Art In Coaching

This is a summary of our previous podcast episode which you can listen to in full here: https://yourcoachingjourney.com/project/episode-143-coaching-approaches-art-in-coaching/

Using Art in Coaching

Note: No artistic ability is required for this topic.

This is an approach to coaching that will probably have some people immediately saying that it’s not for them.

And if someone thinks they don’t like it as the coach, they will be less likely to use it with their coachees, which is a shame because it can be really useful.

Before we start, we’re just going to invite you to be open minded and curious, and maybe just consider giving it a go. (Helen also hated it the first time she across it in a workshop – one of Tom’s – and it was invited to draw something.)

Working in a creative way can help coachees to get past their rational thinking mind a little bit, that cognitive processing of thought.

Being asked to draw ideas, solutions, problems, or potential futures, does take you to a different place, a more creative, imaginative place.

It may help to get past any resistance quicker. 

Richard Boyatsis suggests that if we just focus on the goal, and how we’re going to get there and how are we going to do that quickly, we engage with the task positive network mode in our brains. This suppresses the default mode network so stops us day-dreaming, imagining, visualising, and perhaps being able to come up with more expansive answers. Creative thinking is what we’re looking for in a coaching space, expanding the mind, generating new thinking. So it might help our coachees more if we actively engage in an activity that invites that visualisation, and engages with the default mode network.

This activity lends itself to homework inbetween sessions, but it could also be done in the coaching room.

Following a chemistry session, Tom invites every coachee that he has to draw their river of life before they come to the first coaching session.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m going to send you an exercise to do. Just have a go’. But it’s an invitation. They don’t have to do it. But often they do, and I get some great rivers. Sometimes they’re not drawings, sometimes it might be a collage. I did have one guy in a workshop once who just wrote it, just typed it out. It wasn’t a river at all. He just typed up things that happen. But, for the most part, people do go to a creative place, even if it is a collage or some sort of PowerPoint thing they put together, there’s still a creative element to that. And there’s generally some images, some visualisation involved. So, art isn’t necessarily drawing. It could be a collage or something else.”

Helen like to use art when clients are thinking about their future.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m going to send you an exercise to do. Just have a go’. But it’s an invitation. They don’t have to do it. But often they do, and I get some great rivers. Sometimes they’re not drawings, sometimes it might be a collage. I did have one guy in a workshop once who just wrote it, just typed it out. It wasn’t a river at all. He just typed up things that happen. But, for the most part, people do go to a creative place, even if it is a collage or some sort of PowerPoint thing they put together, there’s still a creative element to that. And there’s generally some images, some visualisation involved. So, art isn’t necessarily drawing. It could be a collage or something else.”

Using Art In The Coaching Room

Drawings might highlight the challenges that might come in trying to get to the possible future. And working on the drawing, or talking it through in the coaching session might also help to find the solutions.

If there’s a canyon between now and the future, maybe they need to find a means of bridging the gap.

If you’re asking a coachee to draw something between sessions, maybe ask them to just a picture of it, and send it to you before the session. If you’re working onlone you can then share the image so you both see it.

During the sessions, ask them to talk you through it. You may then want to ask more about the picture, “what’s this over here?” “ what does this represent?” This often elicits more awareness in the client. They’ve had some awareness from doing the drawing, but then they have further awareness and new feelings in talking it through with you and exploring it.

It’s almost like the paper or the background provides a broader landscape. We can get tunnel vision when we’re thinking about a problem. And if we’ve got this paper to illustrate, it almost automatically provides a broader landscape in which to think about the problem and open up our awareness.

If people are drawing, they may be less fearful of putting down quite creative, imaginative possibilities that they would filter before saying, if they were just talking about it.

There’s also that outdated idea that we engage with the more creative side of our brain when we’re doing art, to help us think more creatively about a problem. But we know that the whole of the brain works when we’re being creative, it’s not one side or the other. There’s some really interesting research on this about creative endeavours engaging the whole of the brain, integrating the memory centres, the problem solving centres, the emotions, the flexible thinking. So it’s possible that this type of creative exercise will have a lovely all round effect for our coachees. You can find the research here:

Research article on creativity and neuroimaging: Julian Kutsche, Joseph J. Taylor, Michael G. Erkkinen, Haya Akkad, Sanaz Khosravani, William Drew, Anna Abraham, Derek V. M. Ott, Juliana Wall, Alexander Li Cohen, Andreas Horn, Wolf-Julian Neumann, Isaiah Kletenik, and Michael D. Fox. “Mapping Neuroimaging Findings of Creativity and Brain Disease Onto a Common Brain Circuit.” JAMA Network Open (First published: February 13, 2025) doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.59297

HELEN’S TOP TIPS:

• Take the pressure off. I will always say, “have you got crayons lying around?” especially if I know they children in their lives. Crayons aren’t about refined artwork. If you say pencils, or paint, they might think they have to produce a work of art. But they can’t with crayons. In reality, they can use whatever they like.
• Explain The Task:
• Make it an invitation.: It lends itself to homework, but we don’t want our coachee to feel under pressure to try to create something for next time. Say something like, “This is a lovely exercise. If you want to give it a go, it could be really interesting for you”.
• Reassure them that it doesn’t have to be a work of art, it’s not a competition. Stick-people will suffice.
• Next Step: Ask them to send you a picture of it before your next session.
• Don’t be put off if someone didn’t do the exercise, they might do it another time. Be agile and don’t rely on them having done it.
• Set your own feelings and assumptions aside. Be curious. Maybe, you don’t think your coachee will like it. Maybe you wonder whether they are artistic or not. You might be pleasantly surprised (I always find my coachees very enthusiastic and get huge revelation from the work).

Why not give it a go for yourself?

You are invited to draw your perfect day and send it to us, or not, it’s up to you.

Alternatively, you could take your picture to your next coaching session and have some coaching around it. Explore it with your coach or find someone on your course and decide to do this together.

We invite you to be curious.

Both our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma  and our Transformational Coaching Diploma for Lifestyle Medicine explore many ways that we can open up our coachees’ thinking and view new perspective. Take a look and get in touch if you have any questions about either.