How to Coach Yourself and Others Popular Models for Coaching | Page 148

2.6 NARRATIVE COACHING
2.6.1 Bruner’s and Luborsky’s Narrative Coaching
Bruner teaches that there are two ways for knowing the world:
a/ Paradigmatic: by knowing abstract models of the world
b/ Narrative: by giving sense to the world through stories.
Through myths, tales, novels, TV-soaps, gossip, family-stories, …
we structure the world, remind and communicate our
experiences.
Luborsky found that stories are often organised around three
elements:
- The desire to enter into relationship with others
- The reaction of “the others”
- The individual’s reaction to the reaction of the others.
With these guidelines, we dispose of an instrument that allows
us to simplify complicated stories and get to the “red wire” at
their core.

By listening to the coachee’s story, we will often discover a
coherent theme and conflict that keeps returning, for instance
connected to the relationships that he is having with other
people.

One of the goals of a coach is to help coachees clarify the story of
their lives, so that, instead of repeating the same story over and
over again, the coachee becomes aware of the origin and
decisive elements in his story and can make conscious choices
about how to best go forward from where he is.
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