I have a great example which illustrates this both in my client's situation at work and in my interaction with them (a "parallel process"). I think I can tell the story without giving away anything confidential by making the real point of the story about me not them.
My client was on a programme rather than having chosen to do one to one work with me (the significance of which will become clear very shortly). Listening to their story it was clear that they were deeply frustrated by their situation - incredibly angry but holding their anger in rather than being able to vent it, use it, or otherwise dissipate it, so that it was building and building (to quite a dangerous level). They were in a double bind of contradictory forces. The grip of their character style (by which I mean their deeply held but unconscious beliefs and attitudes - "Guardian" for those who know the Centaur model) meant they were clear that others' behaviour was "not ok", but they were equally clear that telling them directly was also "not ok". They were clear that others needed to change, but equally clear that they themselves didn't need to change - after all, they had done nothing "wrong"!
This was a really stuck situation. And my heart went out to them - I desperately wanted to help them see what seemed obvious to me, ie that what was keeping it stuck was not the others, but them. So I tried really hard using all sorts of approaches in the very limited time we had. And I failed completely - in fact I think I probably just made them angrier and more frustrated!
I was myself very frustrated about this for a while until, in a "supervisory" discussion, I saw the parallel to their situation in the dynamic between us. What was preventing me helping them wasn't them, it was me. Because just as they were gripped by their core character style in their work situation, I was gripped by my core character style ("Warrior" in the Centaur model) in this programme situation, causing me to push too much to try to achieve something specific to help them (eg a "solution" to their problem).
If we had been in a one to one coaching relationship, I hope I would have been working from a deeper place. We might have got more quickly to the discussion we did eventually have at the end of the programme (which I believe actually was quite helpful in highlighting the parallel to their work situation) about why behaving in line with my core character style was particularly unhelpful to them, and how the best way for me to allow them to help change their behaviour would be to focus on changing mine.
