One of the dramatic elements in Will Keiper’s chapters in our upcoming book, THE LEADER and THE COACH, is how he embraces and illuminates the worldwide uncertainty leaders face today. Here are my thoughts on that from a coach’s perspective that I offered to Carolyn Freyer-Jones for her upcoming school:
I like to remind myself as often as I can of these words by spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle: “If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.”
Coaches who remember to nurture their inner peace, compassion for others, and their innate love of life .. and then come from that stable and luminous place in all their communications with clients and prospective clients … those coaches will thrive in what looks like “times of trouble” to the outside world.
Because these are the times when people need and want coaching more than ever.
In the winter of 2008, the U.S. economy was in a full-blown recession and, as financial institutions’ liquidity struggles continued, stock markets around the world were tumbling the most since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
I was doing most of my coaching and seminar-leading with companies and organizations at that time, and I remember all the budget-cutting and downsizing and general panic my clients were going through. Even my clients and prospects outside of corporate were scared and worried about money and what the uncertain future might do to them.
My first instinct was a carryover from past conditioning that had me worrying and living all day in my “negative imaginary future” (a phrase I learned later from Ron Hulnick of USM.)
But it was my own coach, Steve Hardison, who turned that thinking around for me when he said, “People need you now more than ever. Get out there and help them deal with this in a positive way. Help them flourish.”
I knew right away he was right. People were more open to getting coaching help than ever before. Especially if I didn’t share in their anxious obsession with “the news” and outside circumstance. Especially if I didn’t commiserate.
People hire coaches because they want change. Most people believe that external change is the only change they need, which is why they feel so powerless and helpless. But we coaches, at our best and most skillful, work on the inside. We clear the lens through which our clients see the world, and we open them to the divine creativity they are made of.
~Steve Chandler, co-author (with Will Keiper) of The Leader and The Coach–The Art of Humanity in Leadership
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Credit: This is a blogpost by Steve Chandler at www.theleaderandthecoach.com
