The wrong question we bring to workplace problems
Most of us arrive at difficult work situations asking, “What should I do?” It’s understandable, especially when the situation involves a boss or a relationship that drains you.
But some workplace problems cannot be solved only by choosing the next action. They need a different kind of inquiry first - before taking action. Identity-level coaching helps us look beneath the immediate problem and ask what the situation is revealing about our assumptions, emotions, beliefs and patterns.
This article is about how identity-level coaching, double-loop learning and somatic awareness can help you move from trying to fix a workplace problem to understanding the deeper pattern beneath it.
In this article
The boss as the problem vs the relationship as a mirror
What double-loop learning helps us see
Where conversational coaching can reach its limit
Why identity-level coaching uses the body and intuition
Agency over the situation vs agency over yourself
Why insight needs to come before action
Questions that create double-loop learning
The boss as the problem vs the relationship as a mirror
Most of us bring the wrong question to most of our problems.
Isabel(*) came to coaching with the goal of understanding her communication strengths, developing a strong executive presence and being able to communicate effectively with stakeholders whose communication and work styles differ from her own.
At the same time, her work increasingly felt difficult due to a lack of clarity and transparency and a lack of recognition or value. She attributed this to her boss, a chaotic communicator who didn’t recognise her work and demonstrated a poor leadership style. That situation has depleted her to the point where she wanted to leave the organisation.
This was the starting point for our latest coaching session. She’s once again talked about how unhappy she was with her boss and that she was looking at new roles.
As a coach, I work with conversational reasoning, somatic awareness and intuitive insight to see what is going on for my client.
The starting question of our inquiry here was not to ask “What should she do about him/this situation?”
It was: “What is this relationship revealing in her?”
This does not mean her boss’s behaviour was acceptable. It does not mean the problem was her fault. It means that before deciding on a course of action, we needed to separate what belonged to him from what belonged to her.
What double-loop learning helps us see
There is a widely known concept in organisational learning theory that helps me to explain this: double-loop learning.
Single loop learning is: identify the error and apply a particular remedy to correct it. But double-loop learning involves an extra step: reflecting on the assumptions, values and mental models that made us define the problem that way in the first place.
Chris Argyris explains the difference with the example of a thermostat:
“To give a simple analogy: a thermostat that automatically turns on the heat whenever the room temperature drops below 68 degrees is a good example of single-loop learning. A thermostat that could ask, “Why am I set at 68 degrees?” and then explore whether or not some other temperature might more economically achieve the goal of heating the room would be engaging in double-loop learning.”
(From “Teaching Smart People How to Learn”, Chris Argyris, Harvard Business Review, 1991.)
In the same article, Argyris argues that smart, high-achieving people are often more prone to fall into the single-loop learning fallacy because their high aspirations hide an equally high fear of failure and a tendency to feel intense discomfort, maybe even shame, if they don't achieve.
Most of my clients are smart, highly analytical and action oriented. Their tendency is towards action (vs in-action) to remedy the problem. They are prone to ask: “What do I do now?”
Single-loop learning changes the action. Engaging in double-loop allows us to change the governing logic behind the action. Double-loop learning asks: “What assumptions, norms, values, or mental models made us define the problem this way in the first place?”
Where conversational coaching can reach its limit
Some problems cannot be fully understood at the level of the mind that first named them. They need to be understood on the level of emotions, habitual patterns and belief scripts.
This is where purely conversational coaching can reach its limit. It can help a client reason, reflect and plan. But when the contributing pattern sits in the body, in emotion, or in an unconscious belief, reasoning alone may not be enough.
The rational mind might say: “What should I do about my boss?”, but the body might be holding anger.
The belief might be: “My value is not seen unless someone in authority recognises it.”, but the underlying pattern might be one of “When I feel unseen, I withdraw, judge and prepare my exit.”
If we only work on the surface level of the mind, we may create a rational plan that leaves the deeper pattern untouched.
Why identity-level coaching uses the body and intuition
To surface these unconscious and automatic patterns, we need identity-level inquiry.
Identity-level coaching means coaching the ways of being that shape how a person sees, feels and responds before they rationally and consciously choose an action.
These include:
Emotions: What feelings and emotions are evoked? How are they contributing to the problem and the (kind of) solution I am seeking?
Beliefs: What do I believe about myself (in this situation/with the person)? What do I believe about the other person/ other people? What do you believe about the world?
Ancestral Patterns: Where has the (pattern of this) situation occurred previously?
Goals / Desires: What do I want? What would I love?
The most effective way I found to get my clients to this place is to work beyond the rational mind and work with two entry points:
The soma, the living, breathing body experienced from the inside out in the immediate subjective reality; and
The intuition, the non-rational intelligence that can instantaneously synthesise information and knows what is right for your evolution, healing and wholeness.
Back to Isabel.
We had started our coaching session, and I sensed her resistance to looking at the relationship with her boss. I sensed that Isabel had put on a protective armour of indifference around this situation that we needed to address first before we could look at the relationship in depth. My first step was to ask permission to lead her through an intuitive exercise to understand what's behind the resistance she held. We surfaced anger and frustration that she could pinpoint in her body. We worked with that emotion until it no longer dominated the session.
Then we had had room to engage in a genuine exploration of her relationship with her boss. I led her through a powerful somatic exercise in which we examined the relationship from her boss's perspective. The purpose was not to excuse his behaviour. It was to help Isabel see what she could not see while she was inside her own resistance. It’s a powerful exercise to invoke our intuitive faculties to read energy tune into what is going on in the other person. In parallel, I used my own intuitive faculties to sense what was going on for my client while she moved through the exercise.
Agency over the situation vs agency over yourself
Clients often arrive wanting agency over their situation (a strategy, a next move, a plan for what to do about the boss, the role, the relationship). That's the domain of transactional coaching, and it's not wrong to want it. But before our work together, Isabel's default mode was the exit. Leaving was the mind engaging in single-loop decision making. This is the possible trap for action-oriented people: the ability to act fast can mask the fact that only one option was ever really on the table.
Identity-level coaching didn't hand Isabel a better plan. It gave her choice. It gave her agency over herself: the ability to notice her own assumptions, emotions and resistance before deciding what to do next. For the first time, the question was not “leave or stay”. It became: “leave or try engaging with him differently and see what is true.”
Following the exercises and insights that emerged, Isabel realised:
Her boss's values, including power, money, status, authority and recognition, were diametrically opposed to her own, and this caused her to reject her boss's behaviour.
She recognised the contribution her boss is trying to make while also acknowledging that it was not the contribution she wanted to make.
She noticed her resistance to speaking her bosses’ “work language” and giving him recognition in a way that he wanted.
Why insight needs to come before action
Before this session, "engage with my boss differently" wasn't a real option for Isabel, because she had built a wall around the relationship. Once we cleared the anger sitting in her body and she could see her boss's behaviour without her own resistance distorting it, something shifted in the menu of what felt possible. The option of leaving was still on the table. But now, so was trying, authentically, to meet him differently and engage in the relationship (rather than ignoring it).
Isabel left the coaching with thoughts on how she could authentically speak her boss’ work language more. She agreed to think about why she has resistance to giving her boss what he needs/wants (and why she’s resistant to what attention and acknowledge what boss in a way)
Now Isabel had a choice in the situation. Yes, she still disagreed with her boss’s leadership style. Looking inward does not mean making his behaviour acceptable, taking responsibility for it, or finding a way to tolerate what is unhealthy. It means separating what belongs to the other person from what belongs to you. Isabel might still pursue other job opportunities, but she now had more agency in how she understands herself in the situation, and therefore in the choice she made next.
Questions that create double-loop learning
The next time you find yourself asking, “What should I do?”, it may be useful to pause and ask a different set of questions first:
What have I already decided without admitting it?
What feeling am I trying not to feel?
What assumption am I making about this person or situation?
What part of this belongs to them, and what part belongs to me?
What choice becomes available if I stop defending my current interpretation?
Most of us bring the wrong question to most of our problems.
So, before your next “What should I do?”, it might be worth asking a harder one. One that helps you move from fixing the problem to understanding the pattern.
(*) Isabel is an anonymised client example, shared to illustrate a coaching pattern I see often.
