Blog Post: A Client with a Blind Spot

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I have a coaching client with a blind spot.  In fact, calling it a “spot” is a gross understatement.  The client is blind about how she shows up, the impact she has on those around her, and her contribution to the challenges she faces.  After a dozen coaching sessions, her blindness remains.  What do you do with such a client?

Coaching works by evoking awareness that the client can put into action to reach the client’s agenda.  Lots of times the new awareness that’s needed concerns the person being coached, not just the problem they face.  Another way of saying this is that the client realizes they are part of the problem.  For most clients, new self-awareness can be challenging, but also liberating.  It’s refreshing to know that you have great influence over a major aspect of the problem you have to face.  While personal change is hard, many clients lean into the challenge and move forward as a result.  Not this client.

The big blind spot for my client concerns the chaos she brings into her interactions, the business she owns and runs, and her family.  If you remember the Peanuts character Pigpen with his cloud of dust following him around, that’s her except with a cloud of chaos, confusion, and misunderstanding.  And the one in the cloud is the least aware.  Throughout the coaching relationship, the client seemed impervious to self-awareness.

The client swatted away curious questions:

Me: How do you think you’re contributing to the chaos in your office?

Client: I’m pushing against the chaos.

The client deflected observations:

Me: It sounds like you’re making things more chaotic, not less.

Client: No, not really.  That’s not what’s going on.

The client denied and grew defensive when I offered direct feedback:

Me: I think you’re blind to how much you’re the one bringing the chaos.

Client: I disagree.  I’m doing everything I can to help things run smoothly.

So what do you do with a client who seems impervious to self-awareness?  There’s no magic formula or foolproof technique.  But there are some principles that have helped me stay engaged and keep possibilities open.

First, be patient.  Personal change in someone else often looks obvious and requiring immediate attention.  Personal change in oneself is usually much less obvious, takes more time to accept and more energy to address.  Empathy for the client can support your patience as the blind spots slowly come to light.  Remember the adage about when the student is ready the teacher will emerge.  While coaching doesn’t involve teaching, it does hinge on client readiness.

Second, stay humble.  As the coach, you are only one aspect of the client’s life.  There are many more circumstances and factors that can contribute to opening the client to self-awareness.  Humility as a coach includes seeing your role as a facilitator of what the client is ready to do not just as a catalyst who stirs readiness.  Other aspects of the client’s life can also stir readiness, so seek ways to bring those aspects to life and pour fuel on the fires lit elsewhere in the client’s life.

Third, be persistent.  Patience is not necessarily passive.  Active patience involves repeatedly investigating, making observations, offering challenges, and looping back to topics that could help the client eventually experience a breakthrough.

Fourth, offer challenges.  Coaching can involve direct challenges from the coach to the client.  Don’t overdo this, and don’t start here.  If we challenge too often or too early, we are most likely slipping out of coaching and into more of an expert role where we think we see things more clearly than the client does.  Only after some time and repeated exposure to what appears to be a client blind spot should you offer a direct challenge.  And even then, you should do it in a way that is safe for the client and demonstrates that you have the client’s best interests in mind.

Finally, celebrate baby steps.  Take progress where you can get it, even if it’s not related to the blind spot.  When a client experiences new awareness and forward progress in one area of life, they are much more open to recognizing the need for change in other areas of life, including a major blind spot.  Minor changes signal to the client that change can happen, that change is good, and that change is manageable.

It’s been about a year now and my client is still largely blind to the degree to which she is contributing to her frustration and office chaos.  That said, she has made progress.  She’s encountered the topic of emotional intelligence and is studying it – not because she needs it, of course, but because she thinks her team needs more of it.  Still, exposure to such a topic is bound to have some impact on her.  She’s also more committed to developing her team instead of replacing them.  Earlier in our coaching, she thought having different people would make a big difference.  Now she realizes that different people will not make much difference.  I think this is a small step toward self-awareness that she is the common factor.

Most of my other clients are more motivated to change, more open to self-awareness, and more likely to experience forward progress as a result of our coaching.  To put it bluntly, they are more coachable than the client described in this blog post.  But even this challenging client is experiencing benefit and blessing from the coaching relationship.  As you coach, remember that each client is different. Some will be less coachable but still worth the investment.

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