Creative techniques are transformative in coaching and mentoring. They release blockages, or reveal a deeper awareness. This ready-to-use collection of short poems targets coaching and self-reflection. Each sequence, such as “Even a Day” for burnout prevention or “Gorges de la Nesque” for perspective shifts, includes a poem, its intended use, and coaching questions.
Poems are well suited for coaching when used not as interpretations, but as invitations to reflect. They bypass the analytical mind through imagery, helping clients access feelings, body awareness, and fresh perspectives on entrenched problems. A poem creates a pause — space to observe and reflect before acting.
So, meander through these sequences covering themes like self-recognition, perspective shifts, resilience, and letting go. Dwell and see what they reveal in you. And you might find some of them useful for your coaching or mentoring practice!
Possible ways to use these poetic ideas
- Browse the poems, maybe checking each hint to guide your choice.
- Read the text aloud (either the coachee/mentee or you),
- Ask an open-ended question about it (e.g. “What in this text moves you; and what doesn’t?”) — or by using, or taking inspiration from, the proposed “Coaching questions”. Perhaps structured as:
- Observing → What strikes you? (and why?)
- Exploring → What does it mean to you?
- Action → What small step might follow from this?
(As reflection is the main point, don’t force the ‘Action’ step).
- Invite your client to write something, add to it or take something away from it — perhaps a small insight or action.
Set aside your own interpretation and keep your questions open to allow your client to form their own meaning related to their current situation. Not every client will enjoy this “esoteric waste of time” (and that’s fine), although you might be surprised by those who unexpectedly revel in it. So, with permission, try an experiment — see what you find.
Poems and their metaphors can carry cultural connotations. Those proposed have been written in a European context.
1. Mirroring — Self-Recognition in coaching and mentoring
Even a Day
read no newspaper
received no mail
checked no emails
received no news
let no SMS through
had no idea
sought no occupation
thought about nothing
spoke with no one.And?
- Potential use: Digital over-stimulation; intentional withdrawal; stillness/presence; burnout prevention.
- Possible coaching questions:
- Which line catches your attention most? What else could you add to this list? — and why?
- Which line would be almost impossible for you to actually do? — and what feels freeing?
- Is there one thing you could leave out, switch off or let go of for a while?
Step Out
Step out
of rushing moments —
step into still minutes.
Let them grow
into rooms of time.
Clear time up,
shield yourself,
give your eyes
a breath
pause.
- Potential use: Invitation to pause; step out of urgency — space for calm, reflection, and recovery.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What words or images feel familiar from your own experience?
- What helps you create stillness, or “rooms of time”, in a busy day?
- If you needed a time of stillness tomorrow, or the day after, how could you create this space?
Assembled
Forty-five years
after the end of school,
and everyone asks themselves
how to sum up all those years.And why.
When everyone
got through life
without the school gossip
and its updates.
Unbelievable.
Except
as the course of things.
- Potential use: For retrospectives, transitions, farewells to old roles, burnout, crises of meaning — to reflect on the arc of a life. Not everything needs meaning or explanation.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What strikes you in the question of how to sum up all those years?
- If you had to sum up your last 10, 20, 30 years — not as a balance sheet, but as ‘the course of things’ — what would be the first sentence? What feelings do you have?
- Is there one part, or more, of your story you would like to look at again — with less judgement or explanation?
Serene
Trying to sail
on rough seas.
Not interpreting every squall as a storm.
And simply from the full barrel
taking a few drops
of expectation.
- Potential use: Resilience; self-regulation; steadiness in rough seas; proportion; not overreacting; letting go.
- Possible coaching questions:
- Which image or word catches your attention? Why?
- When do you tend to interpret a “squall as a storm”?
- What strengths help you stay steady in high-pressure moments as well as to respond rather than react?
- What would “taking a few drops of expectation” mean in your context? Describe
the drop(s).
2. Perspective Shift (Mindset-shift in poetic form)
Gorges de la Nesque
At every gorge
you ask yourself
how many million years
the river gnawed at the rock,
and why exactly like that.At the Gorges de la Nesque you don’t ask that.
Instead:
How can a river be an artist?
- Potential use: Fixation on duration or output (e.g., stuck on a problem); attention shift from analysis to appreciation, curiosity and fresh perspective.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What happens when the question changes from “Why?” or “How long?” to “How can a river be an artist?
- What if you saw what is happening to you as a work of art?
- Where in your life could you look with more wonder than explanation?
Sculpture
In the visible formed
from found object, stone and wire.
Behind, before, beside,
in between —
the invisible.The sculpture
instils thoughts
into the eye.They trickle.
- Potential use: The visible and the unseen; attention shift from the measurable to the subtle; hidden influences that shape the surface.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What do you notice about the contrast between the visible and the invisible?
- What in your current situation feels most “visible” to you, and what might be getting overlooked?
- What invisible factors — assumptions, values, emotions, possibilities — might be shaping your current situation or decisions?
Horizon
At the sound horizon
a farmer hammers at his future.
The field in front of the farmstead
would be ready.
The cornfield behind it —
still waiting for the harvest,
stands in the way of the silver lining
on the horizon.Roots take hold —
quietly laying the ground
for the future.
- Potential use: For clients who are constantly busy but rarely arrive: lack of completion, restlessness, motion without progress.
- Possible coaching questions:
- Which image stays with you: the horizon, the harvest, or the roots quietly reaching out?
- Where might you be focused on the horizon while the real work is happening quietly underneath? What stands in the way of your silver lining?
- What one root are (or could) you laying now that will support your future?
Leadership
Aimlessly
racing
in the early evening
swifts in group formation
collision-free around.Suddenly
one takes the lead.
Or is it being pursued?
- Potential use: Leadership reflection; role clarification; fluid nature of initiative within a group – influence involves both leading and being led.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What catches your attention in the movement of the swifts? And what do you make of the final question: “Or is it being pursued?”
- How are you leading in your different work situations — steering, accompanying, or waiting?
- When do you feel most comfortable leading, and when do you prefer to follow? Is it an either/or?
A Diving In
A foot-breadth
aside from galloping time,
out of the saddle,
watching a kestrel,
smelling resin,
talking about life.Would the kestrel know the way?
We find it
by diving in.
- Potential use: Stepping out of routine; trusting discovery; moving from analysis into experience.
- Possible coaching questions:
- Which image draws you in: stepping out of “galloping time”, watching the kestrel, or “diving in”?
- Where in your professional life might you be analysing when experience or exploration is needed instead?
- What might one small “dive in” look like for you?
3. The Poem Mind-Bomb
Happiness Path
On the way to happiness
met contentment.
Paused.
- Potential use: Pursuit of happiness; pausing; appreciation; enoughness; contentment.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What strikes you about happiness meeting contentment—and pausing?
- Where in your life might a pause be more valuable than just doing?
- What might change if you allowed yourself to stop and stay with what is already here?
Migratory Birds
Migratory birds are not uprooted —
they only feel the pull.
Scarcely past the horizon,
they soon return.The roots of their meaning
must lie in the air.
- Potential use: Feeling uprooted; guilt around change; belonging; freedom; finding meaning beyond place.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What catches your attention in the idea that migratory birds are not uprooted—they simply “feel the pull”?
- What if you weren’t ‘uprooted’ and followed the ‘pull’ — what is that pull for you?
- What is pulling you at the moment? Where do you experience belonging without feeling fixed or stuck?
Shards
Throw
your fragility
at the feet
of the past.Build
without a crowbar
your future —
follow it confidently,
with gentle footfall.
- Potential use: Letting go; new beginnings; clinging to past injuries, failures or identities; releasing without force.
- Possible coaching questions:
- Which phrase stays with you: “throw your fragility”, “build without a crowbar”, or “gentle footfall”?
- What is the ‘fragility’ you still carry around today — that you could have thrown down long ago?
- What does ‘building without a crowbar’ mean to you? What would change if you didn’t fight, but built more lightly?
Chaordic Path
Where the garden meets wilderness,
where wilderness meets garden,
in this border space without a boundary fence —
order and chaos rub against each other.
At the edges, what begins to change
is what as order needs chaos,
and what as chaos needs order.
- Potential use: Tension between structure and spontaneity, control and surrender; “third space” between rigid order and chaos.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What resonates with you in the image of the “garden” and the “wilderness”?
- Where in your professional life are order and chaos rubbing against each other?
- What do you do with it? — do you tend to tighten control or let go entirely? What would a third option look like?
4. Quiet Companion Poems (for the middle or close of a coaching session)
Trust
Trust the clouds —
seeds will yet sprout, the sun
will come anyway.
- Potential use: Let go of control — exploring patience, faith in process, and holding uncertainty without forcing outcomes; natural timing over premature action.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What image or word stays with you? Why?
- What “clouds” are present for you right now?
- If you fully trusted the process, what would you stop — or start — doing?
Storm in Autumn
What forces the branch
to let go of the leaf?
What does the branch think,
what does the leaf sense?
- Potential use: Letting go — for change and farewell; navigating endings, transitions, or loss.
- Possible coaching questions:
- What word stays with you: the branch, the leaf or the storm? Why?
- What may go, so that something new has space? Or: What are you resisting letting go of?
- What might happen if you released something willingly (rather than waiting to be forced)?
So, what did you notice? What resonated?
A poem will hardly solve a clients problem. But we are all touched by poems in dfferent ways. Creativity lands with its own impact for each person. Yet, a common theme can be that unlocking, that new insight or hope, that honest self-appraisal.
It might feel uncomfortable. You might even feel like an invader in your own mind. Poetry might unlock ideas for you as well as your coachee/mentee.
Do you use creative techniques in your coaching or mentoring? Please share any ideas, comments or thoughts below.
Poems by Kuno Roth; co-authored with Dаvid Firmаn
