Hermeneutic Method
The coach needs an orientation during work, which allows him to create correlations, to form and hold a focus, to separate the relevant from the non-relevant and to express it concisely: i.e. he must understand. For this, he requires information on all levels (verbal, non-verbal, own resonance). In addition, he needs a diagnostic concept about how to organise and evaluate this information and how to apply this in interventions, so that the person being coached can understand himself. We call these activities the hermeneutic method. To a certain extent all other methodical pathways are joined together under the title of ‘plausibility’.
Any understanding, though, is always subjective, provisional, incomplete and time-limited. We never understand how ‘it’ is, only ever how it is ‘for us in this moment of time’. This is why understanding in coaching is linked to contact. If the other party is supposed to feel that we understand him, and wants to understand himself better, then we must learn his language so that we can follow his inner logic. Then we translate that which we have discovered into our language and offer our viewpoint. Simple repetition or imitation does not lead to being understood. Understanding is an event in dialogue and requires the constant to and fro and a sustained correction possibility on both sides.