The Frontier Town
In bringing this eighth analysis to a close, I turn to the metaphor of a frontier town that I have deployed in previous essays and elsewhere (Bergquist, 2011). The professional coaching community might already be on the threshold of establishment as a real “town” with law and order, a schoolhouse and some legitimate businesses. This being the case, we might be finding that the earlier occupants of this community find it a bit too “tame” and no longer a site of radical entrepreneurship. They (USA coaches) might be getting a bit bored and are making plans to move on to another newly discovered territory. Conversely, the new arrivals (non-USA coaches) might be excited about the prospects of living and working in this wonderful new (for them) town. I am obviously engaging a metaphor that is much too fanciful for any serious analysis of the marginal results obtained from this preliminary study. Nevertheless, the dynamics operating in this metaphor do align with what has already been proposed regarding fads (Maher and Pomerantz, 2008) and the diffusion of innovation (Bergquist, 2011) in the field of professional coaching
In my further engagement of this frontier metaphor, I look to results obtained from all of my previous analyses. The organizational coaches were a bit more positive than were the personal coaches, but the differences (if any) were minor. Organizational coaches perceive themselves to be a bit more skillful in practicing coaching than do the personal coaches who responded to this survey, and feel more like they have a growing sense of enthusiasm about engaging in the coaching enterprise than do their personal coaching colleagues. Perhaps, organizational coaching is newer and more like a frontier town than is personal coaching. We do know that personal coaching tended to precede organizational coaching in many countries (including the USA) (Brock, 2012). Are the personal coaches (especially in the USA) most likely to move on to other ventures—following their own advice to “follow your bliss”?
Is the frontier town metaphor appropriate in understanding potential difference between professional coaches from different countries? Is this metaphor (like many metaphors) compelling but not very accurate? After all, coaching has been in place for many years in some non-American countries. What we now call “coaching” has gone by many other names in various countries—so we need to be careful about declaring that this is a “new” field of human service in most countries. There might be an even more damning critique regarding the use of this metaphor: it might now be out of date. Yes, 10 years ago we could talk about a “frontier”, but probably not today. Organizations such as ICF have successfully promoted professional coaching in many countries, and membership in ICF is remarkably international in scope.
