How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching and Counseling in Difficult Circumstances | Page 148

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safety manager [you] again! I’m always sounding like somebody’s mommy – be careful about this, be careful
about that. God forbid I should leave you alone to get the job done!”
Though he classes counterprojective statements as “interpersonal” rather than “empathic,” Havens notes that
counterprojective statements are also empathic, “because they involve the expression of the patient’s strongest
feelings.” But counterprojective statements go on to help reattribute those feelings to their correct objects, rather
than letting them stay misattributed to you.
I do a fair amount of work with mining and oil companies in developing countries – countries with a long
history of colonial exploitation. When a western multinational corporation arrives in an African village, it is a
safe bet that many stakeholders will project their feelings about colonialism onto the company. Of course the
projection may be accurate; the company may in fact be yet another colonial exploiter. But assume for the
moment that it isn’t. Assume that the company intends to behave responsibly and responsively, that it is capable
of behaving responsibly and responsively, that it will share the profits from its resource development activities
with the people whose resources are to be developed, that the village is really going to end up better off than if
the resources weren’t developed (or at least better off than if they were developed by a different company). So
the projection is inaccurate.
But the projection is nonetheless inevitable. To succeed in establishing a good relationship with the village and
securing a “social license to operate,” the company will need to voice the loathing of colonialism that is
animating the village and contaminating the interaction. It will need to say, not “That damn chair!” but
something equivalent to “That damn colonialism!” It will need to make counterprojective statements.
But that’s not all it will need to do. The company will also need to acknowledge the ways in which it really does
resemble the colonial exploiters of the past. I want to turn to that next.

9. Proactive Acknowledgment: “Some Things You Should Know about Me”
I have urged mining and oil companies in the situation described above to come as close as they can make
themselves come to saying something like this:
For centuries people who looked a lot like me have stolen resources from people who looked a lot like you. So
when we come here today asking your permission to let us drill, you’d have to be a fool not to feel a lot of anger
and a lot of suspicion. Are we going to do it to you again? And I have to admit a painful truth: If we could do it
to you again, there’s a good chance we would. A lot of people think that’s the nature of capitalism, to do
whatever the company can get away with. I hope I wouldn’t be a part of anything like that, but there’s no reason
why you should trust that I wouldn’t – and I can’t even claim that my company wouldn’t, if it could.
What’s important here is that whether we want to or not, we can’t act like colonial exploiters anymore. You’re
too powerful – powerful in your own right and powerful in your allies, all the activists and NGOs and socially
responsible shareholder groups that are watching us like a hawk. So the question isn’t whether or not we’re
going to exploit you again – and get away with it again. We can’t get away with it anymore. The question is
whether or not you’re going to forgive us for the history of past exploitation and let us do business with you.
There are still pros and cons to letting us come into your village, of course. It’s still debatable whether the
benefit to your people will outweigh the harm. Even with a company that’s trying to be socially responsible and
a community that’s empowered, resource development is a dirty and disruptive business. Some things haven’t
changed: We come, we harvest your resources, we make money, we leave. Even though some of the control and
some of the profits have moved from us to you, it can still feel a lot like colonial exploitation.
This is more than a counterprojective statement. It acknowledges that there is truth to the projection.
When Havens writes about interpersonal statements, he’s f