Rachel would do well to serve Sam by focusing on his use of language and on the assumptions, perspectives and values that underlie his use of language. It is very difficult for any of us to reflect critically on our own linguistic and cognitive world, for we can only reflect on this world from within our world (what is often called the “hermeneutic paradox”). A coach like Rachel can be of great value in this regard, though Rachel is in an awkward place because she dwells in a world that is very much like the one in which Sam dwells. How does she step outside her own assumptive world? Would Sam be better served by a coach who comes from a different country, for whom English is a second language? Might such a person offer a more critical and detached perspective—and ultimately be of greater benefit to Sam? We are now in a place—with professional coaching becoming a global enterprise—to ask this question about the relative value of local (parochial) versus global (cosmopolitan) coaching services.
Conclusions
Some of the more obvious shifts occurring in early 21st societies have been identified and several implications have been drawn regarding how these shifts might impact the professional coaching enterprise. Each of these shifts requires an expanded sense of self, of organization, of society and even of the entire global community. We might even want to reach out beyond our own world to consider the recent findings in astrophysics regarding our university being much larger and more dynamic than we had previously believed. And what will happen during the next few years when new telescopes will be able to reach across vast time and space continua to actually witness the creation of the universe (the “big bang”). Rudolph Otto wrote many years ago about the reactions of human beings when confronting the “numinous” (unstructured, experience of the massive reality that confronts us every day). How do we address the “awe-ful-ness” of our expanding universe? As one of my colleagues recently mentioned, our “God” is going to have to grow much larger, given the immense and expanding size of our universe.
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