about doing the courageous work around claiming that inside of yourself, you have some power hungry parts. It’s human nature. And the more that you can claim
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that you have this.
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The more that you can own this without shame, then the less power those power-hungry parts have to come out sideways for you and have you do something that is unethical or that inadvertently abuses power.
00:20:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
What I’m talking about here is a really big work when you actually go through the deep, deep process of it.
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But again, I just really want to emphasize, if you’ve been listening to this episode and you recognize that there are places in your own practice where you can tighten up on the ethics of power peace, please, don’t beat yourself up.
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Don’t worry.
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that you’re a bad person if you are seeing that you’ve done something maybe not so kosher.
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Have a ton of compassion for yourself, self-compassion.
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Know that you are human.
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Know that we’ve all made mistakes.
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None of us are perfect.
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That’s just the truth all day, every day.
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And then commit to learning and doing better.
00:21:33 Joanna Lindenbaum
So my friends, this was my quickie, fiery, passionate PSA for today, my public service announcement.
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Obviously, there is so much more to explore on this topic, but I hope that it was inspiring.
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I hope it feels as important to you as it does to me.
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The more we work on this stuff, then the more we get to do our best work.
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our sacred purpose work, the work that we were put here to do, and also the more that we work on this ethics and power piece, the more we get to help make the world a better place.
00:22:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you want to go deeper with any of this, of course, please check out Sacred Depths or check out Advanced Depth Shadow Training,
00:22:23 Joanna Lindenbaum
Also, at the end of the month, I am hosting a special 2 1/2 hour master class called the Hidden Money Map.
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And inside of that master class, we go a little bit deeper into the shadow of power because power has a lot to do with money.
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And we also go into a lot of other important territory.
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to help you stop holding back in your business and in your practice.
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And I’ll drop the show notes for Sacred Depths and Advanced Depth and Hidden Money Map.
00:22:58 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’ll drop those links into the show notes.
00:23:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, thank you, thank you for being here, for listening, for being the kind of ethical practitioner who cares so much.
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If you’re not subscribed to the podcast, please subscribe so that you don’t miss any episodes.
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If you are willing, please give us a great review and a great rating and please share with your friends.
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That is the best way to get out the word.
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I’ll see you next time.
