TRAINING  &  COACHING  for  MANAGERS & LEADERS

Case Histories

What is Systemic Coaching?

Interview with Martyn Carruthers

By Roland Brantschen (July 2001)

Martyn: Soulwork offers a wide spectrum - we offer business coaching, success coaching, couple coaching, team coaching ... and more. What is interesting to you?

Roland: What is the theoretical basis for Soulwork Systemic Coaching?

Martyn: Soulwork integrated principles and practices from many disciplines. The anthropologist Dr Gregory Bateson provided a hierarchy of abstraction which helps us analyze a person's cognitive habits. The psychologist Dr Clare Graves provided a hierarchy of social evolution which predicts the development of relationship skills and organizations of a person or group. Dr Richard Bandler provided the concept of metaprograms, which are useful for predicting behavioral constraints. We also integrated skills derived from native Hawaiian healers, who helped us recognize and change relationship bonds, while creating the concepts of family soul and healthy family that permeate Soulwork.

Roland: Do you use other models for relationship coaching?

Martyn: We use a hierarchy of relationship development to predict the current and future relationship challenges that a person will face, which was inspired by Annegret Hallanzy's VoVa. We use another home-made hierarchy to assess relationship health. And our systemic diagnosis predicts relationship conflicts, transferences, separation and deaths.

Roland: Are these psychological theories?

Martyn: Soulwork is practical. It focuses not on resolving complaints, but on helping people find meaning and happiness and helping people develop achieve worthwhile goals. Soulwork includes finding life purpose, or "sense of life", if that is what a client wants.

Roland: Can people use Soulwork by themselves - or do they need help?

Martyn: Few people can use what they do not understand. Soulwork can help people solve the underlying issues that stop them from solving their own problems. Once those issues are resolved - a person is free to find information, to make decisions and to act. When those entanglements remain active - a person makes robotic decisions and may be unable to act.

Soulwork is about quality relationships - yet Soulwork is not easy. A coach can provide people with the relationship resources to accept and acknowledge their complaints and to identify their goals and dreams. Then people can solve their conflicts, their anger, fear, sadness and guilt and move on freely. Without this coaching relationship, most people attempting self-Soulwork will distract themselves, or get stuck in "poor me" consciousness, and in difficult moments they may go to sleep.

A Soulwork coach responds to non-verbal communications or unconscious objections. Few people can do this for themselves. Unconscious signals are ... well ... unconscious. A coach can respond to those communications by gently provoking people to become conscious of them. This is a BIG step towards the person sorting out their "stuff" - their objections to happiness.

Roland: That makes sense - so - who will benefit most from Soulwork?

Martyn: Motivated and responsible adults gain the most benefits in the shortest time. We also work with children, and childlike adults, in a less direct way, with indirect stories and interactive metaphors instead of direct strategic questions.

A more difficult answer is that people who lack quality relationships are unlikely to realize the depth of Soulwork. These people will be unable to use the systemic resources available in Relationship Coaching. They need a quality relationship with the coach.

Roland: Would you call Soulwork a New Age development?

Martyn: Some people complain that the name Soulwork sounds too New Age. Soulwork is practical. Each step of Soulwork follows a structured, systemic sequence, without recourse to intuition. We check all answers in three or four ways, to ensure that a client wants a specific change and the consequences of that change. (See New Age)

Some therapists want to intuit their clients' problems. That route can lead to dependency and victimization. Clients have no idea if a New Age counselor is accurate or even effective - and some therapists blame their clients if something does not produce results.

Roland: Is not Soul an emotionally loaded word?

Martyn: Many people are not interested in anything to do with soul, and I wouldn't have been a few years ago. A better word is integrity, although I like the word Soulwork. We also call our corporate and organizational work Systemic Solutions and avoid using words with esoteric or spiritual connotations - although, for me, the Soul of an organization is an extremely practical and worthwhile topic to discuss with leaders and CEOs.

We do not ask or require that a client have or develop any particular belief. If a person wants success in some field, or has recurring problems, chronic or recurring medical symptoms or mental symptoms such as depression or panic attacks, that is enough.

Roland: Your demonstrations tonight were stunning. You make it look very easy. The audience had no idea how long it normally takes for people to make those type of changes.

Martyn: Some students joke that I choose "easy" demonstration people. But most people are "easy" to work with if they are motivated and responsible. When I present Soulwork; I prefer to demonstrate whatever I talk about.

Roland: You said that Soulwork is holistic ... what does "holistic" mean to you?

Martyn: Soulwork is holistic in that I attend to a person's communications of body, mind and spirit; including emotions, relationships and meaning, and I offer ways to change things that don't work or are counter-productive. I ask about thoughts and feelings. I offer ways to identify and change unpleasant internal dialogue (limiting beliefs or self-sabotaging thoughts and consequent behaviors).

Roland: Is that always possible?

Martyn: Always is a very long word. If you are in a relationship with an entangled person - whether the entanglement is with another person, a substance or a behavior, then you risk becoming entangled with that person's toxic obsessions or addictions. Many people say that they want to get rid of unpleasant symptoms but don't want to change the entanglements that cause the symptoms.

Roland: How do you find mind-body connections?

Martyn: I ask questions such as: Where do you hold emotional experiences in your body? What are the benefits of withholding these experiences?

Roland: Where does Soul come into all this?

Martyn: Soulwork has a basic assumption about the innate wholeness of people, and their desire for wholeness and their desire to connect with other human beings in an experience that is generally called happiness.

Roland: What problems do people bring for Soulwork?

Martyn: People come for Soulwork to control emotions, to end compulsions or obsessions, to gain communication skills, to change difficult relationships, to discover who they are and to find meaning in life. Most people come with goals, but want something different, so our systemic diagnosis is a key to fast and effective life coaching.

Roland: And your therapeutic coaching includes ... what?

Although Soulwork techniques include such things as relationship matrix, systemic solutions and interactive metaphors, we resolve conflicts, identifications and many forms of identity loss. This leads to the experience of integrity and connectedness that we call Soul.

Roland: Who are your main clients?

Martyn: We have a wide range of clients. We support private therapists and those in public health and mental health sectors, as well as corporate Human Resources people.

Many people who seek Soulwork want to experience life differently; they want to achieve their goals or end their complaints. As each person is a system within other systems - our systemic tools help people reach their emotional goals as well as physical goals, which often includes integrating personality. Most people live fragmented lives based on conflicting desires, conflicting beliefs and conflicting values.

Roland: Are you saying that most people - me for example - are split into pieces? That sounds more like multiple-personality...

Martyn: In multiple personality syndrome, people are amnesic of their actions and decisions in other states - but few people are so dissociated. Most people know well the experience of "Part of me wants to ... but part of me doesn't", many people make promises in one state yet forget them in another.

People with deep inner conflict may announce decisions one day and deny those decisions the next day. People who experience self-criticism have "inner voices" which can be horribly critical. As Teresa Mocna said, "Psychosis is exaggerated normality".

Roland: What issues are people concerned about today?

Martyn: The sources of inner conflict may change but conflicts remain. Many women suffer from grief and conflict when they postpone childbirth and motherhood in favor of a career. Many men suffer shame following immature sexual exploits. Many people suffer from the emotional consequences of abuse and trauma, and from lack of acceptance. Although our world is changing rapidly, our emotional responses to our relationships seems constant.

Soulwork includes effective solutions for cross-generational entanglements. People can end their suffering. We also deal with the effects of abuse and the consequences of trauma better following our research into relationship bonds. We can better recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress and we can help motivated people rapidly dissolve those symptoms.

Roland: Martyn - I have heard good things about your results - but - who coaches you?

Martyn: I enjoy exploring other therapeutic modalities from a client perspective - although not many therapists enjoy me as a client. I focus on results - not credentials - and I am not very compliant if something doesn't make sense. I do not allow my life to be a testing ground for theories.

Roland: How do you determine what type of coaching is helpful for what type of problem?

Martyn: Coaching, consulting, counseling, advising and therapy are words that are often used interchangeably. In a consulting role, I work in a focused way in a highly defined context, perhaps to change the structure of a human resources department. On the other side, individual client coaching is exceedingly open. Who knows what the next client will want? Very few people know what they want.

Roland: How long does Soulwork coaching take?

Martyn: How long is a road? A Soulwork coach often works with time-limits for people who want a fast solution rather than all-life mentoring. For example a coach may offer 5 or 6 sessions to change a defined complaint or to expedite a specific goal. This can be in a week, if a person can handle the intensity.

A Soulwork Coach can also provide long-term changework to restructure a person's identity and integrate personality. Fulfilling these goals can be profoundly life changing. This may require 10 or 20 sessions - perhaps over three months or so, although healthy people can do it a lot faster.

Roland: You said that Soulwork has a "spiritual" base. How do you know whether a person is "spiritual"? How do you perceive spiritual evolution?

Martyn: Life includes many distractions, games and illusions - often self-inflicted or provided by ignorant, arrogant or manipulative people. Each of us must pass these distractions to fulfill life and transcend death. Yet these distractions can be so compelling or so uncomfortable that many people stop moving forward. It's like they reach a certain age - could be six or sixteen - and not develop much after that. We expect such people to express age-regressed, immature behavior.

The Soul of Soulwork is an experience of integrity and connection that transcends memories, thoughts and feelings. The egoistic personality "I" can merge with an unborn and undying reality - while alive. Age-regressed behavior is incompatible with this deep maturity and responsibility for life - and the stable experience that we call Soul provides a reference - a direction - a compass - through the challenges that life presents us.

Soulwork coaches people to look at their lives, to resolve identity loss, to end toxic traditions and to perceive illusions. We travel together through the chaotic wildernesses of the body-mind - to the twin goals of lasting solutions for mental, physical and relationship symptoms, and for "life makes sense".

Roland: Martyn, thank you for your time.

Soulwork systemic coaching provides effective coaching, training and mentorship. Do you want to coach people to resolve emotional and relationship challenges?