In the past year, I’ve talked with a number of prospective executive coaching clients in a one hour meet and greet, so we can see if we are a good fit. Since most of my business is from referrals, the people who get in touch usually know someone who knows me, so they have a frame of reference.
Sometimes they hire me, sometimes they don’t. I don’t take it too personally when they don’t. An executive coach is a very specific, personal service, and people need to feel right about it.
But I feel like more and more people are asking for a short cut, a magic wand, an outside authority to tell them what to do and be. Which worries me.
One such prospect met with me and decided to go with another coach, then got back in touch about six months later. He told me that when he was choosing between me and the other coach, he felt equally comfortable with both of us, we had similar credentials and experience. But the other coach had a “framework.” He told me about the framework. It wasn’t especially compelling to me, but since I haven’t heard this other coach’s articulation of it, I can’t judge, so I won’t say what it was. After a few months, he said, they’d gone over the framework and there wasn’t much more to talk about.
Frameworks worry me. A number of the prospects I’ve talked to want me to tell them what to do. They want a fifteen step program, an easy schema, an assessment tool that answers all. Because they want a quick, ready-made path to reach their goals.
Which is understandable. Some assessments, frameworks and structures can be very helpful, and I’ve used a number of them. But it is in addition to the ongoing work of deep consideration, examination and practice that is the foundation of any substantive change.
And what is an underlying premise of a framework? It is that someone outside of me knows better than me what I should be doing, and how I should be evolving. This author/coach/guru/professor/religious leader knows more than me and by virtue of their authority they can fix me.
I understand marketing. I get that we need to be able to articulate what we do in a way that is memorable, unique, compelling and clear about the benefit to the person paying for our services. USP – Unique Selling Proposition – was a common catch all when I was coming up in sales. I have a pithy statement for my coaching practice, for this substack, for the podcast I do with Eugene, for the book I’m finishing.
Being able to say what I do and who it is for is useful. I work with creative people who lead companies that make cool shit. I call what I do Chaos Coaching, where I combine different disciplines to challenge each client; organization development and quantum physics, say. It’s like a chaos menu that challenges a diner’s expectations by combining flavors in an unexpected way. But each recipe, if you will, is different. I don’t walk into a coaching session and say ok, you’re getting the number seven special. I ask how I can be helpful.
My foundational belief is that each of us knows what is best for us, what we think is right, and how we want to grow. I have degrees and credentials and knowledge, but those are meant to be in service of helping you elicit what you know, to help you clear away anything that blocks you from your innate genius and knowing.
Some people just don’t believe that. They don’t believe they have that capacity. Others don’t want to do the work to understand their unique insights and genius, they want to be told what to do and who to be. It takes time and effort to understand yourself, to separate out what you are told you should want and do and be from what you actually want to do and be. To do that with another person, whether it is a therapist, partner, friend or executive coach, requires trust and vulnerability. And patience.
Here are a couple of other analogous processes. Democracy is hard. You have to think, consider, vote, work with and talk to others who are often difficult and think very differently than you do. It’s slow and laborious. Dictatorships take less energy, less thought, less work. Tell me what to do.
Dan Savage, the writer and podcaster, often says that cis straight people have a pre-made set of roles and expectations they can follow. Meet, have a certain kind of sex in a certain way, move in together, maybe get married and have kids. They don’t have to discuss it. But queer people don’t have that pre-set formula. They need to talk about it, do some more work. I liken it to moving into a house that someone else designed, built and furnished rather than building your own. More effort, more time, more reward.
Any kind of personal growth or exploration presents the same choice. Do you want to spend more time, more work that is specific to who you are and how you move through the world? Take more care in picking a traveling companion? Work on the thoughtfulness, intention, patience and courage to face up to old stories that might not serve you anymore?
Or do you want a ready-made framework, a short cut, a prefab structure that looks like all the others on the block? Do you want to just do what someone else tells you to do, want what they want, be who they say you should be?
The framework authorities, the purveyors of short cuts, the ones who have ready answers and clear-cut black and white beliefs seem to sell books and win primaries. I understand their appeal.
As for me, I want the tools to build my own space, in my own way. I want to trust in my innate knowing and connection. I want to give my clients the tools to build their own houses, not the blueprint or the prefab of my house. I want us all to learn to trust in the value of the messy, ongoing, challenging, changing process of being authentic and free.