Weeknotes #52: Becoming Agent
What does it truly mean to live with agency?
You are reading Coaching Weeknotes by Roxana Bacian: explorations at the intersection of inner-growth, leadership coaching and organisational development. These weeknotes are multiply authored, arrived at in conversation with many:
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It’s that time of year again. Birthday season. When it comes to my birthday, my reflective tendencies get amplified. I wonder about things like: what is my life for? am I really living my purpose? am I really contributing what I can to others’ lives? what does it truly mean to take responsibility for one’s life?
I crave for clean and finite answers. But the years keep teaching me that we rarely get them — or only just for a while. For now, I give my therapist long stunned stares every time she invites me to more accountability — even in situations where all possible logic would imply that accountability is required from someplace or someone else.
I’m talking about the kind of complex relational situations that beg for a clear villain and a clear victim. I think about Paulo Freire’s text on oppression and how he invites victims of oppressive systems to, unintuitively, identify and learn from the complex ways in which they get drawn into contributing to their victimization. It’s a maddening picture, that when analysed, might leave little room for hope. And yet, when we look with discernment at behaviour within the context it arises, we have a chance to re-establish agency. This isn’t about your A-B morality, but the kind of morality that has grown up to understand the world it lives in.
And so, as I do, I think about how I apply this personal learning to how I work in coaching leaders and teams. I find that in transforming my relationship with agency, my clients may benefit, too. Max St John describes beautifully how inspiring and influencing others fundamentally happens through how we show up; not only through what we say. And if we do do this, I wonder about the kind of organisations we might create. Where the future of our relationships and culture doesn’t rely on old habits of pointing fingers or creating the perfect villains; but on a messy process of learning about our own relationship with ourselves and each other.
A delicate process requiring great willingness.
Becoming agent after all, and perhaps only for a while, isn’t about gaining at the expense of someone else becoming inhuman, but in oneself becoming more fully human: able to experience the multitude of feelings that a complex situation will ellicit; and in that process, transforming what’s possible for everyone involved.
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Roxana Bacian ACC
Leadership and Organisational Coach
Intl Coaching Federation
Previously designing public services with leaders and teams alongside Snook and FutureGov. Most recently, working together on OrgBuilders supporting organisations to navigate complex transitions and leaders in the education sector in Scotland sustain team wellbeing with Know You More.
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