Inhabiting complexity. Coaching as a new tool for working well in cultural heritage

Some time ago I worked on a particularly complex cultural project. A wide, layered project that involved researchers, field technicians, restorers, clients, institutional sponsors, and a local community that was very sensitive and attentive — partly because of past experiences that had not always been positive.

On paper all the right competences were there.

The people were well-prepared, motivated, often excellent in their fields. And yet the project ran into delays, misunderstandings, subtle but continuous frictions. Not for lack of technical capacity, but because of unclear communication, roles that were not always made explicit, divergent expectations, and a general difficulty in holding together vision, timing, and responsibility.

One of the main difficulties, for example, was the pressure exerted from above: a project leadership that was very exposed to the sponsors and tended to pour urgencies, requests, and tensions onto the team. From a project management perspective, many of these dynamics were formally correct; yet they were not enough to make the work sustainable.

Looking back a few months later, it is clear to me that, alongside management tools, a space for team coaching would have been useful. Not to manage or motivate, but to think together.

In international cultural contexts, where you work under pressure with many different people and specialists, with pressure coming from all sides, project management is necessary, but not always sufficient. Coaching can sit alongside it, offering a different space: not operational, but reflective. A space where professionals, researchers, project managers, or directors can pause and observe how they are working, not only how much they are doing.

In project work, in teams, in academia, or in museums, coaching can help to:

• bring clarity at moments of transition or blockage
• support responsibility without isolation
• improve the quality of professional relationships
• train presence, listening, and conscious choice

It does not add another workload. Instead, it can make the work more inhabitable, more intentional, more sustainable.

In our sector, which holds memory, meaning, and future, perhaps it is worth taking care also of the spaces in which the people who work in it can think, choose, and grow.