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Clutterbuck20
and a host of meeting platforms. To the second belong the emerging capabili-
ties of artificial intelligence.
Time and space
I find it hard to believe that less than 20 years ago, I was expressing great doubts
about the viability of email based mentoring and coaching. Surely, the quality of
interaction and conversation would be much poorer. With experience of using
both synchronous and a-synchronous media and of studying the subject (Clut-
terbuck & Hussain, 2009), I rapidly learned that both face-to-face and virtual
coaching and mentoring could be highly effective. Each had its key pluses and
minuses. Face-to-face meetings were rich in communication at multiple levels –
for example, rapport building, body language and intuition. But they are also
prone to information overload. Coaches and mentors constantly have to select
what to take notice of and which path they want to follow in the conversation.
(Every time they ask a question, it directs the flow of conversation along a path
they have chosen.) Much of the richness of conversation is, therefore, lost.
Email-based conversations, at the other extreme, are »thin« in the sense
that they capture only the written word, sometimes supplemented by emojis.
But the potential to analyse the content of the conversation, identifying hidden
themes and undercurrents (revealed, for example, by recurrent use of partic-
ular words or phrases) is much greater than face-to-face. If a coach or mentor
were to capture such detail, they could not possibly be fully present with the
client. Moreover, it is possible with email to track back and compare evolving
conversations over time.
Another point of comparison is thinking time. With face-to-face conversa-
tions, the dyad has to work at creating space to reflect. It is easier for a coachee
or mentee to react immediately to a question, rather than ponder on it deeply.
With asynchronous e-mail conversations, thinking time is built in – and this
leads to deeper reflections by the client and more considered questions by the
coach or mentor.
In-between face-to-face and asynchronous e-mail lies a spectrum of other
media choices. Video connection and other forms of meeting room allow both
parties to see each other, but the head and shoulders frame provides only facial
and vocal clues to the client’s emotional reactions. Bandwidth problems still
cause irritating interruptions – often at critical points in the conversation. The
old-fashioned non-visual telephone relies solely on the words spoken and the
ability of the coach or mentor to intuit emotional and other clues. (One of the
Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY-NC-ND 4.0
zurück zum
Buch Coaching im digitalen Wandel"
Coaching im digitalen Wandel
- Titel
- Coaching im digitalen Wandel
- Herausgeber
- Robert Wegener
- Silvano Ackermann
- Jeremias Amstutz
- Silvia Deplazes
- Hansjörg Künzli
- Annamarie Ryter
- Verlag
- Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- deutsch, englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-666-40742-0
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 23.2 cm
- Seiten
- 166
- Kategorie
- Technik