Coach as Instrument: Why I Coach Part 2 (ICW)

As we enter International Coaching Week, I’m reflecting on my journey as a coach. The seed was planted in 1978, but it would take more than 22 years to sprout.

In June 1978, a few short weeks before I’d be heading off to college, my dad suggested we go for a father/daughter lunch. He wanted to talk about my future. Our casual conversation over burgers that day became perhaps the greatest defining moment of my life.   

It went like this:

Dad: “Honey, what are you planning on majoring in when you get to college? What do you want to do?”

Me: “I don’t know, Dad. I was thinking maybe sociology or psychology. I just want to help people.”

Dad.  “That’s nice, honey.”  (Pause)  “What would you do with a 4-year sociology or psychology degree?”

Me:  “I don’t know, Dad. I guess I’d go to more school.”

Dad: (Without skipping a beat)  “Honey, four years from now, you’re going to be supporting yourself. I recommend business.”

And that’s what I did. I dutifully attained degrees in accounting and finance, and sure enough, 4 years later, I was supporting myself. And I gave up any notion of pursuing a profession to help people or the possibility that I could support myself doing it. 

Over the next 22 years, I learned about things I didn’t like, to do things I didn’t enjoy, for reasons that didn’t matter to me. And in spite of that, I did well. I climbed the corporate ladder, got promotions, and made money. I achieved a lot of what my dad wanted for me. I had a career and was financially secure. And for what?

In 2002, I went through a life and career transition. And this time, I asked myself what I wanted to do. I’d done some mentoring and advocacy in my corporate career. Something like that felt right. Coaching seemed like the closest thing I knew to what I wanted to do. 

After two decades, I was coming full circle.

So, I went to coaching school. I was fortunate enough to live in the same city as Fran Fisher and her Academy for Coach Training (which is now InviteChange). Fran and her marvelous faculty were a blessing, and coaching opened up a new world for me. And I was finally learning how to do something I wanted to do.

After I’d been coaching for several years and was able to make a living doing it, my dad admitted to me that when I’d first told him what I was going to do, he couldn’t imagine anyone hiring me. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in me or wasn’t proud of me. He did, and he was. It was that hiring a coach was something he’d never do. And never did. So he couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it either. (Thankfully, there are LOTS of folks out there who see it differently)

I’ve been coaching now for almost as long as I was in the business world. And my life is dramatically different and so much better. My life feels rich, connected, and meaningful.  

In anticipation of International Coaching Week, I’ve been considering why I coach, why I do what I do, and why I love it so much. This is what I’ve come up with.

I coach because it’s how I find connection to something greater.    

I believe that we humans are a way for the Collective Consciousness of the Universe to know itself. We exist to know and experience ourselves and to make meaning of our experience so that Consciousness can do the same. And we coaches help humans, our clients, to know and experience themselves, making each of us an Instrument of Consciousness itself.

We coaches are doing sacred work.

With my clients, I seek to support them in knowing and experiencing themselves through a process of connection. I connect them with themselves, with what’s emerging for them in the moment, and with what matters. 

Connecting people with themselves, with others, and with meaning is a thread that’s been running through my life these last 22 years. In 2009, in the throes of the Great Recession, I partnered with a colleague to organize one of the first TEDx conferences in the world and invited little-known Simon Sinek to speak.  

Amidst that very difficult time, I wanted to reconnect my clients and colleagues with what gave their lives meaning and why they did what they did while connecting them with each other.  At that small conference, Simon Sinek gave his now famous Start with Why talk, which is the 4th most viewed TED talk of all time, with millions of views and translations into dozens of languages.

Connection is why I coach. 

I believe that when we connect fully with ourselves, we can connect fully with others and together, we can find meaning. And that’s the work of WE-Q and Learning in Action.

In honor of International Coaching Week, I asked a few of Learning in Action’s WE-Q Practitioners to share with you why they coach. And I’m excited to share their responses with you. You can find them each day this week on our social platforms with #WhyICoach. 

Today’s episode features practitioners Roberta Riga, Joe Phillips, and Sherryl Christie on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.

I am deeply grateful to all of our WE-Q practitioners who do the work of using the WE-Q Profile to connect people with themselves so that they can connect with each other and make meaning of their lives. I feel blessed to be on this journey as a coach in a community with other fantastic coaches in an effort to help people.