Olafur Eliasson, The weather project
Tate Modern, London – 2003
Tate Photography (Andrew Dunkley & Marcus Leith)
Link to Photo
‘Alternative Career Coaching’ is a tricky name to sit with, because the word ‘coaching’ gives me the ick. Hear me out though – I’m not trying to make anyone stronger, a higher performer, or any other metric of mainstream success. No, career coaching is a convenient title that simply fills the gap.
So what do I actually do?
My work at Pulang Studio is about sharing curiosity with others in how we can transform our experience of power and control in the workplace, which often looks like finding ways to sit with 2 things being true at once. As Ani Difranco once sang “there’s a paradox in every paradigm,” and that is certainly true of every single workplace and job I can think of. A simple example might be the basic human need for building genuine relationships within a business structure, and that same structure then removes people for a budget line item.
The work happens by co-researching with others about their own experience, which means I am most definitely not the expert. I do have some influence though, where I might encourage us to go down particular pathways of research that could be fertile ground, and I could offer observations or patterns that appear as we speak.
What alternative career coaching can do
Alternative career coaching means we can explore and make meaning of careers, workplaces and jobs in so many creative ways. For instance, let’s consider the artwork image above of Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project. The Weather Project is a paradox of nature inside a paradigm of industrial architecture. Visitors found themselves “sitting with” the fake sun as if it were real, highlighting how we construct our own experiences of power and environment.
To extend that imagery of the nature paradox within the industrial paradigm, is that not the same as our very own human bodies sitting in an office?
When we’re not working with the aim of hustling harder, and we’re creating our very own meanings, the possibilities open up to beautiful transformation for our workplace experience that might include:
- Placing problems outside of ourselves and into the perspective of a whole life
- Recognising and celebrating the subjugated knowledge and skills that are powerful tools (and yet often not seen as legitimate)
- Clarity about the systems and contexts that surround ourselves in all spheres of our lives
All of this adds up to the possibility of creating a shift in how problems are experienced. It’s an internal change, when the external is out of our control.
Why traditional coaching doesn’t fit for Highly Resonant Bodies
If you are living and working in a Highly Resonant Body, there is so much unspoken knowledge sitting within your body that has sensed the power dynamics and subtle shifts that have taken place in a workplace. This somatic intelligence is brilliantly noticing the paradox in the paradigm long before your mind can find the words for it. This resonance isn’t a weakness to be managed or a stress response to be silenced; instead, it’s an incredible tool to be regarded as subjugated knowledge – a profound, local expertise that has simply been waiting for a witness.
Traditional career coaching often feels awful because it is usually built on the industrial paradigm of the 20th century – a model that assumes the world is stable, progress is linear, and the “problem” always lies within the individual’s lack of efficiency or grit. If you feel the “ick” with mainstream coaching, it’s likely because you are in a Highly Resonant Body and sensed the misalignment between their lean-in solutions and your reality.
But yes, I’m still calling it Career Coaching
Unfortunately, I’m not going to make a whole lot of sense if I say what I do is offering “individual conversations about the workplace experience with power and control, by being informed by narrative therapy, mindfulness and corporate reality” – it’s not really SEO friendly. So I need to use the shorthand of calling it Career Coaching and sit with the discomfort of that ‘coaching’ word. Oh well, just another paradox in this paradigm.