There is something major happening in the world right now. Ever-closer runaway climate change, mass species extinction, food crises, flooding, dwindling fossil fuels, economic recession. With the end of the era of cheap oil – sometimes referred to as ‘peak oil’, our old ‘business-as-usual’ models are proving themselves to be untenable and are being dismantled all around us. Whether we like it or not, we are entering what many believe will be ‘transition years’, where our habits, relationships, goals and priorities will need re-assessing and re-establishing.
What on earth does this have to do with coaching?? The individuals, communities, organisations and corporations who have recognised that there are myriad challenges ahead are asking for support. They see that there is a need to create something totally new for our society and yet often remain unsure as to how they can implement the necessary changes and solutions. They also perhaps doubt that they can. We as coaches recognise this floundering in the waters of ‘good intentions’ and know that it’s our cue.
Why coaches? Because as a society, we need a change of dream. Already, clients are coming to us because they want to change their own individual dreams; the old way isn’t doing it for them. How often, by following their own agenda, have we helped clients to spend quality time with their loved ones? Get healthy by home-cooking or cyclng? Find work they love? All of these results fit with this sustainable world that is dawning. Coaches are being called to do what coaches were always meant to do: meet genuine need and desire to change by offering tools and support which enable people to do so. We are part of the team who are getting into position to hospice out old, unsustainable ways and midwife in visions of new ways.
We need to be conscious that our job as coaches is not to pander to our clients’ temptation to rearrange the furniture on the Titanic. Our job is to get them off the Titanic as quickly, easily and enjoyably as possible – because the ship is sinking. [The ship, in this analogy, is a society built on the foundation of - and assumption of continuing - cheap, abundant oil.] Every time we offer a client the space to explore new perspectives, meet their Future Self, take authentic, inspired action, we are assisting them in building lifeboats. It is scary to leave the perceived comfort of a huge, well-established boat (read: way of doing things). We assume it’s got to be the safest option – it’s so big and seems so permanent and unshakeable. No-one can see a shore, the waters seem pretty hazardous, and we look around and see most people are staying firmly put on board. We, as coaches, hold the stance that people can and must make it off that sinking ship and seek a new island – a more durable, sustainable ground to stand upon. We remind them of the urgency, the imperative – and we also remain vastly spacious and compassionate whilst urging them to the edge.
What elements of coaching will support people through these transition years? In the ‘being’ of coaching, we need coaches who can really hold despair. We are facing the end of a party to which we’ve become very accustomed. We need to be able to acknowledge how hard these next years might be and stay with our clients through all that. We also need to be able to hold huge out-of-the-box space for clients to dream up radically new ways of doing things, unheard of ways of being. We need to self-manage and stay unfettered in our view of what’s possible for our clients and our world. For too long, the environmental movement has been telling us what we shouldn’t be doing, what we need to cut out. We need to be detectors & collectors of visions; we need to mine our clients for value-based, proactive visions like the one Rob Hopkins had with Transition Towns, Lynne & Bill Twist had with the Pachamama Alliance, Mike Reynolds had with Earthships.
In the ‘doing’ of coaching, we need to be able to call forth. Big time. We need to be brave enough to say: “Wake up! We are sleep walking through this addiction to oil and we need to stop NOW!” There really is no more time to allow our clients to stay stuck, fearful, waiting for tomorrow. We need to have adept, skillful Saboteur management. If our clients get scared by individual change, imagine how monumental societal, global change is going to hit them. They’re likely to be clinging on to the status quo, resisting, trying to bargain their way out. We need to be alert to the cultural gremlins which keep us addicted to our unsustainable ways of life and how they whisper to our clients. And we need to be masterful in our ability to hold strong accountability and get our clients into action… NOW.
We can offer our clients major support with their lifestyle – easing them into necessarily simpler, slower, lower-carbon lives, resplendent with more authentic connections and deeper fulfillment. We can also support our clients in recognising the unique value of what they have to offer the world. In these spectacularly significant times, we as a coaching profession are bestowed with the duty of alerting our clients to their own spectacular significance.
We cannot underestimate the role of skilled, aware coaches in these transition years ahead. All of us are being confronted – whether we hear the call or not – with the need to change the very fabric of our society and therefore the very basics of our lives. We know we are equipped to facilitate deep, long-lasting, far-reaching change, starting with the individual and rippling out into our families, our communities, our world. We have the opportunity to help people change because they want to, before they have to. We can see ourselves as integral to the sustainability movement because we help people discover and create lives that are truly sustainable.
We are being called to step up and be the coaches we always dreamed of being – ones who have real, significant impact, who genuinely make a difference. Together, we are going to be weaving a new cultural dream. We are going to be making up new stories – sometimes from scratch, sometimes as a patchwork of what we have loved before. It’s down to all of us to decide what that new story will be. These times are exciting, they are daunting, and this is utterly unknown territory.
Once upon a time…
(c) Corrina Gordon-Barnes, You Inspire Me
www.youinspireme.co.uk
References
http://www.pachamama.org/
Indigenous people of South America, who still live in their traditional Earth-honouring ways, refer to our modern worldview as our “dream” and have urged us, for the sake of all life, to “change the dream of the North.”
http://www.transitiontowns.org/
Building community resilience to the twin challenges of climate change & peak oil
http://www.earthship.net/
Sustainable housing design
Corrina Gordon-Barnes, CPCC, runs You Inspire Me, a coaching business dedicated to supporting people in these transition years. For more, read ‘Contribution Footprint – How Big Is Yours?‘ http://www.youinspireme.wordpress.com/
