Coaching – Reducing Suffering

Outside of my regular teaching in the coaching programme at Henley, one of my favourite pieces of work is the teaching I do on Diversity in Coaching for our MSc programme.

During the last session, one of the students asked me whether I thought the work of EDI would ever be done, whether I believed that racism could ever be eliminated. Much as I would like to believe that we could see a world without discrimination and prejudice, I doubt that we ever will, and certainly not in my lifetime.

In her book, the Sixties, the essayist Jenny Diski discussing the impact, some forty years on, of the idealism and optimism of that decade, observes that “what alarms me is how little has changed ... women are still paid considerably less than men for the same work, millions of people are starving around the world, and most of them are black." This was written in 2009, long before the rise of the far right and its acceptance into the mainstream of politics, and long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, as part of its continuing assault on hard- and long-fought for rights in the US. There’s an old episode of Seinfeld from 1994, The Couch, where Elaine asks her boyfriend Carl about his views on abortion, and he responds that he longs for the day when there are enough people on the Supreme Court to change the law. Comedy then perhaps, but harsh reality less than 20 years later.

Does that mean we shouldn’t try, shouldn’t have hope, shouldn’t try to make the world a better place for everyone?

No. Absolutely not.

Even in the midst of the despair I can feel when I look at the state of the world, I am sustained by the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, literally “repairing the world” - the idea that god created a broken world in order that people could dedicate their lives to fixing it. Even as the world seems tougher than ever for ever more of its citizens, even for the planet itself, we can still make a difference; we can do our bit to make the world a better place, to make life less difficult for others where we can.?

Although for the most part its reach is to a privileged minority, coaching can be a way to help ease the path for people in challenging times. James Flaherty, MCC , author of “Coaching, Evoking Excellence in Others”, articulates this powerfully in this video, where he says that the secret purpose of his coaching school's work is to reduce the amount of suffering in the world. “I can’t stand how much suffering there is in the world”, he says.

Even when there is so much suffering in the world that we can’t bear it, even when we can’t ever imagine an end to the difficulties of the world, there is still some difference we can make, some hope we can share. When we give money to the homeless, for example, we won't reduce homelessness, but we might bring momentary comfort and hope to an otherwise bleak life.

Reducing suffering, making life less difficult for others, gives a moral compass to our lives and to our work.

And, lest we get carried away, as I easily can and do, by the earnestness of all this, I find this piece of Buddhist wisdom a perfect reminder:

Act as if the future of the universe depends upon everything you do, and then laugh at yourself for thinking that anything you do makes any difference anyway.