(A Possible Prologue to a Future Coaching Book)
The coaching industry is at a crossroads.
In our hands is one of the most powerful pieces of technology created in the twentieth century. A tool with as much promise and possibility as the microchip or the discovery of antibiotics. And a tool that is so easy to take for granted or to corrupt on a deep level.
And, as we step into this intersection we face a stark choice.
Are we going to use this tool to put Kandy Krush into the hands of every human with a heartbeat?
Are we going to keep turning depth workers and healers from vibrant humans into life-wheel zombies and core-competency ghosts?
Or are we going to use this tool to mold a new generation of leaders, ideas, movements, and grasp at the fullness of human potential?
THIS ISN’T A PHILOSOPHICAL IDEA. . .
There is a very real battle currently going on for the soul of the coaching industry—and the Empire is winning.
It’s winning because more coaches than not are being run by fear. Fear of not getting clients, fear of being left behind, fear of having to work for someone else, fear of competition, and fear of possibility.
And it’s not their fault; (it’s not your fault either.)
You’re not the reason that the coaching industry has come to this.
In fact, if you look at the history of any revolutionary technology, this arc is entirely predictable and unsurprising. But even though it’s not your fault . . .
Even though you’re not one of the people trading transformation like ill-gotten droids . . .
IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
Because you have the ability to respond. You have the ability to be a different kind of coach.
Not a CTI Coach, or a Prosperous Coach Coach, or an Advanced Client System’s Coach, or a Mindvalley Coach, or a Robbins-Madanes Coach, or a Co-active Coach, or a ‘The Work’ Coach, or a Tantric Spirituality Coach, or an RTT coach, or a Master NLP Practitioner coach, or an ICF Certified Level Two Master Wizard CPP Coach.
Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these groups or systems. This isn’t a matter of affiliation.
It’s an invitation to become something more than the school you trained in. It’s an invitation to become the kind of coach that is brilliant, innovative, creative, transformational, powerful, successful, and incredibly impactful.
You have the ability to be the author of the future of coaching instead of a supplicant stormtrooper adorned in the matching white-plated armor so many of your peers seem to wear.
You have the ability to become a one-of-a-kind master coach, an X-wing fighter whose dings and scrapes speak to the depth, commitment, practice, and being you’ve developed in devotion to your own deep work.
The world of coaching doesn’t need any more gurus or Sith lords. It doesn’t need any more kingdoms that say this is the right way to coach, this is the best way to coach, this is the ONLY way to coach.
We need more rebels who say . .
THIS IS MY SABER OF LIGHT AND TRUTH . . .
There are many like it, but THIS ONE IS MINE.
Its color is as unique as my ability, my style, and my approach.
I share the best of what I’ve learned, I give everything I have, but I don’t let anyone take everything I’ve got.
And I’m not attached to my way being the ‘right way’ for anyone other than me.
The choice is up to you. And you get to make it today, and tomorrow, and the next day.
You can follow the well worn path. The one that leads to a Death Star of the predictable decline of what could be a heroic industry. We can watch the fading possibility of coaching spread into space like orbs of light dispersing from a shattered planet.
Or you can be different. You can coach differently, not recklessly or without support, but nobly.
As Samurai Ronin . . . the last of the Jedi Masters.
I place my saber upon the table.
Will you join me?
