Change in the context of… coaching
Coaching is the art of creative relationship for all seasons. Good coaching empowers people from within themselves. Coaching draws out and demystifies the feelings and fears of Voice 1, invents experiments and possibility in Voice 2, and clarifies objectives and stands for the disciplines of Voice 3. In a sense, coaching is the perfect strategy for people whose worlds are changing.
Coaching - good coaching - is all about learning. In that sense, it is all about change, since learning, transition and design are all about letting go of the known, re-inventing possibility and enacting a commitment to a new work of a new order. Coaching may just be the highest form of the art of leading/teaching/guiding others on a one to one basis. Leadership of groups is another matter, though not unrelated. Coaching assumes that there is always a new potential lying just below the surface of current knowledge. This edge of new possibility, or the Learning Edge as I've called it, can be found, integrated and enacted. As edge after edge is crossed and each little bit of learning is integrated the individual is constantly re-empowered at a higher level. Taken over some time, one might perceive an immense transformation. The individual would not experience it as a step change. Rather, he or she would just be doing the work, day by day.
Like learning and good design, healthy transformation occurs day by day. If we are learners we do it without thinking about it. A learning organisation has this coursing through its veins. The most devoted artists of all stripes are naturals at it, or at least have given themselves to the process. It is not easy or without anxiety and pain. In fact it always has anxiety and some struggle. Sometimes immense struggle and discomfort. When a big discontinuity strikes us, imposed from the outside, we are tossed into a change not of our personal making. In a sense we have to catch up with our life. Our mind and body go right to work on it, looking for the right path and, at the same time, avoiding the whole thing. Coaching offers the fastest path through it, with least angst, least waste and most reward.
The luxury of long times of stability between upheavals was always an illusion. Given the speed up of all things in the world, we can no longer maintain the illusion. Change is a constant. Or maybe it is not. Perhaps that which is constant is the constant increase in uncertainty and the level of chaos we all live with. Chaos has two edges. If we look to the outside world to tell us who to be and how to be, chaos will be increasingly destructive to our psyche. We are quickly overwhelmed, at sea, adrift. In order to get-a-grip, we may immerse ourselves in a human-made system of ideological thinking, be it religious, corporate, scientific, sexual, athletic or political or some other which provides 'all the answers' for living. Taking these at face value produce their own chaos of divisions, proselytisation and warfare of all kinds. The other edge of chaos provides us a rich field for creativity, assuming we are looking within for our own story, our own heart's desire, our own wellspring of creative expression. From this point of view our job can be a place to get our life's work done rather than pleasing the company bosses. From this point of view the chaos of all things provides massive, undisciplined resources to be harnessed to effect our purposes. But, for this to work our purposes must be OUR purposes and they must rise, over our lifetime, from within.
Coaching is the one most potent role for a parent, a teacher, a guru, a manager to learn, if he or she is truly committed to seeing their charges evolve most fully. Decent, caring parents probably come closest to the experience of this commitment as they raise their kids. Parenting can start off as wanting to have kids to fulfil ME - I want the experience of raising a kid. If this persists then the child is used as a tool to generate a lot of keen anecdotes, or to make me feel like an insider in the parent game. Of course, the real experience, for caring people, quickly transcends such limited, selfish pre-conceived notions of what parenting is all about.
All of us carry some appropriate selfishness. I want to evolve as fully as I can. But I am apt to want to use you to help me fulfil that desire before I get interested in your actual evolution. Some people do go to their grave wishing their kids had turned out better so as to give the departing soul a higher stature in heaven. Some, who are called teachers, just seek tenure and power and their own research. And, some managers see their employees as resources to ennoble the manager's stature in the eyes of the almighty gods of the-next-great-assignment. We woo the potential hire as if they are magical and valuable beyond reason. Once on board we expect them to jump to our every order and treat us as gods, just as we jump to please and kiss up to the various gurus, geniuses, smarty pants and morons who inhabit the upper reaches of our own client set.
Fortunately, most of us know we aren't terribly saintly, yet we still do our best to be good people. And for the others, well, hope springs eternal. Those who truly aspire to being satisfied with a life and sense the need to give something back, can find remarkable well-being by showing up with a coaching attitude to their kids and the other ones in their sphere who want to be more. The generosity of attention and the curiosity and finely tuned listening and invention and story telling that comes with coaching is well advised for almost every encounter we have with other humans and most every other species we choose to hang out with.
Other species? Can one coach a cat? Can one think like a cat, get interested in what the cat may be interested in, imagine something new to interest the cat, aligned with its apparent curiosity, and successfully fascinate the cat into the new game? I think so. Getting a stranger of a cat along the road to trust the traveller is all about being more interested and attentive and inventive to the cat then the cat can imagine a human being being. And this is precisely the pathway to a great coaching relationship with another human, who, after all, is not nearly as crafty as the cat. A mahout coached an elephant into playing hide and seek. Yup. I have it on tape. A woman coached a fish into playing basketball. Really. But, you'll have to trust me on this one.
