September 25th 2017

I thought about this line reading the chat feed while watching a livestream of a coaching workshop this past weekend. At one point, a presenter, a well-known and brilliant coach, was talking about Power, and how she discovered how strong she really was after being sexually assaulted. She recognized that extraordinary coaching involves both authenticity and vulnerability, and she invited us to journey deep into the depths of our own selves, to find our inner strength. Very powerful stuff.

We who were watching from home had a chat feed. Someone wrote, after this presentation, how she was disappointed, because she was coming to this weekend coaching conference to learn coaching tools, and instead she was getting “group therapy.”

Sigh.

I understand the comment. She came here with certain expectations, and she was not getting what she came for. At the same time, to me, her comment reminded me of the line from the musical Wicked!:

“I don’t understand why you don’t just teach us history instead of always harping on the past.”

Coaching comes from within.

And I started to think about tools.

Tools are obviously very useful. They can be weapons for positive change. At the same there is another truism: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

For example, I know someone who had a serious medical condition, and he sought various opinions. Surgeons recommended surgery. Endocrinologists recommended hormone treatment. Radiologists recommended radiation. Those were their “hammers”, and his condition looked like a nail to each of them. And that is where and how tools can become weapons inadvertently.

And this participant on the chat feed, and she was seconded by one or two others, was disappointed in the “group therapy,” because she wanted tools instead.

Focusing on tools is focusing on what we “do.” As I see it, the best coaching comes from, as Rich Litvin, co-author of The Prosperous Coach, likes to put it, “Who we BE.” The presenter put herself out there to help us become more than we are, and to find that inner power to help us better “BE” our best and most powerful selves. A few participants were looking to learn — or be told? — what “to do.”

I honor their commitment to their craft, and their willingness to commit time and money to participate in that weekend coaching conference. And, perhaps this can create a shift for them.

The other possibility, though, is for these participants to end up like the grade school class a friend told me about, who went to the aquarium to learn how they trained dolphins. They had the kids circle the dolphin trainers, and as the trainers talked, they patted a kid on his head and then gave him an “M&M.” They continued talking and patted the kid next to him on the head and gave him an M&M as well. The 3rd kid, watching this, when he saw the trainer’s hand over his head, jumped, so that his head hit the hand faster, so that he could get the M&M faster. By the time the trainers went around the circle a few times, the kids were jumping, twirling, and tumbling, in order to get those M&M’s.

But the students had no idea how they trained the dolphins…..