"The Coaching Conversation: Nina"
This document is an excerpt from my DCM thesis and is currently under embargo. It is shared with you solely for review purposes. Please do not copy, quote or distribute it without explicit permission.
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From the outset of this research project, my goal was to create something not only valuable to the coaching profession but also enjoyable and engaging for the reader. As Watson (2015, p. 407) observed, writings on humour are rarely humorous themselves. The creative synthesis, encouraged by the heuristic inquiry methodology, offered an opportunity to challenge this pattern. Recognising that the reader may already have encountered a substantial amount of text, I was determined to express the synthesis in a format that felt more dynamic and evocative.
Initially, I considered using a cartoon or video to illustrate how humour might manifest in a dyadic coaching conversation. However, during the evolution of this study, I found myself repeatedly drawn to the parallels between humour and music. As I reflected on the flow of coaching sessions—and on the rhythm, timing and spontaneity of humour—I realised that musical improvisation offered a powerful metaphor. I felt excited by the idea of capturing the coaching dynamic as a piece of music, especially since the Humour Notation System had already drawn on musical metaphors during the research process.
This exploration led to the composition of a short musical piece structured around the jazz-inspired technique of call-and-response. The process of creating this piece helped me articulate an emerging insight: that humour in coaching, and the coaching relationship more broadly, shares important qualities with musical improvisation. This realisation became the foundation of a conceptual model developed through this research: the Relational Jam Model.
The Relational Jam Model proposes that a coaching relationship resembles the spontaneous and unscripted creation of music. Each person (the coach and client) brings their instruments into the session—representing perspectives, values, experiences, preferences and styles. Together, they co-create a dynamic, evolving and unique melody from their interaction. Some notes align perfectly with clarity, while others clash, creating confusion that is either resolved or remains unresolved. Nevertheless, playing together deepens and strengthens their connection, leading to a richer harmony over time. Although comparing coaching to music is not entirely new—for example, Read (2014) and Turner (2020) discuss how music, particularly jazz, relates to coaching—the Relational Jam Model specifically emphasises how the coach and client integrate humour into the coaching relationship.
“The Coaching Conversation: Nina” (above) emerged from the creative synthesis and offers a musical interpretation loosely based on my coaching conversation with Nina H. The composition draws on jazz motifs inspired by musicians—Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Jerry Bock, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Hickman, Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn—with various percussion elements used to represent humour attempts. While I could offer a detailed account of the composition’s meaning, I prefer to leave it open to interpretation, allowing the listener to draw their own insights from the piece.