Human Being-ness with Andrew Machon

In this episode of Coaching in Conversation, Tracy has a conversation with Andrew Machon.

Andrew Machon is an experienced ICF Master Certified Coach, living in the United Kingdom. He has a first-class honours degree and Ph.D. in Biochemistry and a Master of Arts in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy. He has worked as a coach trainer across the world in many different countries and cultures. Andrew has also helped major organisations develop coaching strategies and valuable resources for internal coaches. As a visiting lecturer in Positive Psychology at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK, he has taught students about the nature of change and development.

Andrew is the co-author of Positive Psychology Across the Life Span: An Existential Perspective (2020). He has also written several other books including, Guiding Lights – Images and Words Inspired by Aurora Borealis (2019), Appreciative Healthcare Practice – A guide to compassionate person-centered care (2015), The Coaching Secret – how to be an exceptional coach (2010), A Difference of One – Rediscovering a Loving and Creative Originality (2008), and Just Beyond the Visible – the art of being and becoming (2005).

Andrew’s focus now is largely two-fold – firstly, continuing his work as an experienced coaching supervisor working with and developing groups of coaches. And secondly continuing to explore and develop coaching mastery with groups of coaches in retreat settings in the UK and abroad.

We hope you enjoy this conversation!

To learn more about Tracy Sinclair and coach training and development, visit tracysinclair.com.

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Transcript

Tracy
Well, Andrew I'm, so excited to have this conversation and I am mindful that you and I have just spent the best part of a week together right up until yesterday, tea time, and I'm really aware how some of that energy and presence and connection that we've had is probably going to find its way into how we talk today.

It just felt important to voice that as some context for how our conversation is starting. But nonetheless, despite all of that, I'm still really, really happy to have had the opportunity to connect with you today. And maybe the scheduling of this was by design, who knows, but welcome.

And thank you for having this dialogue with me and maybe to start us off, I'd love to hear how you, Andrew, found your way into coaching when you did given the many parts that you have followed and the many parts that you could have followed, what was important about coaching for you, and maybe why.

Andrew
Yeah, lovely Tracy. And it is great just for us to be together.  I always enjoy this time with you. And so, I'm really excited to be here. It's funny. When I think about beginnings, I have that saying in my head that all the paths lead home, something like that, all the paths lead home. I remember as a young scientist, I was a biochemist looking really deeply at a molecular level, a curiosity about not only the origins of life, but what is this life of ours, you know, what are, who are we and how do we change and how do we grow? Those seed thoughts was sort of with me from the beginning. It took me to transform from being a scientist and I managed to, I can't even say negotiate.

It was the most wonderful synchronicity of meeting a very special man where I got the opportunity to suddenly move into organizational development and study organizational change. So I suddenly found myself being immersed with questions around people, change, team change, organizational change, and I wanted to go deeper and believe it or not at the time when I was asked, is there anything that we could gift you to enable this work? I decided to go for it. And I said, well, if all change happens through people, how about studying change in people. And I was sponsored on a what I would call psychotherapy course for about six or seven years.

Marvelous, marvelous, because it took me into the realms of getting closer to understand the nature of change and, the sudden realization, which I think is a, a sort of a light bulb moment when you realize that what enables this beautiful development is often relational. So, you know, that change is  co-creation.

It's a partnership of two. So I trained as psychotherapist, became a psychotherapist, but then suddenly realized that my passion was still in organizations and complex business settings and worldwide business setting. So I decided then to train as a coach, the coach seemed to offer more of a, it was more like an open door.

One of the things that I can't say troubled me, but one of the things I thought a lot about a psychotherapist was many of the models were about ill health and I was much more interested about longing, and what is it that motivates our development. I'm not saying that we didn't get there in psychotherapy. I'm sure we did, but I was interested to open a door and to explore what felt like the other side of the coin and to really be much more curious about the more than, you know, who are we becoming was a question that really interested me with literature, self actualization, individuation.

I was formulating my own ideas as well about who are we and who are we becoming, and coaching seemed to open a door. So as you know, Tracy, I think we probably sort of walk together in developing sort of our coaching pros for a while. And I became a Master Certified Coach with the ICF, which involves a lot of training and I have a lot of thoughts about competency and training, so that's how I got into coaching. I then became very passionate about developing coaches, but I'll pause there and maybe we can come onto that.

Tracy
Thank you, Andrew. And, and as we've spoken about before, I think we share,  that sense of a transition, not maybe away from the pathological inquiries because they have huge relevance and value obviously, but, a real gravitation towards the aspirational and the potential and what's possible, which has always been for me, I guess, I don't want to think about it in a binary way, but one of the characteristics that differentiate a therapeutic setting compared to a coaching setting. But I'm wondering. I mean, I'm holding a couple of things here. I want to ask you in a minute about what goes beyond competence, because you brought the competencies in of course, which are very important, our competencies as a coach, but be before we go there,  I'd love to ask what does the scientist think about.

Andrew
Oh, my goodness. Well, thank God he's still with me and I do love him. He's you know, the scientist in me, is the scientist that's always been there. He's very rational. He can do great research. He can process, probably quick to evaluate and judge, so he's there and I've always loved him.

The paradox of coaching is that I think the overactive rational mind can actually get in our way. So as a coach, what I learned to do was what I call a psychological acrobat. I used to learn how to turn off my thinking. The scientist in me, even though I do respect him and he's got a role and, and he's certainly got a role in coaching at certain times, but in terms of enabling another, you know, being present to another, I realized quite quickly that I had to become an expert in not knowing.

So I'm still quite close to my scientist. He comes in, in my coaching conversations very much towards the end is often tagging at my jumper and saying, you know, what about the actions? What about the actions? So which it is lovely. He's got a, you know, he is got his role. But a lot of the time, I think he had early retirement in many ways in order to let more of me or more of the contemplative me, more of the me that's able to question rather than answer, to step forward.

And what I love about what you are saying is there's always such a temptation, isn't there? To maybe almost amputate that part of us that wants to know that does know that has expertise or wants facts and figures and rationality and analysis. And when we develop as coaches, because we know that those qualities can get in the way, the pendulum can sometimes swing too far in the other direction.

Can't it? And we almost have this sense. I mean, I can even remember in my first notebooks, from my training, when I trained as a coach, I actually wrote down, I have to leave myself out of the room. And I came across that, you know, a little while ago and I thought, oh my God, that was a real pendulum swing.

Wasn't it? You know, if anything, the last thing we want to do is leave ourselves out of the room. So there's some kind of integration and dare I say, it's synthesis. I know that's been a word that's come up in our conversations a lot. This last week, there's an integration needed here, isn't there? Well, I'll tell you the way I think about it.

There is an integration and every part of us has to come home in some way I believe, which is what I think you're speaking to. And as we've become more whole, we've become greater than the past, the synthesis. But I tend to think about this, my coaching, if I'm in service of another to be in service of another, I have to learn how to get out of my own way, because otherwise the clients do not have this remarkable experience of someone being unconditionally present in service of them. So, you know, our clients hopefully get this remarkable experience of being seen, being heard, being held, which is the most inviting state for someone to explore who they are without condition.

And maybe that was an unexpected segue to, to the other question about what's beyond competence, because one of the things I've been holding recently, well, for the last few years, actually, since I first started the work towards my MCC was this realization that actually there's an awful lot beyond competence and we can often maybe associate the competence with the doing of coaching, the effective doing of something, how that skill is evidenced in our behavior. And yet when you talk about getting out of your own way and being present, that starts to speak to me of being . What beyond competence then?

Can I say a few things about competence and then go beyond, I'm gonna do a transcendent conversation.

I feel quite strongly against competence in that they are vital and it's beautiful work when you start to model what coaching is and think of these competencies. I'm not devaluing competency at all, but I do know from my own journey, if we become too closely obsessed or, if we start to think too much about competency, It actually does get in our own way.

And I know for many of us on the journey of accreditation, you suddenly find this very strange situation where you're aspiring to be present, which is a not knowing versus the complexity of having to remember this whole list of competencies. And it's a bit like, I don't know what it's like for me. It was like a tight rope of knowing, not knowing and wondering, who am I in service of here? And the more I thought about competency, the more I would trip myself up in terms of being a coach. So I just wonder sometimes on the competency model, if there's a way that we can have these conversations, because many coaches at all levels of experience, including very experienced can become deeply troubled by this paradox of competency and having to show competence.

So,  that was one thing. I'm fascinated with coaching, because for me, the beauty of coaching lies, not in competence, but in quality. So, you know, the competence often points towards what we do, but I've always believed it's how we are in what we do that makes the difference. And you brought in that beautiful word being, and it begins there.

And when we are in a place of being that permits, this unconditional space that allows presence in, in essence to form what can happen is that it allows the constellation.  It allows us to be open to some really, really wonderful what I think of as attributes and qualities, which for me are essential to being and enabling.

Being in service of another and enabling change. And I'll name a few with being, you know, I often joke about. You need to have a AAA rating. We need to be alert. We need to be authentic and we need to be able, and these are beautiful words. As you think about them, what does it mean to be authentic?

How do we bring our depth into our genuineness? In service of others, and then you've got other qualities and I could go on and I'm not going to, but I'll mention a few things like detached involvement. You know, when someone brings in something that would automatically maybe emotionally bring the rescuer out in us.

And we get tempted to work with sympathy rather than empathy.  This quality of detached involvement, which is a quality of being able to enable another, the opportunity of being with their emotions. In order to let the emotions guide, qualities of empathy, qualities of compassion, and we could go on.

But I think that the take home for me is yes to competency. It's important. And I understand the beauty of the work in composing them, but it almost touches the surface, the what, the, how goes much deeper, how we are in what we do. And if you want to be a quality coach, I think we have to open our minds to how we constellate quality.

Tracy
Again, so many thoughts coming up from what you're sharing there, Andrew, but I'm just thinking, for the coach that might be listening to this, who's saying, wow, that's amazing.  I want to be that, I want to access that, but it feels so, so hard. So elusive because, maybe I am still grounded in competencies and I ought to be doing this. I need to be doing that. I need to make sure that I'm doing this other thing to demonstrate competencies. What would you say to that person that that gets what you are saying would like to nurture what you are describing, but it just feels really hard.

Andrew
I think that's a beautiful question because as we go into the realm of quality, as we go into the realm of being almost language, you know, can escape us because we go into the realms of experience. And so I think it's a beautiful question. How do enable the experiential development of fellow coaches?

And I think for me, I'm trying to think what happened with me, but there's two things. One of them is for me to think. So if I had a fellow coach who's asked that question, I would say, have a think about when you're working at your best. And I would sit with them. And I would say, tell me about what that's like for you. If we were to look at it from the inside out, and my sense is that we'd begin to talk about being  and what that offers. And then we'd probably begin to explore some of these qualities of , did you feel you were alert?  And what's depth in coaching and what's authenticity. What's genuineness. How does that work for you in coaching? So strangely what I think I'd  to do is to sit with fellow coaches together and to have the confidence for us to look at coaching from the inside out.  I don't in any way think I'm right. There's nothing about this that's me saying I know, or it I'm much more interested  in the other coaches' experience and what that brings. And I think we can enable that. And as a community, if that fosters our quality of coaching in service of others, maybe that's one very good way forward. I'm sure there are others. What do you think?

I was just reflecting on my  own experience and learning as you were talking then, and I was thinking that part of it is  that tension, perhaps with almost doing something that feels like I'm learning part of the transition to encompass being as well as doing was the unlearning of a conditioning of how we are valuable, which is through what we know through our expertise, through what we can offer.

So the metric or the measurement of our value is by an overt intervention or a contribution. And yet, so often we talk in coaching about how it's actually the antithesis of that. It's the fact that I don't know is how I add value. And that is so at a juxtaposition, isn't it, sometimes to the things that we are conditioned to have our identity around, especially, you know, in many of the significant roles that we play as, as parents or as friends or as leaders or whatever it might be.

So I was just remembering the tension there and that you need to let go of certain beliefs, certain habits, certain,  ways that I had developed that were valuable and how I did add value in certain other situations and roles that I play. And of course, many of us still hold some of those roles.

Don't we? So it's not that we are only coaching.  We may still be wearing hats sometimes where our knowing is what's needed. Our expertise is what's needed. The other bit that I was remembering is that coupled with the tension was also the sense ultimately of liberation when  some kind of shift happened for me, when I thought, wow, I could actually do both. I could do the doing, but when my being comes in, there's a freedom that comes with that. A liberation that comes with that, that is then unlocking creativity, spontaneity, and intuition that is otherwise kept. There's some really tight boundaries isn't there when we are just driven by a very doing space and yeah, it's almost like we're in parallel because I was holding the same words.

And isn't it fascinating, Tracy, that the competency piece can take us towards, what we need to think about doing, and then the heart of coaching. When we get into the heart of coaching and you spoke about liberation, it's almost about learning how to get out of our own way. And, and rather than knowing, and to the not knowing.

So, I would love much more conversations as coaches about the paradox of coaching, so that it's not just a straight line of get your competencies, do this. And I'm not suggesting that is, but it can feel like that. You know, to get more to the heart of it, that, yes, it's about learning competencies, but to be in service of another and to offer presence, you are invited to find an unconditional space, a space of not knowing so that others can know. A space of self liberation so that you can be present with all your attention, listening, letting the silence, inform the questions, all these wonderful things that describe what I call psychological acrobatics.  We have to go from one thing to the other and let ourself off the hook and put things down. And so, I think there's more to say about coaching that would help liberate coaches.

Tracy
Why I was smiling there, Andrew, is because this acrobatics that can come up  can feel a bit clunky sometimes. Isn't it, I've got to put this down and pick this up. And actually maybe where my mind went is maybe it's juggling balls. Maybe you're holding both of them at the same time. And, it is interesting because I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but I've called my coach training program, the science and art of coaching. The reason for that was very deliberate and I've taken the model, to accredit it to Michael Grinder who developed his own model of professional development, where he's turned this phrase that we often hear of the art and the science of something to the science and the art and I've consciously chose that because it's holding both, but it is also indicating sometimes we need to be scientists before we can be artists. That sometimes we need to understand the competencies, the technicality,  how we do this thing called coaching to then become artistic with it that once it becomes, do we want to say I'm unconsciously competent or, you know, I'm not, I'm not too sure that I always subscribe to total unconscious competence, because I think there's some huge, huge pitfalls in that.

But you get to that place where you'd know the science and of course you're still studying and learning. We still read, we still go on courses. We still study.  But from the base and the foundation of science, the artists can emerge. And that that's how I experience it.

That's that's why I called that program that, and in fact, the subsequent program, the more advanced program is called the art and alchemy of coaching.

Andrew
I can't believe it. Because I was just holding all those words. We are very, very much in sync. And if I can speak to your wisdom for a moment around naming that yes, to the science, you know, we often need to think about what we're doing to begin with. Absolutely. But I adore the fact that artistry comes in  and  if I may let me just say how come or why. When I'm working with groups and talking about presence, I refer to presence as the art of not. How do we practice, not knowing? How do we practice not wanting? how do we practice not competing? So yes, a big, yes, but the other thing as well is where do we go with coaching? Ultimately,  it's about enabling another to go back to their resourcefulness. In a source of something in themselves in which they can trust for direction. We can refer to it as an urge, a calling, whatever, but there's a place within us that continually we can continue to return to.

And therein, we discover our resourceful nurse, but with it, we also discover a sense of directionality and energy, a will and a choice that we, you know, we choose to go this direction. This is where I want to go. You know, to take me a step forward on my developmental journey. Now, when we get into the realms of energy and words like longing and calling, I think the world changes from, the fact of thought much more to the realm of imagination image metaphor. so I think you are very wise because if we are to work from the inside out and from our source to let our source informers, I think there's an invitation to be an artist, know the scientists would try and make it fact. When it's not, it's not that. So who winners? You know, I often think of the masterful coach as the inner artist.

You know, who am I when I'm at my best? And I like the science as well. I like that to be there. And the, the word alchemy is beautiful. The Alchemy used to believe. I don't know if you know, but they had a theory years ago. I can't remember the name of it. It'll probably come. But they believed that everything particularly different things.

So imagine that, you know, we judged this to be right and that to be wrong and that to be black and this to be white and all these things, the Alchemist alchemists believed that there was an connective tissue between everything, you know, that nothing was out of reach, nothing was out of relationship. And things that we might to be judged to be world apart may closer than we imagine. And may even, you know, be the dynamism or the things that motivate our development, you know, things like vulnerability that we might reject or, it's the alchemists are remarkable in that the reminders.

We're in a different realm and a different world as coaches when we work with another person. And what is it that enables development? It's a remarkable question. So very wise, I'm not surprised Tracy.

Tracy
Well, I love what you are saying about the connectivity from the Alchemist and you know how, if I think about client work and myself, when I'm the client, you know how we can feel so separate from where we want to be from who we want to be from what we want to achieve or attain. And yet that connectivity offers that we are so much closer than we might think. And maybe. I'm aware our time is going by and I could talk to you for hours, obviously. There's somewhere I'd like to invite us to a slightly different direction. In the time we've got left, if I may, please, we've talked a bit so far about ourselves as instruments of our work, whether we are doers, be being beings,  whatever that is. If I could invite us to the place of coaching itself, you know, one of the things that we know in, in change work with clients in coaching and whatever other context, a paradigm shift is often what creates and evokes insight and change.

Andrew
Yeah.

Tracy
And, and at the moment, the profession of coaching around the world has perhaps has a certain paradigm that  it's framed, it's viewed, it's defined, it's positioned, it's offered, delivered, received in a particular way. And I'm just wondering, given where the world is at we probably don't need to describe and list all of the things that our world is experiencing right now, but let's say there's quite a lot. What is, what is the place of coaching and what is possible?

Andrew
Yeah, lovely. I think one of the first things we've got to demystify it and make it open to every.

Let me explain what I mean by this. One of the things I realized when I was working in organizations, embedding coaching cultures, working with managers and leaders, developing coaching skills, all that stuff. What I realized is the beauty of the coaching moment. Now I don't want this to slip us because if you think about coaching and presence, What we realized through being coached, being coaches is that there's a whole landscape to the moment when we are present, it has much more possibility and potential than maybe we ever thought it did in those coaching settings.

So imagine how many people we bump into in our daily lives. I mean, I'm just thinking of mine now. That can go unnoticed and unconscious. And I know in my life, every conversation I have, it's almost like someone is saying something and often people are asking for things if not directly behind their words.

So if we were all conscious to coaching moments and could appreciate what's involved in terms of not being over helpful, but useful to another, you know, how we enable another. So I know there's loads of metaphors. Don't give someone a fish, teach them how to fish, but that's the point? The beauty of coaching is it  invites and the product is people are more resourceful, more accountable, more self confident, Healthier.

Because what we do is that we give, the individual gets the insight that they have the power to manage their own lives. The resourcefulness is within them, not within me. One thing I'd like to to think is to demystify coaching. Yes, you can have a professional vocation. I've been blessed with one of those and I value that, but how do we bring it to the populous?

How do we bring it, so that in a way humanity has access to this little mysterious wonder and, I'd like to challenge myself and maybe  I will to think about, and what are the core skills for when we meet in our daily life to be able to hear the request and to be able to respond.

Rather than react if the world responded Tracy, and I know this is close to your heart, I know it is. But if the world responded, how different would we be? So point one for me is. Yes to the professional and there'll be some of us that'll make it our life work, but how do we bring it to the populace? Everybody, the parent, the friend, irrespective of the role.

I've seen it work in managers beautifully. They have this sudden revelation, you know and what's beautiful about coaching and working in this way. What you give is what you get. There's a return to this. It's not one way, it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I think of it, you gift other people who learn then how to gift others.

It's ongoing. I also feel as a second arm to this, one of the things I'm thinking a lot about, and working with some coaches who are exploring this, but I'm thinking this also is how we bring this to younger people, you know, and that question of where does coaching begin to work?

I have one fellow coach who has the idea of working with very young children  and it's her passion. I think she refers to it as little stars and how can I enable a child. And I find this really quite remarkable because most of us are fashioned in our early childhood. As we know history, those days can be very impressionable. So is there a place for coaching there? And I think the third angle, and you and I are both into this, I sense without a question of doubt is, I would like to look more creatively at the nature of coaching.  I know we share a colleague, I'm gonna name him Marion, Marion Jones, isn't it?

Tracy
Yeah.

Andrew
And Marion works with art. He's a co-creator of pieces of art that are relevant, more than relevant. They're vital to the coachee. But other mediums in which to capture the essence of coaching that allow this co-creative part of coaching to come alive.

Tracy
Yeah.  I mean, so many things resonate again. You know, I know that we've been talking about how do you go beyond the modality of words? And already in coaching, we have that notion of the value of silence. The value of less is more. The value of space and presence and conditions for coaching.

My energy and curiosity is going as you go even further to that, to really explore a way of communicating that is as, as coach currently is that seems to be still very grounded in the exchange of dialogue, is wonderful and potentially limiting at the same time. If we can't engage in other ways to express ourselves, which is why I love the work  that Marion is doing  in the art, in the artistry.

And of course, completely supporting this idea of coaching being for everyone. Especially younger people.  And where my thinking goes with this as well is, is I wonder if we say that coaching at its heart is something that we all sort of intuitively know, it is within us  to engage with people in that way.

And yet we are still in a place where we are overtly teaching it as a skill as though it's something that we don't have and we have to be taught it. And the place I'd love to get to is, could we nurture within society within humanity, returning within,  find the inner coach that's already there. So that coaching is not even something that necessarily has to always be taught anymore because it's just a way of communicating. Isn't it? You know, it's very simplest of levels. Isn't coaching a way to communicate with self and others. Amongst the plethora of other modalities that we have.

Andrew
Well, I've just had a revelation while you were talking and you have this effect on me. I've just realized what was happening. I was listening to you deeply. And my mind years ago, I had the privilege, I'll use that word of working with a large group of coaches, coach training in China. And at the end of that experience, the group came to me and collectively and spoke about, and someone in the group said, coaching is about creating humanity.

I thought, wow. So coaching is about making human beings in all our humanity. Now I know you might say, well, we're all  born human beings. That's our birthright, but I have a feeling that it's through coaching that our true human being-ness is born. And so why don't we, and this is the revelatory moment, get rid of the word coaching and talk about human being-ness. Yeah. Yeah. You know, as a gentle invitation to recognize that. The developmental journey in all our lives. The first step of that, the turning inward, rather than outward and processing overthinking, to be able to still and discover our human being-ness.

And then we become who we were born to be, human beings.

Tracy
Yeah.

Andrew
You know, but isn't that a lovely way of just making it the most natural rather than I'm a coach, you know, which I know is important in certain settings and formality and all that. But if we were to make this the most natural recognize that it is a natural way of being in service of others.

Yeah, the metaphor or analogy that was coming up for me, as you were saying Andrew, was instead of coaching being a piece of clothing that we wear, it's part of our skin.

Yeah, it's part of our own fabric.  I felt like saying, it is a perfect metaphor. Cause I felt like saying, it's only a breath away. Cause it is. What do we do? We connect with our breathing. It's literally a breath away. This, the practice of this becoming conscious is a breath away, which takes us right back to where we started earlier.

Tracy
Wasn't it of,  it's not as far away as you might think,  it's closer than you might think. So that's, probably a lovely Cycle, what we've been talking about this this week haven't we of you go somewhere and then you think you've come back to where you started. But actually you're somewhere very different.

I feel like that's happened to us today. It's we shall not cease from exploration. And at the end of all, our exploring T.S. Elliot, we will arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time. And here we are. Well, that sounds like a very fitting place to, to pause maybe for now, Andrew.

And I'm just, I'm just wondering if there's anything that you'd like to just share by way of bringing today's conversation to a close.

Andrew
It really feels that last moment there is the, the full stop, but I want to say, Like coaching, it's the joy of working through another. And I mean, you and I being together, that I realize is the vital catalyst in my life.

I can't do this alone. So thank you.

Tracy
Wow. You know, that, this is a mutual feeling. I've loved our conversation, as always something new has come out, even with revisiting some concepts that we know, something different has come out. So we are definitely back to where we started, but seeing the place for the first time. So thank you so much.