Western Culture or Human Nature?

In a recent coach training even I led I was asked the question, “How much of this coaching stuff is culturally based? For example, will it work at a Korean church?” And it’s a question worth asking.

The coaching movement is an international movement. It can’t be said that life coaching is only a real industry in the Western world. However, it can be said that the majority of coaching is taking place in the Western world. The argument could even be made that the life coaching happening in non-Western locations reflects people who are adopting Western culture (i.e. corporations who are capitalistic competitors to the West).

The core values of coaching do seem to reflect Western culture more than some others (from my own perspective). For example, authenticity is becoming a huge value in American culture. Our leaders are no longer required to look perfect, but rather “be real” with us. Distrusting the “expert” is common is America, too, and someone who would come alongside of us rather than be “over” us to teach us is much more appealing to many Americans. These values are not universally shared. For example, my personal work with other cultures reveals that authority and expertise are much more highly valued in others cultures (i.e. Asian cultures).

So I pose the question to you: Is coaching a product of Western culture (and therefore applicable only to those who want to be Western) or is it a product of universal human nature (and applicable to all cultures equally)?

Reformed Advice-Givers

One of the core ideas in coaching is that the coach is supposed to help the client discover their own solutions and not give advice. The posture of teaching, being an expert who instructs another, usually is considered anathema to most coaches. This idea is not just one of many elements to successful coaching. I think you can make a strong case that it’s one of the few foundational paradigms on which the coaching industry and movement is built. However, after talking with hundreds of professional coaches and training coaches professionally I have noticed an ironic motif. It seems that the vast majority of people who are eager to become coaches—people who pay noteworthy amounts of money to be trained as coaches—self-describe themselves as prolific advice-givers. Certainly, by the time they complete their training they hold the value of drawing ideas out of others rather than offering their own ideas. But coming into the program, a great number of the coaches I know name that aspect as one of the most significant changes they had to make to become an effective coach. And, to be authentic here, that would be my story as well.

So my questions are: What is it about coaching as a field that draws people whose “natural” posture is antithetical to the coaching field? Is it a misperception in how coaching is understood? Is it something in the personality wiring of would-be-coaches? If this sounds like your story, too, how do you explain it in your own life?

Coaching vs. Counseling

Coaches talk a lot about the difference between coaching and counseling. It makes sense. They are similar enough that defining differences in the industries is necessary. And I certainly think there are significant differences. However, I think that one of the differences is harder to define in real life than we coaches make it out to be.

We say that counselors deal with areas of brokenness or woundedness in their clients, whereas coaches work with people who are basically healthy and functional. In essence I agree with this. But in practical experience I find this distinction to be a very fuzzy line.

Here’s my question for people to comment on: What level of brokenness, pain, or woundedness requires a counselor approach vs. a coaching approach? Or asked another way, how much healing work can a coach be involved in with a client and still be truly coaching (and not counseling)?

I look forward to hearing how you handle this is your coaching business.

Scott Wozniak

When Does a Moment Become a Movement?

Many people live for a moment in time when everything seems to come together for them. Many coaches are trained to “stay in the moment” for the people they are coaching or training. These are great goals and are very satisfying to the participants.

My question that I have been processing over the years is what actually makes for a movement of these moments; a sustainable momentum that goes beyond those individual participants to become something real, tangible, and even generational beyond any one person's experience or stewardship?

Here are some of my operating values and principles on creating or even stewarding any movement; including a coaching movement.

A movement has to be organic in its connections and has to follow relational lines to form into a movement. The now classic text on church growth called The Bridges of God explained that “people movements” in church history always emphasized that the “Gospel always travels along existing social networks”.

A movement has to have a transferable DNA that is coded in both a curriculum and in the people who steward the process of that curriculum. For a coaching movement to meet this standard there needs to be evidence of years of tested results across various cultures that achieve consistent transformation. It is the people, the process, and the paper that make for a multiplying movement. (Thank you monks for preserving the movement of the scriptures during the Dark Ages!)

The larger vision for the movement has to be encoded in a song, a metaphor, or some kind of rallying cry so that individuals are able to “see” or “hear” something much larger than their own experience and interpret that personal experience in light of the larger call. We have chosen both the Seven Mountains call and the continuum of personal, family, vocational, and community transformation as our movement language that brings people out of their personal career plans for coaching to a call to Kingdom significance in the ministry and the marketplace.

What are you learning about movements that inform how you are bringing coaching into the lives of those around you?

Joseph Umidi