What should we do about Jeremy?

What should we do about Jeremy? – A post from July 2016

Everyone has an opinion about Jeremy Corbyn.

I’m trying not to write about my opinion about Jeremy Corbyn, but about how skills derived from the world of coaching and communications might help Jeremy Corbyn.

You might well think that Jeremy Corbyn has people already doing this for him. If he has, arguably, it’s not working.

What might the processes be that could help him?

The first question a coach might explore with Jeremy is ‘What’s the problem?’

Very often, when you’re coaching, you have no idea what the client’s problem is, and no idea of its context. It’s seen as an asset to be unknowing, to have no preconceptions so you can explore with the client what they perceive the challenge to be.

How Jeremy Corbyn perceives his challenges would be enlightening.

At Durham, at the big meeting, and since. Jeremy has told his audiences he feels no pressure, or at least, not in comparison to the pressure of life on the breadline.

It’s an interesting response.

It could easily be filed under the heading of whataboutery, of Jeremy avoiding an awkward question by re-framing it. Don’t ask me about me, he says, look at how other people have to live.

It’s clever, and a sophisticated way of dealing with the awkward question, but a good coach would explore the idea of whether Jeremy should be answering the question about his leadership under pressure. They might invite Jeremy to explore why he doesn’t want to answer the question.

Sometimes, a coach has to challenge as well as to listen.

SImilarly, if Jeremy is surrounded by colleagues who think he isn’t the right person to be leader, it might be interesting to explore with Jeremy why he thinks they think that.

Leadership is always about self-awareness, about knowing why you behave in the way you do, and why others see you in the way they do. A common tool in a conflict situation is to step aside from the ‘He says,she say’ psychodrama of the conflict, and to ask the participants in the conflict what they think motivates the other party, and how they think a third-party might see them both.

Would the third party, the person observing from a chair in the corner of the room, think both parties are to blame? Might they see two parties. each very different, but both behaving badly?

In plain language, what does Jeremy think a voter, looking on, might think about the Labour leadership contest?

A coach might re-frame the dispute in a way designed to make it mundane; not Jeremy and the party at war,but a domestic row where one partner is neurotically anxious about the future, and the other uncommunicative, dismissive almost, convinced that whatever the circumstances, they’re on the right track.

Would a voter see the dispute as the stuff of soap opera, not grand ideas? If they do, something’s gone wrong.

The solution is not to declare one side right or wrong, but to work on communication, and, realistically, on identifying whether the breakdown in relationships is terminal. The longer the row goes on, the more onlookers are expected to take sides, even as they wish they could look away, and the more positions become entrenched..

The first step is for both parties to step back, to admit they might both be in the wrong. Could Jeremy do that? As a coach, if Jeremy couldn’t do that, I’d be in the invidious position of having to discuss with Jeremy whether he can be helped at all.