A world of coaches

The future of conversation

What if, in every conversation, with every single person in your life, you would feel supported and empowered?

Can you imagine?

I can.

I’ve been imagining it for some time now, and more than just imagination, I want to do everything I can to make it a reality.

In the previous edition I talked about the importance of working on a vision for your life, to promote moving forward in a direction that aligns with who you are.

This is mine. The driving force behind my obsession around coaching skills, supportive conversation, and the spark behind writing this newsletter.

I didn’t find coaching, coaching found me

I never planned to become a coach.

I never even considered it. It wasn’t one of the classic classroom occupations like ‘astronaut’, ‘doctor’, or ‘firefighter’, nor has any of my career advisors ever brought it up as a feasible career path.

And when coaching eventually did pop up on my radar I was repelled rather than attracted to it. 

Being uninformed and very much outside of the coaching world, it sounded to me like a pseudo-scientific phantom profession like astrology or energy healing. The word ‘life coach’ (what I’m currently calling myself) especially annoyed me. You’re going to tell me how to live my life? I don’t think so.

Before I had a reason to look into it, I simply didn’t understand the profession.

It was exactly this misunderstanding that got cleared up later in life, when I found myself looking for coach training.

What got me hooked initially

In my 30’s I had been working on some health challenges and after diving deep into food and lifestyle factors, I had made some serious progress. And people started to notice.

I was receiving more and more questions from folks in my social circle about the steps I had taken to achieve these results.

It opened my eyes to the possibility of helping others through sharing my experiences and I realized that I might be able to turn this into a meaningful profession.

This new level of fulfillment sounded like an unexpected but suddenly exciting path.

To double down on this track, I joined a year-long, very thorough and practical coaching program, thinking I was going to be giving advice and answer questions for a living. 

What quickly dawned on me was that coaching isn’t about sharing expertise at all, but rather learning a set of communication skills and fostering an inquisitive, supportive attitude.

As soon as I figured this out,  I was hooked.

Being a thinking partner and a guide rather than an expert, I discovered the power of letting people talk out loud to help them discover their own path forward.

I was still an expert (in supportive conversation), just not in the advice-giving sense.

I came for the professional, I stayed for the personal

Although I love the practice and the profession of coaching and while I enjoy and learn from my clients so much, the area that I gained most from my training (and the mindshift that followed) was in my personal life.

Since a well-trained coach is an expert in communication, this pervades all areas of their lives. My personal relationships began to improve. Where’d had a sometimes difficult, stiff, and ‘head-butting’ relationship with my dad for example, my new attitude made me a better son. Which in turn, naturally invited him to be a better dad.

The same goes for my ability to grow deep friendships, and even not-so-deep friendships. Being able to communicate clearly and to listen carefully, has helped every interaction I’ve had with another person since.

Why I teach coaching skills to non-coaches

These ‘coaching skills’ aren’t beneficial for coaches only. Even people who don’t necessarily want to coach for a living can still benefit greatly from learning them. 

Why?

Because we all have relationships.

We deal with people all day long. Be it your spouse, children, parents, friends, coworkers, neighbors, health care providers, car-mechanics, customer service employees, people at the grocery store, the list is endless.

The better the conversations we have with each of them, the better our relationships will be. And because we are animals that live in tribes, the quality of our relationships determine to a large extent the quality of our lives.

As a certified coach, conversational skills are my core business. But even if coaching hadn’t been my profession, the impact of learning these skills in my personal life would have made learning them more than worth it.

Everybody needs these skills.

The vision

Ultimately my vision is to build a school, platform, and community dedicated to bringing these skills to people.

There should be a way for people to access this at a young age. Because it’s a fundamental life skill.

The what and how might change over time. Maybe it needs to be an app instead of a platform, who knows. But the vision is the same; bring these skills to as many people as I can until we have a world filled with ‘coaches’.

I envision a world where coaching skills are so normal that everybody has them. Peers would automatically coach their peers, business leaders would automatically coach their team, and parents would automatically coach their kids.

Coaching as a profession would become extinct simply because everybody would have the know-how to elevate our daily conversations to a higher, way more empowering and supportive place.

Imagine that.