Liam Moore reflects on how we find balance in a world of dynamic complexity, and how he uses autoethnography, where personal experiences are connected to wider cultural and social understandings, to explore identity and meaning.
It is almost a decade since I published my first research paper [1], but I felt like its central theme – how we make sense of who we are (our identity) under complex conditions – is as relevant today, if not more so, than when my co-author, Professor Juliette Koning, and I wrote it.
I was keen to revisit the paper to see if there were lessons to draw from it that would speak to the challenges that coaches are currently facing in our increasingly complex and uncertain times. For example, how to support our clients when we identify not only with the personal (micro level) stuff they bring, but when we share experiences on a global (macro) level, such as climate anxiety.
Back in 2012, while writing the dissertation for my masters in coaching and mentoring practice, Juliet, who was my tutor at the time, introduced me to the research approach known as autoethnography, which I have since used to support my coaching practice. Autoethnography brings together elements of autobiography and ethnography. It involves a researcher analysing personal experiences to shine a light on aspects of a culture of which they are a member. [2]
Autoethnographic writing is presented in rich, often evocative detail, elevating day-to-day experiences to create opportunities for new perspectives and meaning making. Although autoethnography involves reflection, it is not the same as reflective practice, with its focus on process (what is happening here?). Autoethnography is reflexive, concerned with questions of identity – who am I in this situation?
With its focus on exploring identity, autoethnography has much in common with modern perspectives on coaching, which has evolved from its roots in performance to embrace a more holistic view of individuals and their needs. In our paper, we explored how coaches in training make sense of their identity under conditions of dynamic complexity, a multi-layered experience of change and uncertainty. We proposed that when complexity increases, our capacity to make sense decreases, leading to greater confusion on an identity level.
Have you ever had an experience where things got so stressful or confusing that you started to ‘lose sight of yourself’? We work in a field which is in a constant state of evolution. Coaching’s methodological eclecticism prompts an ongoing process of individual and collective sensemaking on the part of its practitioners, as we do our identity work, and that of the industry, too. And as the old Chinese proverb goes, we live in interesting times, arguably the most unstable and uncertain in post-war history. In this respect, creative research techniques such as autoethnography offer valuable ways for coaches to make sense of and maintain a coherent identity amid the complexity.
In recent years I have had to tackle precisely the kind of complex experiences that I hint at above. To illustrate, I offer an example of autoethnographic writing which relates to a challenging situation from my own recent experience. As you read it, ask yourself, what am I noticing? How does the writing compare or contrast to other forms of writing or research that I have encountered?
From where I am sitting as I write this article, in bed on a quiet, sunny Saturday morning, in many respects little appears to have changed for me in recent years. I still live in the same house with the same partner as I did five years ago. I work in the same field – people development – as I have done for over a decade. And there have been no fundamental changes in personnel among the significant others in my life. Although I have turned somewhat more grey in the last couple of years, otherwise I am physically in similar shape.
Yet in other respects, I have seen so much change and uncertainty. For example, throughout the pandemic I found myself still navigating a job I’d been planning to leave before it struck. When shortly after that, after years of following a trail of social and psychological breadcrumbs, I realised that I might be autistic, I then lived in a state of betwixt and between for three years while I awaited diagnosis. And working remotely alongside my partner brought change and confusion into the place we call home.
Throughout that time, I felt an additional sense of unease; detached, foggy and overwhelmed. I have experienced bouts of low mood through my life, but this felt unfamiliar. It came to me slowly that what was different was the result of an unusual kind of conformity of experience that I now shared with others. Not simply those closest to me, but with people at various steps of remove. What the pandemic had started – economic crisis, growing climate anxiety and geopolitical instability – then continued. It created a sense that we are all bound together like never before, despite ideological differences and questions of identity – gender, race, neurodiversity, robotics – that have increasingly occupied public discourse.
These feelings were everywhere, so of course they showed up in my work. I noticed feeling entangled with those I’d been engaged to support. I asked myself: how can I do my work, which requires me to offer perspective, if I am unable to find perspective myself? How can I help someone to find distinctiveness if I find myself too closely identifying with what they describe? I struggled with this for some time. It dented my confidence. Now still, when I think of those times, I find myself holding my breath.
It would be unrealistic to point to a single event that made the change. Leaving my previous role, starting to work for myself, achieving that diagnosis, no doubt those things contributed. But what most stands out is a decision I made shortly after starting to work for myself. Recognising that I would be using LinkedIn to support my marketing efforts, I chose to write in a way that would distinguish me from those who follow a pattern of posting that dominates there. In what now looks like a mini manifesto, in an early article [3] I set the stage for how to recover my sense of self by seeking to express a unique voice. Only now, writing this, do I notice the significance of that decision.
Since then, I have written an article once or twice a month in which I take a topic that interests me and that I can relate to my work. I write myself into those articles, seeking answers to questions I hold about myself and how I engage with the world. Writing for an audience – particularly writing about ourselves – is not like writing a journal. It is by nature exposing. However, in choosing to write myself into my articles, I reveal myself to myself in an imagined dialogue with others. It helps me to locate myself in the messy geography of my life and work; to distinguish myself from the problems that my clients bring while allowing me to empathise more sincerely. On reflection, it is to some extent like the experience of doing supervision.
Reading back over the nearly 20 articles I have written since August 2023, I see the self-consciousness in my writing dissipating as I have grown in self-understanding and confidence in expressing my voice during moments of doubt. And while I still find myself drawn into the weirdness and complexity, when I feel the fog creeping, I find that writing helps it to lift.
You may notice that the above piece includes both description of an experience and analysis of it. It can be tempting to separate the two. However, autoethnographic writing is considered both process (doing the research) and product (presenting the research). [4] New perspectives on or epiphanies about personal experiences are exposed by and shared within the writing. In that way, autoethnographic writing is discrete, like a coaching session; we do not step out of a coaching session to analyse the content that the coachee has shared within it.
Autoethnography is increasingly used by practitioners of relational interventions such as coaching and psychotherapy to deepen reflexivity and understanding of our practice. I have found great value in integrating autoethnography into my own practice, and continue to appreciate how writing in this way helps me to make sense of my work.
Notes
[1] Moore L and Koning J (2016). Intersubjective identity work and sensemaking of adult learners on a postgraduate coaching course: Finding a balance in a world of dynamic complexity Management Learning 47(1) 28-44. Available from ResearchGate.
[2] Koning J and Moore L (2020) Autoethnography. In E Cox and P Jackson (eds) Doing Coaching Research. London: Sage Publications. Available from ResearchGate.
[3] Moore L (2023) Liam Through the Looking Glass: Reflexions on finding a voice (on LinkedIn) [online] Available on LinkedIn.
[4] Ellis C, Adams T E and Bochner AP (2010) Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12 (1), Article 10. Available from FQS.
About Liam Moore
Liam Moore is an executive coach, supervisor and facilitator. He helps founders, leaders and HR and L&D professionals to make sense of their challenges and find practical ways to address them. Liam holds an MA in Coaching and Mentoring Practice and a Professional Certificate in Advanced Study in Coaching Supervision from Oxford Brookes Business School. He has published research exploring the role of professional identity in coach training, and contributed a chapter on autoethnography for a text, Doing Coaching Research. He writes regularly on LinkedIn about coaching and related topics.
Photo by Jeremy Bishop
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