Great coaches do work that is similar to a sculptor’s work. They see what’s possible in their client, and then they help the client carve the negative beliefs away. Soon the client is feeling a freedom they have never known.
This happened for me many years ago when I turned my dreams (trapped inside my negative beliefs) over to the hammer and chisel of my own coach Steve Hardison.
The term “coaching” comes from the world of sports and also from the performing arts. That’s why they call it coaching instead of “consulting” or “advising” or “counseling.” I remember a time when there was no coaching for people like you and me. There was only coaching for athletes and singers and actors. (Those budding superstars had strength coaches, voice coaches and dialect coaches; they had quarterback coaches, golf coaches, and hitting coaches.) For you and me? There were no “life” coaches.
And leaders were stranded in the same boat. They had highly specialized industry-specific consultants with lots of advice and recommendations about how to manipulate the outside world of employees, customers and financial opportunities, but nothing for the inside…nothing for the heart, soul, mind, and spirit of the leader….a human being with a life.
But ultimately (and fortunately) a personal growth movement began as the world got more entrepreneurial and creative. Individuals became more empowered. No longer did most people work for the same huge company at the same boring job all their lives and then get a watch and retire (and get to show it off in an open coffin).
Creative people and innovative small businesses were rising up. People changed jobs often, and even changed careers, and soon anyone who really wanted to succeed was considering hiring a coach. Why not?
Two heads have always been better than one. If you want to grow as a whole and balanced person, are you not better with two people on the project than one?
A lot of people have thought that this explosion of personal life coaching is absurd. Why should a healthy-minded person be hiring a coach? A life coach? Are you kidding me? Don’t you already know about life? Don’t you know how to live?
People asking those questions were missing the point. This was not about survival. This was about thriving.
Even today, people wonder if their inner life qualifies for “coaching.” It’s that whole “little old me” approach to low self-esteem and fear-based false modesty. That’s one of the debilitating problems that coaching ends up solving. Mocking self-help is the ego protecting itself.
However, protecting the ego keeps me isolated and shrunken down to my merely survivable self. So I feel disconnected, not only from the world, but from my own potential.
Most leaders who are succeeding today will understand and identify with this quote:
At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. ~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer
~Steve Chandler, co-author with Will Keiper of the book, The Leader and The Coach
Contact For interviews, blog content, podcast invitations, and other information, please contact will@theleaderandthecoach.com
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