Foley & Boyatzis (2012.pdf

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Freedom Fighters

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All rights reserved. This article

appeared in Coaching at Work,

Vol 7, Issue 3, 2012 and has been

reproduced in full by kind

permission of the publisher. Not

to be distributed electronically or

made available to public websites

without permission from the

publisher. For personal and

internal organisational use only.


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How do you

coach to the positive

in extreme negative

situations? Eric Foley and

Richard E Boyatzishelp two

defectors from North Korea

make sense of their past,

and their future

Mr Bae, a North

Korean, sat

in jail for

13 months,

without charge,

as a possible traitor, while the

North Korean authorities

investigated him. As a free man,

Mr Baes ashbacks became less

frequent, but were always

unnerving. Typically, he would be

walking down the street or

reading, when suddenly he would

be back in cell 436, wondering if he

would ever see his wife and

daughter again.

Fortunately, his story checked

out and he was released. But when

his wife rst saw him at the police

station, she said he looked like an

freedom

fightersold pumpkin bruised and

beaten. He shared how people

had starved to death in the station.

They had all been made to sit on a

cold oor in one position all day

long, from morning until 10pm.

However, the couple were to

learn that, once free, the life of the

defector does not get any easier.

A disproportionately high

percentage of North Korean

refugees suffer from depression,

commit suicide or, in desperation,

enter into lives of crime.

Mr and Mrs Baes families had

migrated to China from North

Korea, then ed back there in

1962 to escape Chinas Cultural

Revolution. A key aspect of their

story was rooted in Mr Baes

grandfathers conversion to

Christianity while in China. It was

from this that they inherited their

sense of purpose.

At the time of Mr Baes release,

their daughter had begun to

manifest skills in healing. Even

though she did not study formally,

she was able to heal through

traditional medicine. It wasnt

possible for her to become a doctor

in North Korea, so the family

decided to leave. After a harrowing

defection across China to a Korean

embassy in Southeast Asia, they

ew to South Korea.

Mr Bae is now 52 and his wife 50.

He works at a car wash. They are

regularly asked by the South

Korean governments Ministry of

26 Coaching atWork May/June | Vol 7 Issue 3 2012 | www.coaching-at-work.com


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Coaching atWork 27

COACHING EXTREMES

Unication to speak to South

Korean churches and civic groups

about the repression they

experienced in North Korea as

underground Christians. As part of

their socialisation, they receive

coaching as well as intense efforts

to address the basic needs of food,housing and education.

But freedom has its price. In

North Korea, the couple had

government-provided housing,

jobs and healthcare. And, oddly

enough, much better air quality

than in South Korea.

The coaching

When the Baes came to us, they

were weary. Within ve minutes

of our meeting, they had described

Mr Baes haemorrhoids and

Mrs Baes stomach ailments and

eye surgery.

They lamented that they had to

spend the equivalent of $100 a day

on special herbal treatments for

their health. It was as if they were

nostalgic about North Korea. They

were not only escaping from what

we call the Negative Emotional

Attractor (NEA), yet spent much of

every day living in it, but part of

their work was to get others into

the NEA too.

This may have been why they

sat up abruptly when I began by

asking them a question they

later told me they had never been

asked before: Tell me about happy

memories from your time in both

North Korea and South Korea.

They exchanged puzzled glances

and the briefest of cautious smiles,

before turning back to me with

poker faces. It was as if I had asked

We know that giving someone ideas as to what

they should do and how they should change to bemore effective, often has the opposite effect


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them to share some delicious

secret and that, just by asking, I

had revealed my membership of atiny fraternity: those who were

willing to believe that North Korea

was capable of producing

moments of happiness, even

among its most oppressed.

They began to share with me, at

rst with great hesitation and

guarded body language, but

gradually with increasing ease,

including more and more effusive

gestures, about moments of

happiness that might confuse,rather than delight, Westerners.

Mr Bae talked about becoming a

member of the Communist Party

in his youth, how hard it was given

his familys background, and how

excited he was to be inducted since

this meant he could marry well

and provide a better life for his

children. Mrs Bae spoke with great

animation about how she was

teaching high school literature

about the wisdom of Kim Il-sung.

She would write letters of

recommendation for young male

students from poor families to

help them get selected to serve in

North Koreas elite military troops.

Soon they were ying along in

the Positive Emotional Attractor

(PEA) with bright smiles, broad

gestures, laughter and by nishing

each others sentences.

If anyone was slipping into

the NEA, it was me. How could

their happiest memories be

ones in passionate support of

the state that had imprisoned

him and deceived Mrs Bae

into teaching nonsense to a

generation of youth?

This is an example of coaching

with compassion coaching to the

PEA. In contrast, coaches and

managers still often coach for

compliance to the NEA.

When coaching to the PEA, you

focus on the persons dreams,

28 Coaching atWork

values, gratitude, even playfulness.

It has the effect of activating neural

circuits and endocrines that invokea cognitive, perceptual and

emotional openness. The person

being coached is physiologically

and then psychologically prepared

to consider new ideas.

We know that giving someone

ideas as to what they should do

and how they should change to be

more effective, often has the

opposite effect, arousing

defensiveness and closing down

the person.

Marital tag team

Mr and Mrs Bae insisted on being

coached together. It provided anopportunity for positive emotional

contagion to work in favour of a

more inspirational session.

Of course, it could have gone the

other way. Though I would direct a

question to one or the other, they

would look at each other before

answering, and decide who would

start the response.

They were cautious, having lived

for so long in a repressive, political

state. A point would come, in


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almost every response, when the

person responding would falter,

drift into sadness, or simply stop,

as if reaching an emotional trafc

light. At that point the other would

pick up the narrative seamlessly,

typically making physical, but not

visual contact a hand squeeze, a

pat on the shoulder before

continuing, with positive emotion,

often with a tease.

Once, when his wife began to

struggle as she shared a story

about a young man who had stolen

her socks, but whom she still chose

to help, Mr Bae said, Meeting me

was her happiest moment!

Later, Mrs Bae said, Everyone

knew he was a good man, as her

husbands voice cracked when he

mentioned his 13 months in prison.

Once they were guided into PEA

through that initial question, they

sustained each other.

COACHING EXTREMES

Coaching atWork 29May/June | Vol 7 Issue 3 2012 | www.coaching-at-work.com

The ideal self

The ravages of Mr Baes time in jail

and Mrs Baes defection are

apparent in their bodies. Mr Bae has

had multiple surgeries to manage

his haemorrhoids so he can

continue to work at the car wash to

save for his daughters education.

Mrs Baes speaking engagements

drain her for weeks a bodily

consequence, perhaps, of publicly

reliving NEA. They learned recently

that the North Korean authorities

had executed Mr Baes parents.

Despite these seemingly

insurmountable daily obstacles,

they press on towards their dream

of putting their daughter through

medical school and building a

clinic for her practice. A personal

vision (articulated Ideal Self) gains

power and momentum when a

couple share their vision.

Mr Baes parents sensed their

time was short, and that their son

and his family had to defect to

protect the familys next-generation gift. In this sense, they

did not so much escape from North

Korea as they were drawn to South

Korea by the realisation that that

was where they needed to go for

their vision to become reality.

A concluding thought

I have this mind that what

happened in my life was not

easy and could not happen

without God, so I keep thankingGod for what he has done in my

life. And because he is with us in

my life, I believe our dream will

come true, said Mrs Bae, when I

asked her how she felt about

the coaching.

She saw our session as another of

Gods myriad ways of refocusing

them away from the smog, the

bodily aches and pains, and the cost

of medicine back to the dream.

As our session progressed,

Mr and Mrs Baes dream moved

me back into PEA too. I began to

understand that they experienced

with happiness Mr Baes entry into

the Communist Party and Mrs Baes

preparation of soldiers for Kim

Il-sung, not in spite of the difculties

they had faced, but because this was

their life, and all of it had been

required to lead them to the dream.

Coaching with compassion made

it possible for me to enter into their

PEA as a guest, even if they had

somehow needed the nudge of my

questions to remind them that it

was still there. n

Eric Foley and Richard E Boyatzis

Coaching with compassion made itpossible to enter into the couples Positive

Emotional Attractor as a guest

Documents

Foley & Boyatzis (2012.pdf