 Miami, 2017 (This photo was taken with an iPhone 6 Plus) An Organizational Coach Learns How to Speak
“Finding the right words at the right moment is action.” – Hannah Arendt Sometimes, a desire or a need sparks a coaching process: putting into words what has remained unspoken, or even what has yet to be thought, yet silently shapes decisions, relationships, and behavior beneath the surface of the visible. Rediscovering the Value of Words Casualties of a media landscape obsessed with making an impression at any cost, and of the relentless one-upmanship of ostentatious marketing that shamelessly seeps into the few silences not yet conquered by ambient noise, words are becoming trivialized and outdated at the speed of fast fashion. Directions blur and meaning fades. As everything accelerates in front of us, we risk becoming frozen like startled hares caught in the night, blinded by headlights slicing through the dark. Though reality is now presented to us in 4K, it appears increasingly blurred. And ironic. Fortunately, technology is here to reassure us, seeming eager to prove that human thought can be efficiently replaced by the instant execution of prompts (Mhalla, 2025). As our capacity to think gradually erodes, we might begin to wonder: is thought, after all, really that useful? Is it truly indispensable to our daily lives? Constantly dazzled, our attention has been captured by the glow of screens, and this is nothing new. We have become captives of small rectangles encased in titanium or aluminum (iPhone, 17th edition, October 2025) and of the addictive swarms of adorable kittens that populate them. From one anecdote to the next, moment by moment, we lose ourselves in the endless stream of entertaining distractions that saturate our minds and memories, pulling us away from what is truly happening around us and within us. In a world saturated with stimuli and constant solicitations, being receptive to information and knowing things still holds value. Yet true power may lie elsewhere, in the ability to choose, to decide, and to discern what truly matters, when, and in which situations. Despite the scattering of reference points, the confusion that threatens our intelligence, and the eroding of our capacity to dream, we still have a choice. We can choose to keep alive the breath of speech, the kind that awakens, inspires reflection, and connects us to one another. It is through words, and by means of them, that we dare to encounter ourselves, and that we can continue to move forward in the world. It is through words that we discover new perspectives and recover the freedom of our movements, both at the heart of our being and in our actions. It is through words that we draw closer to others and weave the bonds that give meaning to our shared humanity. By giving value to a language that seeks meaning, we clarify our thought and make it possible to communicate our intentions and our strategies with precision, to act together with lucidity and discernment. We thus choose to favor the nuances of language to name the reality around us and within us. From this attention arises self-awareness, one that helps us welcome and integrate the emotional realities that shape our experiences and make us unique witnesses to the world we inhabit. This precious and intimately felt richness helps shield us from the slogans and propaganda that agitate our daily lives. It is also self-awareness that enables us to draw inspiration from the gestures we observe in others, to adapt them in our own way, and to enrich our future actions, remaining attentive to the echoes they stir in our relationships and in our environment. This, then, is the spirit in which we propose to approach the practice of coaching. The aspiration is simple: to be reconciled with ourselves, to continue to grow, and to live as interesting a life as possible, seeking an ever-renewed and dynamic coherence between who we are, how we act, and the contexts through which we move. In the end, to borrow the final words of a poem by Charles Bukowski, “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” (Bukowski, 1986, p. 305). So, where do we begin? Daring to Pause Every transformation begins with a pause. Whoever dares to slow down begins to resist automatism. To stop is to start envisioning other possibilities, a path beyond the day-to-day fence of the homely garden. This requires courage and patience. Seneca suggested this long ago, and his words have traversed centuries, countries, and translations in various languages: In my view, a sign of a well-ordered mind is the ability to pause and linger with oneself (Sénèque, 1992, p. 32). Because change often begins with words, the bridge between the inner life and the shared world, our first pause will be with words themselves. Words colonize our minds, shape our beliefs, sustain our habits. We name things without always realizing that some words restrict our horizons, or, on the contrary, have the power to free our thinking (Hamant, 2024, p. 168). Today, the first word we suggest pausing together with is the one that defines coaching itself, a field that continues to expand, yet whose contours remain blurry. Coaching Beyond Performance Before it has become a practice, coaching is first and foremost a word, that both indicates what is possible and prevents us from imagining what it cannot embrace. Originally, the coach referred to a horse-drawn carriage, a means of transport that allowed people to move more quickly and efficiently than on foot. It later inspired the world of sports, then the business world, and eventually became part of “global English,” a simplified language oriented toward performance, efficient in setting standards and promoting best practices within commercial organizations. Easily mistaken for common English, this managerial newspeak has gradually spread across the world in public contexts and permeated every aspect of daily life, even reaching into the private sphere. It is not that uncommon today to give feedback to friends, brief them, set deadlines for our children, and even attempt to manage our own emotions (Hamant, 2025, p. 37). The history of coaching is therefore closely tied to performance and its optimization. Indeed, one of the foundational books of business coaching, published in 1992, bore the title Coaching for Performance, written by Sir John Henry Douglas Whitmore, considered one of the pioneers of the coaching industry (and also a professional race car driver). Over the past few decades, however, the practice of coaching has continued to evolve. It no longer confines itself to chasing individual ‘peak performance,’ whether athletic or professional, nor to behavioral approaches rooted in behaviorism, once particularly popular in Anglo-Saxon cultures. Today, drawing on the experiences and insights of past practitioners and scholars, coaching has matured to pay closer attention to the psychological, relational, and contextual realities of organizations. This does not mean rejecting the value of clear and specific goals or good performance, but rather seeing performance as one possible priority among others, not an absolute rule for every life or coaching situation, as if it were a modern cult demanding blind obedience. Sometimes what matters more than reaching a goal, especially one that may not even exist yet, is facing with honesty and courage the dilemmas that arise in the everyday reality of organizational life, and finding ways to deal with them, move past them, or resolve them. The task, then, is to clarify both the situation and one’s intentions, and to try new ways of acting that suit one’s motivations, challenges, and the current organizational context. Coaching in organizations can drive tangible performance and results, and also nurture the evolving identity, influence, and impact of those who lead. But if we aspire to extend the field of coaching beyond the narrow pursuit of performance, we must also question its language. As long as we remain captive to a terminology shaped by the implicit managerial ideologies of the last century, we risk reproducing their stereotypes and perpetuating not only simplistic or even caricatural attitudes, but also responses ill-suited to the complex challenges of today’s organizational life. Organization-Oriented Coaching It is by daring to step aside in language itself, by exploring words, that we begin to create distance from what is said and done automatically, without thought. In doing so, we may shift our perspective and widen our field of vision. Attempting to replace coaching with another term, something close but different, meant to broaden its scope while grounding it in a richer, more nuanced, and more human vision of contemporary organizations, might seem like the right path forward. Yet this appears unrealistic, or at least inefficient, given how deeply the term has entered everyday language and taken root in organizational life. Coaching has become a word of the world. It has slipped naturally into corporate life, like a garment shaped to the spirit of its time. It has found its place and gained acceptance. Let us build on this. Lacking a better alternative, we propose moving forward by simply adding a distinctive adjective. This allows us to initiate an evolution of the practice through language while maintaining its connection to its origins in the pursuit of performance. Given that coaching necessarily involves an organizational context, with its specific structures, cultures, explicit rules, and implicit norms, we suggest naming it organizational coaching, or organisational coaching, depending on your location, language habits, and cultural experiences and inclinations. Indeed, it is not only about accompanying a person in their professional role, but also about taking into account and coaching the organization to which they belong, an entity that is both present within them and expressed through them (De Haan & Burger, 2014, p. 169). Organizational coaching is about listening not only to the person but also to the organization itself. Listening Every person brings both conscious and unconscious emotions into their professional role. Welcoming these emotions with curiosity and without judgment allows them to become a catalyst for change and a source of innovation. This requires attentive listening to help uncover what is already present yet implicit. It is about being present, listening with patience, and allowing the voice to find its own breath, to express, within the newly forming coaching relationship, what is seeking to emerge, even if still uncertain. The voice comes into contact, testing trust, finding its way through emotions that may bring a blush, through the unspoken that clutters the path, and through lingering sensations, those mysterious remnants of the night’s dreams. Organizational coaching, as we practice it, is therefore grounded first and foremost in listening, before conversational words, before questioning, which is so often emphasized by coaching practitioners. It is listening that allows words to unfold within the relationship. Ultimately, it may not be so much that something transforms because someone speaks, but rather because someone truly listens, with joy, genuine attention, and full presence. It is this act of listening that allows something to move, open, shift, or transform. The power of listening lies in being heard. It is a rare and precious gift, and it is remarkable what can be revealed when someone feels truly heard (Phillips, 2015). Organizational coaching offers a calm and respectful space, in which one can feel welcomed with one’s own words: the words that live within, animating one’s world and guiding one’s decisions; the words one has borrowed and now claims as one’s own in order to belong; the words one can no longer bear to hear; and the words that have accompanied one for as long as one can remember, keeping alive the presence of those who have shaped one’s existence, even in their absence. Gradually, by leaning on these words, we think together and meaning emerges. Mobilis In Mobile In a fluctuating, unpredictable, and ever-changing world, organizational coaching serves as a true lever for change and transformation when grounded in solid foundations:
Organizational coaching thus becomes a sheltered space, free from external pressures, where one can explore the challenges of professional life, face, name, and release blockages that prevent movement, restore flow, and open the way to more conscious action. It involves navigating one’s desires alongside the norms required to belong to and participate in group life. One must come to terms with not only one’s own drives, and emotional tensions, but also those of others, within the framework of the culture. It is a matter of finding one’s own way between the desire to assert oneself and the tendency to give up being oneself in order to be liked by others, balancing the need to be unique with the need to feel a sense of belonging (Freléchoz, 2025, p. 9). Ultimately, it is about unfolding and moving forward within the very movement of the world itself. Like the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s famous submarine (Verne, 1870; 2019), assembled from parts gathered from around the globe and serving at once as a research laboratory, a library rich with twelve thousand works, and an instrument of combat, we navigate according to its motto: mobilis in mobile, moving within movement, changing with change. Two Modalities of Organizational Coaching: Executive Coaching and Leadership Coaching Among the various forms of organizational coaching, two areas stand out: executive coaching and leadership coaching. Both are widely discussed and commonly offered within organizations. What do they tell us? Executive Coaching The word executive originates from medieval Latin, meaning “to follow through, carry out, accomplish.” Over time, it came to denote “capable of performance” (a sense now largely obsolete) and, from the seventeenth century onward, “pertaining to concrete implementation,” as in the execution of laws or decisions. Historically, it is worth noting that the words executor and executioner were long used interchangeably; both referred to individuals charged with carrying out legal orders, even though their roles were vastly different: implementation, accomplishment, enforcement, and, in the case of the executioner, the act of carrying out a death sentence. From the twentieth century onward, in American English, executive came to denote a high-ranking businessperson within a company. This sense later gave rise, in the 1970s, to the use of executive as an adjective describing something luxurious, elegant, or costly, for example, an executive car or an executive suite. Today, the word executive refers to someone who has the authority to put plans or actions into effect, an influential individual responsible for the proper functioning of an organization, a company, or even an entire country. An executive is, in essence, a leader, and he is generally expected to act as one. Executive coaching is therefore primarily intended for executives, leaders, and senior managers, including directors, vice presidents, and C-suite officers, who hold strategic positions within an organization. Focused on organizational continuity, where every decision has systemic implications for the company’s reality, executive coaching serves primarily as a lever for aligning the executive’s role with the organization’s critical priorities, and particularly short-term performance (Sherman & Freas, 2004). More specifically, executive coaching addresses topics such as strategic impact (the leader’s influence on the organization’s direction and overall success), the management and facilitation of complex relational dynamics among multiple stakeholders, as well as critical transitions, including assuming new roles, integrating after promotion, or preparing for succession (Hall et al., 1999; Witherspoon & White, 1996). Leadership Coaching The term leadership does not have a classical Western etymology; it has no roots in Latin or Greek, nor in Asia or Africa. It apparently originates from Old English, more than a thousand years ago, from the word laedan, which is believed to have meant to travel. Simply put, leadership can therefore be seen as an invitation to journey into the unknown. Leadership creates, stimulates, and facilitates change. A concept similar to leadership exists in Latin culture through the notion of guidance, ducere. Benito Mussolini identified himself as Duce, comparable to the German Führer. These terms, which instantly evoke the horrors of dictatorial regimes, have found little acceptance in contemporary organizational discourse. Converging in the metaphor of a journey, coaching and leadership are two terms that naturally complement each other: coaching serves as a “vehicle” that supports and sustains momentum, while leadership acts as the “breath” that charts the direction. Together, they pave the way to transformation. Focused on developing leadership capacities regardless of role or hierarchical level, leadership coaching targets any professional who, at some point, contributes to the leadership of their organization (Grant, 2017). It primarily addresses the human dimension of leadership, encompassing the ability to mobilize and influence others as well as the cultivation of skills, particularly relational ones. Beyond enhancing personal effectiveness and short-term performance, leadership coaching supports the evolution of professional identity, asking, “What kind of leader do I want to be?” and provides an opportunity to explore the impact of personal values and motivations in a professional context. Consequently, it often engages a significant emotional dimension (Boyatzis, 2006; Long, 2016). Toward a Synthesis By paying careful attention to the details of words and their meanings, even distinguishing between two modalities of organizational coaching—executive coaching and leadership coaching—we have sought to lay the foundations for a clear and purposeful intervention framework, one that enables and facilitates conscious action in the service of change and transformation. Executive coaching is anchored in strategy and governance, addressing a specific “business urgency” or strategic challenge (such as a critical transition), whereas leadership coaching often takes on a more reflective and developmental dimension, exploring posture, relationships, and professional identity. In other words, leadership coaching tends to focus on the person in their role rather than the role within the system, while executive coaching tends to do the opposite. In practice, organizational coaching may oscillate between executive and leadership coaching, depending on the situation, challenges, and events experienced by the professional at different stages of the coaching relationship. The two approaches also frequently intersect: executive coaching necessarily involves reflection on leadership, while leadership coaching always occurs within a specific organizational context. Ultimately, any organizational coaching that ignores context risks becoming merely a tool for adapting to logics that may sometimes be destructive. How far can one ethically support someone within a system that may itself be toxic? And any coaching that does not create space for “pausing” or critical reflection risks reinforcing the technocratization of organizations rather than supporting their humanization. In Conclusion, So Far Organizational coaching, before being a practice, is first and foremost made of words, a space of language where the possibility of new perspectives and behaviors can take shape. By attending deeply to words and their meanings, we have laid lay the foundation for conscious and adaptive action. Only after pausing with words, listening attentively, allowing silence to return, and, so to speak, forgetting everything to be fully present, can organizational coaching create a reflective space where the individual and the organization meet. From this space, a new and true conversation can now arise, fostering critical thinking and a living dialogue capable of meaningful transformation, like stoking embers to rekindle a fire in the heart of the night. References
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