AN OPEN LETTER TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE GLOBAL CONVENTION ON COACHING PROCESS
As many of you have heard by now, The Foundation of Coaching is no longer sponsoring or providing staff support for the GCC process. We strongly believe in the original intentions of the three people who convened the work: Michael Cavanagh, David Lane, and Dianne Stober. We have provided tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of paid staff hours for well over a year in direct support of the GCC steering committee. We are genuinely saddened to be in a position to officially withdraw our support at this time.
The intent of this open letter is to provide answers to the participants in the GCC process, many of whom have approached us individually in the last several months, and with greater urgency since the official invitations for the Dublin event were issued. We have heard your profound concern and your desire for information and clarity. It is our hope that the GCC steering committee will be able to communicate with you directly, clearly, and quickly.
When The Foundation of Coaching, a project of the Harnisch Family Foundation, stepped up to provide the major funding to begin the work of the Global Convention on Coaching, our intention was to help the steering committee (Stober, Lane, Cavanagh) attract a broad range of participants from around the world to address many important topics in coaching, culminating in an in-person event in Dublin where vigorous discussion among stakeholders representing a wide spectrum of constituencies and interests would occur.
We supported the vision of the GCC steering committee, including an agreement that substantial funding from many players around the world would be secured. The Harnisch Foundation, celebrating its tenth year of grantmaking, encourages its grantees to seek broad financial support to avoid dependency on any single source of funding. The assurance of funding from other sources was a condition of our support. This has been a difficult sticking point - to date, we have provided a significant majority of the money and staff, which was never the intent of either the Foundation or the steering committee.
The most significant consequence of the absence of other major funding is the cost to delegates who wish to participate in the Dublin event. The steering committee set the price of registration at 1200 Euros. In addition, participants will bear the cost of their own hotel rooms (four or five nights) and transportation. Depending upon the distance a participant must travel to get to Dublin, this means it will probably cost between 2500 and 5000 Euros in order to attend the conference. The participants in the GCC process have already devoted countless hours of volunteer time in their working groups.
It was never our intention that these volunteers, who have already done so much, should bear a financial burden in order to attend. The Foundation’s financial support subsidized major expenses for those who attended the 2007 GCC planning meeting in New York City, and it was expected that the Dublin event would be similarly supported by other sponsors. It wasn’t, and the result was a price many of you told us was just too expensive. For some of you, it would be a double expense, because you would be giving up a full week of income-producing activity in order to attend the Dublin event. This was not what we expected. It is a significant departure from the steering committee’s original commitment, and we are extremely uncomfortable with putting so much financial responsibility on the volunteers who are essential to the work of the GCC.
In addition to the financial concerns, some of you have told us that your working groups are not well-organized and are not on schedule to produce the results you expected in time for the Dublin event. Others have indeed met expectations and are prepared to come to the GCC with well-developed scenarios to consider. It seems logical to us that the effort and expense of the Dublin event should happen when all of the working groups have done sufficient work to make the convention enormously productive. And it seems only fair that the event should only occur when there is enough financial support to make it possible for a representative, diverse group of participants to attend, regardless of their individual financial circumstances, as was the case at the 2007 planning meeting. We think these two factors –the completion of the preparatory work and the reduction of costs to participants – are key to attracting the representative participation that would help the work of the GCC gain support from the many stakeholders in the coaching profession worldwide.
Our position and perspective is this: If the event is to go forward with a sustainable and reputable future, it should be inherently in alignment with our coaching values. It should be transparent, representative, inclusive, open, and well-run. If that’s not possible at this moment, then the time is not right, and a new plan is needed.
We have heard from many of you that in order for this process to work that it needs a professional manager to work full-time, making sure that all the groups are on track, and that important details are attended to in a timely and professional way. This is especially important because most of the people who are doing most of the work of the GCC have full-time responsibilities elsewhere, and that includes the steering committee. Early in the process, we offered to sponsor a full-time manager to organize the conference and help keep the working groups on track. The steering committee did not agree that this was mission-critical. In fact, they believed just the opposite: they felt an outside manager might intrude on the flow of the all-volunteer organization. Further, they felt that to accept such an offer might create the wrong impression with the large number of organizations that had agreed to participate in the GCC process. The steering committee did not want to give the impression that any single organization – even one as committed to independence and inclusion as The Foundation of Coaching - had influence on the process. We respected their decision, and they believe they made the right decision at that time.
We are sorry that we are unable to provide any information about the next steps for the GCC, but the steering committee assures us that they are in communication with participants to determine the best course of action. We acknowledge with gratitude and respect each of you who has given so much to the GCC process for the future of coaching, and we look forward to the continuation of the work with integrity, transparency, inclusiveness, and fairness.
We are committed, in action, word, and dollars, to open dialogue about coaching. The evidence is here on the Coaching Commons. We make this open forum available for discussion about the many issues facing coaches and coaching. We invite you to participate in any and all of the conversations taking place here, including this one.
We welcome all comments, feedback, suggestions and points of view through the commenting mechanism below.
Ruth Ann Harnisch, President, The Harnisch Family Foundation
David Goldsmith, Managing Director, The Harnisch Family Foundation
Popularity: 69% [?]
Comment by Linda Ballew on 16 July 2008:
David,
I am so glad to hear news of GCC Dublin. I invite the other GCC steering committee members, the chairs, facilitators and participants to the Coaching Commons to share their experience and talk about the work that was accomplished!
AND, let’s hear what’s next!
Linda
Comment by David Lane on 16 July 2008:
Dublin has happened. The GCC community from across the globe gathered for five days of dialogue. We produced a declaration, calls to action in nine areas and explored the reality statements and scenarios that members worked to produce. We made adaptations, considered what would help and hinder us and agreed common themes. We will provide all this back to the whole GCC community as soon as we have gathered all together in a useful form for those present and as well those who were not able to be there. Following this it will be made available to the wider coaching community.
The members in Dublin were clear they wanted to take the dialogue forward as a community and have come up with a number of ways to do this, again we will communicate these and invite further participation and ask for others ideas to add to the next steps.
It was a great event and we thank all who participated for their commitment to the future of coaching. We also thank all of you who have contributed via working and consultation groups and on line - it has been a tremendous voluntary effort and shows the strength of our field. Our heartfelt thanks to the Dublin hosts who were tremendous and who absolutely stood by the principle to create an hospitable space within which dialogue could take place and to our sponsors for helping to make it happen.
Our thanks and regards,
Michael, David, Dianne, Stephen and Lise For the Steering Committee
Paul
For the Dublin hosts.
Comment by Paul Mooney on 15 July 2008:
There must be a different meaning for what a hustle is or what exploitation is than we understand in Europe. So far, my estimate is that GCC members have donated over €500,000 worth of time to the project. I am trying to work out a number that can be audited with backup.
On top of that, the contribution in human energy is unquantifiable as anyone would have experienced if they were in Dublin. To my mind, those seriosuly interested in coaching are not complaining about the price, they are eager for data and for input to comment on.
The Dublin Declaration and its components are being worked on for global comment as we speak. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Stuff has to be paid for.
If we are serious about coaching, then we must also be serious about paying for it too.
Comment by Francis Dutton on 10 July 2008:
I saw the details about GCC Virtual Collaboration. The technology and screen shots looked excellent, and it was clear that considerable expertise went into developing the platform. But 90 euros is neither a “small fee” nor an acceptable amount for access.
With unspecified general outcomes, an unstructured agenda (in reality there is no such animal), and so many other alternatives (the ICF European conference is just one example), the 90euro fee seems like a “hustle” or “exploitation” of those seriously interested in coaching.
Comment by Paul Mooney on 30 June 2008:
Thanks all for the follow up comments - it certainly helps me to understand that there is a genuine intention for dialogue.
On the issue of virtual collaboration, we will be hosting a technology platform that will provide a good experience at the end of each of the convention days.
This link will be emailed to the GCC database this week, and I will suggest that virtual delegates should be able to send the link on to colleagues who might like to particpate.
When they login, what they will see is a 2/3 minute video from the Working Group Chair, a 10-15 slide presentation on the activity that day and access to a web forum divided into the ten working groups.
In this way, there will be over 50 postings from each of the working groups for the week. People will genuinely be able to influence the debate and the dialogue from the comfort of their office or their PC.
At the start of each day, each working group has been allocated 45 minutes to see what has been said in their forum the night before and they can add the comments into their own deliberations.
There is a small fee of €90 for access to all data for the week to help us cover the technology costs.
So yes we will be in Dublin, but through the GCC Virtual Collaboration Platform, Dublin will also be on everyone’s laptops and we hope in their hearts and minds.
Yes, convention organising is complex and thankless, but we are almost there. We thanks everyone that has contributed to date and we look forward to a wonderful dialogue.
Paul MOONEY
Director
Global Convention on Coaching (Ireland) Limited
A not for profit company established to run the GCC Convention
Comment by patrick williams on 30 June 2008:
Well said David…
I look forward to the outcomes that are generated and to the desire for another Global Gathering in 2009!
Sorry i cannot be there this time.
Comment by David Lane on 30 June 2008:
Okay, the Global Convention on Coaching is meeting in Dublin - it is happening. Participants from across the globe paying their own way and giving up five days of their time (more in the case of those coming from great distances)will meet to discuss the current reality and scenarios for the future. The working parties have all reported and their findings will be presented for dialogue in Dublin.
As a community of practice we remain committed to sharing with our members and between our members and via them to the wider community. That is the process. It was this process we used to respond to the open letter from the Foundation in which we clearly thanked them for their support, presented their views clearly to to membership and eventually decided on a course of action. During Dublin we have set up a virtual process so that all members wherever they are can participate. Whatever funds we raised (and as Paul says we raised enough to cover 30% of the cost during a very difficult credit crunch)would never be enough to ensure everyone could be there and hence the virtual option. We will also decide in Dublin on any future communications or processes to take the debate forward.
There continues to be a misunderstanding about our intention - we are not committed to specific outcomes - we have no agenda to pursue - we did not know what would be the result of the dialogue so far and do not know what the outcome will be in Dublin. It is an open dialogue, a process, not a set agenda designed to achieve specified goals. As such it is always uncertain that is part of what we live with and why creative outcomes are free to emerge.
Going forward if the membership so decide we will seek further, wider and deeper dialogue. Given the current reality and scenarios so far there is clearly a desire for such an extension of the process. A wide variety of tools may be used to achieve this.
There is a value in regular gatherings of the coaching community as both Patrick and David suggest above. The format for that is more difficult. This is a community with varied views and strongly held views finding a format in which they can all be represented and explored was never going to be easy. A leaderless community of practice was one way to do that. Once we complete the Dublin phase of this we will reflect and share the learning so that others can benefit from this. But one thing that is clear is that given the diversity of this community, no gathering is possible without a commitment to dialogue. Dialogue as we envisage it means that all get heard, feel heard, agree to respect others views and work to a common good even while taking different views. That requires a community committed to those principles. It is something that can but rarely happens on a public site where particular views can come to dominate and little learning happens. A public site has other values in terms of dissemination of views and we very much welcome the “coaching commons” initiative but it is not a community of practice. So we will probably see debates about what GCC has attempted continue and from time to time members may respond to them. It is unlikely to be the main channel of communication since community principles need to be maintained.
So GCC will communicate via a variety of means following Dublin. Patrick and David above both suggest further gatherings we welcome this. Patrick says 42 attended in Vancouver, more than 60 will attend five days in Dublin and many more have contributed to the discussion, so there is clearly a desire within the community to share. We will add our views to that once the membership has formed a view. The attempt to create a global dialogue free of partisanship continues, we have trod an uncharted path and have stumbled, got up, gone forward, stumbled, sought handholds and advice and have arrived at a point on the journey when to gather together and create at least a partial mapping makes sense. We will do this and share the results.
Our thanks to the many who have provided handholds, advice or have joined the journey with us. Your commitment in spite of the odds against you has been remarkable.