Psychological Influences II: The Systemic Approach and its Axioms

Broadening the Psychological View

Continuing with the psychological influences on coaching, the systemic approach offers a different and complementary perspective to the cognitive view.

Rather than focusing exclusively on an individual's internal mental processes, this approach broadens the view to consider the person as an integral part of a larger system.

It recognizes the interconnections and mutual influences between the individual and his or her environment.

Origins and Principles of the Systemic Approach

This approach arises mainly from two major theoretical currents. On the one hand, General Systems Theory, which postulates that the interaction of the totality of the elements of a group or system is more significant than the simple sum of its independent parts.

That is, the behavior of the system cannot be understood by analyzing its components in isolation.

On the other hand, the Cybernetic Theory, which focuses on self-regulation and learning within systems through feedback processes and the processing and recycling of information.

The central object of study of the systemic approach, therefore, is the context in which the person develops, contextualizing him within his environment as a crucial source of influences on his behavior and experience.

Fundamental Axioms of Human Communication

From the application of this approach to the study of human communication, five axioms or fundamental principles are derived that are crucial to understand the interactions within any system:

• It is impossible not to communicate: all behavior in an interaction situation has message value; even silence or inaction communicates something.
• Every interaction has two aspects: The content level (the what is said, the cue) and the relationship level (the how it is said, which defines the relationship between the communicators, the command).
• The nature of a relationship depends on the punctuation of the sequences: How the participants structure and organize the communication sequence (who said what first, who reacted to what) defines the dynamics of the relationship.
• There are two languages in communication: Digital (verbal, logical, based on arbitrary symbols such as words) and analog (nonverbal, gestural, postural, tonal, more ambiguous but rich in relational meaning).
• There are two types of interaction: The symmetrical relationship (based on equality, where one tends to mirror the behavior of the other) and the complementary relationship (based on difference, where one participant occupies a different position than the other, such as teacher-student).

Systemic Implications for Coaching

Applied to coaching, the systemic approach implies that the process will seek to describe and understand the key components of the coachee's environment.

Attention is paid to how family, work or social dynamics influence the client's situation.

Frequently, the challenges presented by the coachee will conflict with core issues in his or her system, such as shared (or not) values, prevailing beliefs and logical ways of thinking accepted within that environment.

The coach, with this perspective, can help the coachee identify patterns of interaction, implicit rules of the system and how their position within it affects their possibilities for action and change.

Summary

The systemic approach broadens the view, considering the person as an integral part of a larger system (family, work). It recognizes the interconnections and mutual influences between the individual and his/her environment.

It arises from the General Systems Theory (the whole is more than the sum of its parts) and from the Cybernetic Theory (self-regulation through feedback). The object of study is the context in which the person develops.

Systemic coaching describes the coachee's environment and how social dynamics influence it. It helps to identify patterns of interaction and how the system affects the possibilities for change.