Narrative coaching after the suicide of a professional colleague

Pierre Blanc-Sahnoun has published an interesting article in the Explorations on line journal of Narative practice entitled, "Narrative coaching in a professional community after a suicide." You can access it easily and read it for free by clicking here.

I admire the way that Pierre went about consulting about this problem which is a conflict between management and staff over how to deal with a colleague's suicide. Pierre goes into a situation where many therapists would fear to tread. He uses many narative techniques in a very collaborative way. His approach facilitates positive results even though all parties to the process were skeptical and resistive to some extent.

Pierre's basic approach is to reject the dominant definition of the problem as pathological grief internal to the employees which must be excised and worked through so the individuals can "move on." Instead, Pierre realizes that the defintion of the problem is social constructed and has less to do with the grief over the death of a colleague as it does with what staff consider an inadequate management acknowledgement and respect for their local knowledges.

Pierre provides opportunities both at an individual and group level for this experience and knowledge to be expressed and acknowledged by him.

The culmination of the work was a definitional ceremony in which the employees were able to express the meaning of their colleague's suicide for them personally and for them as a community.

Read the paper and let me know what you think.