I was talking to a dear friend and fellow Coach the other day about ‘waiting for a crisis to change our ways of being’ as it applies in all aspects of our life, work, personal relationships, and health, as well as the health of an organization.

To say human beings process things in a certain way, in this case waiting until things are ‘broken,’ is to give validity to a perspective or paradigm that doesn’t serve us. Why wait for a crisis to implement change or rethink and reinvent something? Why not just create something incredible to start with, when everything is already good?

Could it be we automatically settle because amazing things happen to someone else, not us? Is it possible we don’t want to ‘press our luck’? Many have a hard time getting past their successes and so stop dead halfway to their dreams. Many become workaholics and yet won’t redefine their lives until their partner is about to ‘walk.’ There are those who won’t redefine how a company operates until it’s in crisis and about to go under. Why wait until the last moment when digging yourself out is so much harder than building something new on a foundation of great?

There might not be a simple answer, but I’d love to hear your insights on this.

I believe we can do our best coaching when we have the conversations we need to have with people in all fields of practice.  It’s not just talking to clients or colleagues, it’s talking to everyone and anyone to find out their story, how they got to where they are. 

Did they work with coaches or not?  If they haven’t worked with a coach, what was their overall impression of coaching?  Good?  Bad?  Indifferent?  How could coaching have impacted their world if they worked with one when things were great?

I recently wrote an article for the International Journal for Coaching in Organizations http://www.ijco.info on the topic of Shadow Coaching political leaders. One of the questions I posed to someone in an area of power, complexity and intensity was “What if your work could positively influence the stressors on your team? What would that look like?” 

Without letting the cat out of the bag, you’ll have to read the article to know the rest, let me just say that in this case the stressors were positive and energizing ones. How can we, as a community of coaches, let the world know our work is about helping great people become even better and that we don’t ‘fix’ things or people?

I’d love to hear your stories about “From Great to Even Better”

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