We have an exciting connection with a TA project outside of South Africa. Karen Pratt has been approached to be part of the CoachActivism Project in Greece/ Canada, which has started in response to the refugee crisis in Europe. Read more about the project here.
I am excited to have been approached to add some TA input to this international project.
The background to this project is the increasing global refugee crisis. In 2015 more than 1.8 million people crossed into Europe, fleeing from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict. In the first 4 months of 2016, 154 491 people have arrived in Greece alone.
The response of various states has been varied. In Greece, much of the work to support and manage the growing refugee population has been carried by local volunteers, and many of these people are close to burnout. Canada has also been impacted –the photo of Alyn Kurdi and his family and their connection to Canada made this international crisis more real for Canadians as well. After his death, it became known that Canada had refused asylum to his family.
In early 2016, leaders in the coaching communities of Athens, Greece and Vancouver Island, Canada began searching for ways to offer coaching support at local levels. And so the CoachActivism Project was born. It is led by Katerina Kanelidou and Lina Ioannou in Greece, and Lily Seto and Claire Rettie in Canada.
The first phase will run from June to December 2016 and offer coaching to front-line refugee workers, settlement and re-settlement workers, translators, and volunteers. People will be able to work with a professional certified coach either in a group or one-to-one.
Coaches will be carefully selected, and as part of their on-boarding they will take part in a series of online 1 hour webinars. They have asked for some input on Transactional Analysis and I have volunteered to provide this as one of the series of webinars.
What a brief! Such important work and only 1 hour to share some TA learning that will be impactful to coaches working in this context. What model would this be? As I am letting this sit with me, and having some conversations with other TA colleagues, I am leaning towards exploring the Drama Triangle, and especially adding in the Bystander role, and then looking at the positive roles from the Winners Circle. I have a sense that coaches working with people in such a situation of crisis and desperate need can easily get hooked into Drama Triangle roles which immediately make somebody feel less OK. And as we take into account the unconscious parallel processes it is inevitable that this dynamic could be played out all along the chain – coaches with the volunteers, and volunteers with the refugees. It is important to have awareness of this and for coaches to model a positive parallel process that can flow back down the chain to the refugees.
We know how the unhealthy roles on the Drama Triangle can change to be OK-OK ways of being –Rescuer becomes Responsive, Persecutor becomes Potent and Proactive and Victim becomes Vulnerable and having a Voice. I have wondered what the positive expression of the Bystander might be, and in conversation with another TA colleague, Di Salters, she named it as the Active Witness. I do believe that there might be times when our best involvement in a situation could well be the active witness –standing up and saying “I see you and what is happening” Whereas the Bystander role colludes to keep the game dynamics going, the Active Witness can begin to invite people out of the game.
I am looking forward to putting out these ideas and co-creatively spending an hour with coaches from Greece and Canada and seeing what sense people make of this for themselves and their work in this project. We so often bemoan the fact of social the time we spend on screens cutting into our time of relationship and connection –and yet this technology now also gives an opportunity for me to represent the TA community in SA and have some impact on this important humanitarian response to a global crisis.
Karen Pratt