This is the first of two connected issues on coaching. We have written about the “terrain” of coaching and the various charted and uncharted parts of our profession, encouraging continued exploration and explanation of the whole and the pieces (like effective contracting, establishing trust, methods and perspectives, how to measure outcomes or starting points).
There’s another way we sometimes segment our work, this time into two vast and different lands: Life/Personal Coaching and Executive/Organizational Coaching. This, our first of two issues, will focus on Life/Personal Coaching; the second, on Executive/Organizational Coaching. Often it seems these domains lie distant and separate. In fact, we have professionals and schools, companies and nonprofits, which claim to be exclusively one or the other.
Certainly there are differences. Coaches who work in organizations often have multiple stakeholders (client, boss, HR contact); Life/Personal coaches typically have a single person to whom they are responsible, the client. Coaches who work in organizations often have more complex interactions to acquire, contract, and assess their coaching work—there may even be multiple rounds of actual legal contracting. Executive coaching engagements can sometimes be inflexible or embedded in programs where they are secondary concerns. Life/Personal coaches may have more interactions to acquire clients and may need to think about scaling businesses in different ways. Their work may be more fluid and flexible since it generally occurs directly with the stakeholder who is also the client, contractor and evaluator.
But none of those important distinctions really address what we might argue is at the core of our work as coaches: the enhancement of individual lives. Whether that person works in an organization or is an organization unto themselves is not necessarily the defining factor of our work. We write “an organization unto themselves” deliberately to highlight the obvious observation of our profession: that people are quite complex in their history, experiences, actions and desires. But we also write the phrase to imply the connectedness of individuals and organizations–noting the fractal nature of our work as coaches.
A fractal, as we all may remember, is a pattern that repeats at progressively smaller scales, much like the molecular lattice-work in a crystal…or the behavior of a leader in a corporate division or a suburban family. Another example: You can see the way generosity appears as it cascades in patterns from people who lead to those who follow and, in turn, lead others who follow them, who again in turn, lead even more. You can also observe generosity in the way a leader lives with himself and the ways in which that influences his or her impact on others.
Sometimes we are helping leaders consider what vision is, or how to delegate, or what differentiates between the strategic and the merely good-to-do. Sometimes that vision is about how an organization could expand services throughout new continents; sometimes the vision is about how a leader sees his or her own impact expanding. Sometimes we ask questions about what could be essential to delegate in order to develop others and organizational reach; sometimes we ask questions about what people don’t find joy in doing.
That’s the thing about fractals: because they are patterns that repeat at different scales, you can follow them in and you can follow them out. Individuals and organizations are variations on a fractal theme. (Our work wouldn’t be interesting enough if the patterns were always replicated perfectly…) Where we begin—focusing on the individual, or focusing on the organization, serving as Life/Personal Coaches or Executive/Organizational Coaches—may not be one of the more relevant distinctions of our work.
In this issue, we’ll begin at the level of the individual, focusing on Life/Personal Coaching.
First, one of us joined with David Skibbins to write about the “Ten Trends in Life/Personal Coaching.” (In our next issue, we’ll have the article from Carol Goldsmith that inspired the thinking behind this issue, “Ten Trends in Organizational Coaching. “)
From our partner choice magazine, with the generous support of Garry Schleifer, we have reprinted two great articles. The first, by Ann Betz, concerns “How Coaching Changes the Coach.” The second article, by Ronnie Brabon, is about “Wearing Two Hats: The Key to Whole Coach Mastery.”
From the archives of the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations (special thanks to John Lazar, as usual), we have a great piece on adult development theory in coaching by Pam McLean, “A Developmental Perspective in Coaching”.
We are glad to have a great addition to the Bookshelf, written by two of our colleagues (Edmundo Currie and Shinta Togatorop) from Indonesia. They are reviewing Matt Driver’s Coaching Positively.
We hope you find these perspectives on the terrain of personal and life coaching to be of interest and informative. We will be offering various perspectives on the terrain of organizational and executive coaching in our next issue. Stay tuned . . .
Bill Carrier
Bill Bergquist
Co-Editors