Choosing our Cultural Constraints: The Role of Coaches

Those of you who have read my book will know that I believe strongly in the idea that we can make real choices in our lives, even within the constraints of our circumstances. As coaches, one of our most important roles is to help our clients realize that they are freely willing individuals, capable of deciding for themselves. But can we really choose? Or are our worldviews so shaped by the society and subcultures we inhabit that what we perceive as choices may not be choices at all? In this post, I will explore how recent sociological theories apply to the interplay between cultural constraints and individual agency in coaching. 

Claire Armon-Jones, in her chapter, The Social Functions of Emotions (1988), highlights how a constructivist understanding of emotions can explain complex emotional phenomena like guilt, fear, or inappropriate reactions. Her argument—that emotions are culturally constructed rather than biologically determined—reinforces the idea that our emotional lives are deeply tied to the societies we inhabit. But if this is the case, does it not mean that we don’t actually get to choose? And what does that mean for coaches, who are tasked with helping clients make those choices? While a constructivist position might seem to require very limited agency, it also opens avenues for reflection. How do we make real decisions in an environment where much of how we act and react is dictated by external forces? Even granted that much of our understanding of what is right and wrong may come from the societies we belong to, we can still choose among different subcultures within those groups. 

As Amy Wilkins  illustrates in Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status (2008), people can actively opt into subcultures and, in doing so, adopt the moral frameworks and norms that accompany those groups. While Armon-Jones emphasizes the cultural construction of emotions, Wilkins illustrates how individuals can navigate these constructions by deliberately choosing subcultures that align with their values. For instance, identifying with a goth subculture often involves embracing its particular worldview, including codes of conduct and emotional styles, such as sadness and introspection. Membership in this subculture extends well beyond fashion and appearance, although adopting a subculture often means adopting its visual symbols. Wilkins shows that the goth way of being includes a set of emotional and cultural norms that inform a coherent morality. What is most interesting in Wilkins’ observations, however, is that becoming a goth is an actively chosen form of self-marginalization. Goths overcome their marginalization by society by associating themselves with this subculture. In becoming a goth, one gets more than a set of peers to commiserate with, one also gets a set of rules to live by.  

Building on Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1983) concept of feeling rules, we can reflect on how our choice of subcultures impacts our alignment with these rules. Feeling rules are the implicit norms governing which emotions we should feel in specific contexts, how intensely, and for how long. If we want to live an unconventional lifestyle, like non-monogamy, surrounding ourselves with people who share this lifestyle will help us to feel emotionally congruent and can reinforce our belief in the set of related norms that embracing that lifestyle brings. In this sense, we can liberate ourselves from inherited feeling rules by deliberately choosing the social environments we allow to constrain us. 

Two things might be true at the same time here–that we are bound within the constructed set of feeling rules that we inherit from the groups that we are members of, but that we can often also choose which groups to associate ourselves with. In today’s world of universal social media, this is more true than ever. Anyone with an internet connection can find a group of like-minded people for whatever set of moral norms that they might want to embrace.  

Not only that, as William Reddy (1999) argues in his concept of emotional regimes, some groups offer more latitude for creativity, imagination, and emotional freedom than others. Reddy’s work highlights how different societies govern emotions in ways that can either stifle or enable human potential. So in choosing which groups to belong to, we should also be mindful of the latitude that exists in the cultures we’re considering joining. In moving from an executive role in a large financial institution to one at a creative agency, for example, a client might find that they have a significantly greater latitude in terms of how they express themselves, act, and feel in their work context. 

Ann Swidler (2001) adds another layer to this, as she raises the concept of repertoires, which are sets of norms or values that will inform how we respond to certain situations. Even within a set culture, Swidler argues that we have multiple repertoires to choose from. Just like a musician has a collection of musical pieces that she knows how to play, we learn these repertoires in order to have “pieces” that we can act out and inhabit when needed. Not only that, Swidler also argues that we can choose among a set of repertoires in our reactions to a given situation. Swidler presents the case of a pastor who, faced with personal disappointment and helplessness, sought to transform his worldview. By engaging in a deliberate process of reflection and action, he shifted from a place of emotional pain to one of empowerment and self-realization. Swidler refers to this as a process of transvaluation, where individuals reinterpret their circumstances and adopt new strategies of action–essentially learning to play a new repertoire. 

As coaches, we can help our clients lean into the idea that they can make choices both between and within the societies and subcultures they inhabit. To move between subcultures, we should help our clients identify what are the rules and norms of the subcultures they belong to, and help them question whether they want to adhere to those norms. By asking questions like “whose expectations are you trying to meet?” or “what would the people around you say if you did that?” We can help our clients identify whether they are in alignment with the values of their social groups. If not, we can also help our clients identify subcultures that more closely align with their thinking. As well, following Reddy above, we should help them to understand the latitude that those groups allow–by asking about the variety of potential answers that exist within their subcultures. 

I often advise young people entering the workforce to think carefully about the culture of their workplace and to look carefully at the people who have been working there for a while and ask questions like “Do they all dress and talk alike?” and “Do their values align with where you would like your values to be?” Not just because my clients will spend a lot of time with those people, but because they will start to become like them. Lastly, following Swidler, guiding our clients in identifying and expanding the repertoires that they can draw from is also important. Becoming an individual in our rules-laden cultures requires identifying and actively choosing among the various repertoires we have at hand. Helping our clients realize this is one of the most important things we can do. In doing so, we fulfill an important role as coaches, not just as facilitators of decisions, but as guides through the complex navigation between cultural constraints and individual agency.

Armon-Jones, C. (1988). The social functions of emotions. In R. Harré (Ed.), The Social Construction of Emotions (pp. 57–92). Oxford: Blackwell.

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). Feeling rules. In The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (pp. 56–75). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Reddy, W. M. (1999). Against constructionism: The historical ethnography of emotions. Current Anthropology, 38(3), 327–351.

Swidler, A. (2001). Repertoires. In Talk of Love: How Culture Matters (pp. 24–40). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilkins, A. C. (2008). From geek to freak. In Wannabees, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status (pp. 24–53). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.