Judgement or judgemental?

Following my shockingly judgemental title to my last post ("The Armed Forces: why would you?"), I have been thinking quite a bit about this both with reference to myself and to career coaching. It's a kind of given that as career coaches we should be non-judgemental - how can we do our jobs with integrity and do the best for our clients if we are busy thinking about our own values and preferences. All clients must be treated with great and authentic respect, and this simply can't happen if we are judging them by our own criteria. But  now I am wondering if this ideal is not only unrealistic, but perhaps not even always desirable?

So let's turn first to whether an entirely non-judgemental approach is entirely desirable. I'm not going to go into the pluses of a non-judgemental approach - I think they're pretty self-evident, so I'm going to restrict my comments here to the possible negatives. As career coaches, we need to be analytical about our clients and their situation and we need to exercise good judgement. I feel that I use these skills to help me decide whether I need to steer my client who does not appear to be academically suited to medicine to consider a Plan B, whether I should be encouraging my unrealistic client to arrange some work experience, or whether I am going to spend some time getting my client to think bigger and broader about their career options. Now I would always always take these decisions from a fundamentally client-centred stand point, and would be quite aware of the need to be very cautious about any assumptions (who am I to say that the client won't bring it out of the bag at the last minute and getting straight As in their science A levels?). And I stand by these decisions - I think without a career coach using their instinct and analytical ability to manage the process then the intervention risks being far less productive. But is this not clear evidence of judgements? I am judging my clients' academic ability, knowledge and ambition. And where does judgement become judgemental?

Secondly, I wonder if it's ever going to be realistic. As career coaches, values mean a lot to us, and we are in general a pretty self-aware bunch. And I'm just not convinced that self-aware, values-driven people can ever be truly non-judgemental. Let's take the army example to illustrate my point: there are a number of reasons why the army and I are not a match made in heaven. Some of these reasons are simply due to my preferences, and I can quite understand and fully respect people who have difference views to mine (I might prefer to pull my eyelashes out one by one than lauch myself on to an army assault course, but I do understand and can genuinely admire that others might really enjoy the challenge). But other reasons - well, one in particular, are based on my moral code: I think it is wrong to kill people in the circumstances that our soldiers often have to. So how can I not judge someone else who has a different perspective? To me it's not something that I can take or leave, or something that I can see humour in, or something that I can understand - I think it's wrong, and I can't see how I can respect a decision that I think is fundamentally immoral?

Now of course, the decision isn't the person - I can see my way to respecting the individual, and finding plenty to admire in their bravery, their patriotism etc, and of course I can put my own views on hold for the purposes of the coaching relationship. But it remains that there is a non-judgemental streak that I can't see a way through.

In my musings I have found the kernel of some explanation, and I think it lies in empathy. I think that in a good coaching session, where the relationship has formed well, and the coach is really in tune with the coachee, empathy can form a short term bridge from coach's values to coachee's values. I think that we can get in our client's shoes and start looking at the world from their point of view. It's not that we change our values or moral stance, but just that for that short time, we are so in tune with our client that we start seeing the world through their eyes. It's not a route to actually being non-judgemental, but I think that for me it's a route to being able to ignore my own values for a short time to support my client.

I do think this works - I do some voluntary work on a telephone line where I speak to and give emotional support to a great range of people, some of whom behave in ways that I really, fundamentally abhor, and I think this focused empathy is my way of relating to them. It allows me to see the situation exclusively from their perspective, regardless of the bigger picture which forms the basis of my own moral perspective. And it seems to work.

So I think from my perspective, it's not quite a non-judgemental approach that I espouse or even aspire to, but self-awarenss, a client-centred approach and really really focused empathy. For me that feels more realistic and more helpful to my clients, but it's not truly non-judgemental.

Am I ok with that?