Conversations get had repeatedly about the importance of lived experience. Many individuals I have spoken with produce this as a qualification within their work as a coach as a piece of paramount importance. It truly is important; I believe it to be one of the core tenets underneath the coaching role but it’s also not really enough.
Put quite simply, if everyone who had lived experience, had the ability, capacity and insight to use it for the benefit of those around them we would live in a utopian society. They don’t and we don’t.
It isn’t, or should not be, a state of existence, or simply the accumulation of parts. Lived experience is a narrative, action-based toolkit for considering choice and change.
The problem is, lived experience can be incredibly alienating, have you ever heard someone describe an event they experienced that left you speechless? Have you ever found yourself saying the phrase , I can’t imagine what you must be going through?’ – (incidentally I think one of the truest statements a human being can make, much truer than ‘I understand you, and can prove it by sharing similar personal experience’).
So, if I believe that is one of the truest statements a human being can make, why do I talk about lived experience as such an important element of a coaches’ work?
Nuance. Nuance of understanding. So much is lost in translation between languages, so much detail and so much delicacy. The same is to be expected between two polarizing experiences, the languages that are used to communicate them lose delicacy. In that space arises comparison, judgement, lack of compassion, understanding and the need to exert the superiority of your reality over another.
Our experience is a crucial component of who we are, how we arrived at this juncture, often why we do what we do and is full of hope, insight, wisdom, hindsight and bias.
When lived experience is used wisely, it contains an unspoken, clandestine, morse code of communication, a subterranean connection that allows an appreciative nod of recognition to highwire between two parties amongst otherwise untraversable terrain. It is connection.
When lived experience is misapplied, when you accidentally highlight a separation, a disconnection within the climb, it can be the end of the day all at once. The jettisoning of credibility, the battening of the hatches, the bricking up of the windows. It says that we are not aligned, not one bit. If ostensibly only on one small isle, I shall take this as gospel that in fact you and I are not destined to reach a harmonious appreciation of our shared existence, I’ll climb into my Montgolfier balloon and Verne myself round the world in 80 seconds and out the door. For you, in fact, do not understand my experience. Goodnight.
We frequently have such a small window of opportunity for building rapport with a client, we must be aware of the vulnerabilities of our lived experience and ensure that they do not become interruptive for our clients. Sharing our lived experience can be a defining moment in our work, provided that it is done with skill, that it is done in the pursuit of furthering trust in wellbeing pathways, trust in the possibility of change and trust in those involved in their care. It must be purposeful.
