What should the relation between politicians and citizens be? A few years ago, Cobi Brouwer wrote a book that will make you reflect on this question. Brouwer wrote the book ‘onorthodox interventions in coaching’ on the basis of ten years of experience as a coach. She developed her own coaching style.

An important lesson of Brouwer is that a coach and his customer should have a loving relationship. The coach acts as a certain guide for the customer when he suffers from problems, when he wants to learn something new or when he has conflicts with others. This customer is quite similar to a citizen who looks for a politician when he has problems, questions, ideas or the simple impression that something is wrong: the politician serves as the guide of its citizens. Which lessons can these guides learn from Brouwers book?
 

1. Politicians should accept citizens as they are: if they want to build a relation with them, they need to accept them with all their imperfections.

2. Politicians should be able to cope with the problems of citizens: they should have ideas about it, have certain knowledge, and have the idea that they can really help citizens with their problems.

3. Citizens should accept their politicians as well. The question is whether they think that a certain poltician could really help them. Did they choose the correct guide?

4. Politicians should make contact with citizens: a deep contact is needed for communication and change. When there is no trust, there is no contact and no change at all.

This book gives very simple reasons why traditional parties lack support of citizens so often, and why right-wing populists are so popular. Citizens are afraid about Europe, immigration or islam. Right-wing populists accept citizens as they are, they make contact with them and pretend that they can help citizens with these problems. As a result, many citizens accept these politicians as their guides.

This is fundamentally different for traditional parties. Citizens who doubt Europe, globalisation or immigration are not accepted, they are interpreted as racists who want to go back to the fifties. There is no connection or trust. These parties give citizens the impression that they cannot handle the problems citizens deeply care about. As a result, citizens do not accept these parties. If traditional parties want to become guides, they need to take the first step: accept citizens with all their imperfections. If they don’t, they are no guide for them at all.

When you read Brouwer’s book, it all seems so simple. But why is this then so difficult for all these higher educated politicians?

Chris Aalberts*
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
 

Read more in:  Coby Brouwer (2002): Onorthodoxe interventies bij coachen: de kunst van het ontregelen [Onorthodox interventions in coaching: the art of disrupting]. Soest: Nelissen.

* Chris Aalberts is lecturer and researcher in political communication. Visit his blog: http://www.chrisaalberts.nl/ - This paper is also accessible in Dutch