Coaches as Ventilators
What is actually going on here? Not only has Cordelia just left her prestigious job at the big corporation, Marie is also quitting the company she founded herself and Susanna is leaving the law firm. They are all training to become coaches. Lea enrolls at an institute to become a systemic consultant while still a student. Sonia founds her first business, a platform where young adults can get mentoring and coaching.
For some time now, and increasingly during the Corona pandemic, it seems as if many people around us, especially talented, energetic and motivated women, are withdrawing from their previous professions and finding their way into coaching, counselling, mediation or organisational development.
At first glance — it makes sense
At first glance, it makes sense. Many of us experience the existing business world as dysfunctional. The structures are often rigid and encrusted. A certain type of leader still dominates, young or old white men (or women with the same mindset) who see their own approach and worldview as the only valid one. The focus on shareholder value and the bottom line prevents the transformation of companies towards more multidimensional goals, such as more sustainability and the development of employees’ potential. In this setting, highly motivated (young) women and men wear themselves out. They are not only personally dissatisfied, but experience themselves as unproductive and ineffective. They say “I run with my head against the wall”, “again and again I encounter resistance and stagnation”, “I feel empty and hollow”, “I want to get out of the hamster wheel”. Many have burnout experiences.
The path to one of the many coaching academies and institutes, on the other hand, promises not only an exciting training in which one can learn more about one’s own personality and grow. It also offers much longed-for resonance experiences and thus meaning. Supporting other people in personality development and change processes or developing new, holistic forms of organisation is often far more motivating than contributing to abstract quarterly growth. While there is a large professional sector, the public welfare-oriented, non-profit impact sector, where meaningful tasks, in often more people-centred organisations, are available en masse, the usual salaries there are usually much lower. And also in the world of NGOs, social entrepreneurs and activists, many people are caught in the tension between the desire to make a difference and the tendency to exploit themselves. Coaching seems to be an attractive, well-rewarded alternative: I can do something good, contribute my very own skills and perspective and get paid adequately for it.
At second glance — ambivalent to dangerous
Why then does the coaching caravan still create a disturbing feeling in us? Aren’t we also convinced that inner competences and personality development are becoming more important than ever in the digital age? Don’t the current major challenges — the climate crisis, social inequality and existential pain— require precisely this turning inwards? A better self-contact, an update of our relationship skills and a new way of dealing with complexity? Aren’t two of the three authors also coaches and love their profession? Yes. Yes. Yes.
And: coaches like us find ourselves in the second row. They accompany and support other leaders instead of leading and manifesting themselves. Yet it is precisely now — during the pandemic, shortly before the ecological collapse, in the midst of the massive polarisation and fragmentation of our societies — that we need the competencies developed by coaches not on the sidelines but center stage.
Hence our question: Do gifted and motivated people make the best use of their competencies when they turn to coaching? Or do we need them elsewhere?
If we use the Berkana Institute’s 2-loop model as a guide, we see that our world is in transit: between the old, industrial and extractive paradigm and a new, digital and regenerative paradigm.
We believe more people are needed to courageously develop the business models, value chains, political structures, educational institutions and a thousand other solutions that are part of the new world view. Presently, money and power are still securely tied to the old system. The dinosaur may be old and tired, but it is fighting tooth and nail for survival. And a lot of jobs, welfare state structures and identities are attached to it. But the more we fuel this system with our energy, the more we prevent new regenerative, inclusive economies and policies from flourishing.
So can it be that coaches and counsellors, exactly against their intention, are still keeping the old system alive? Are they the respirators of a dying industry?
Of course, coaches and consultants also perform a bridging function and help bosses and employees, ministerial directors and politicians to responsibly accompany the transformation of their systems from one paradigm to the other. But there is a fine line between this positive function and a respirator. Very often, the new support functions are more Band-Aids than 3-D printers: they help managers alleviate their personal suffering in a dysfunctional shop, thus cementing the status quo, instead of creating new structures, products and value chains and developing a new culture as with a 3-D printer.
We see again and again that companies only accept coaches in a certain role: they are allowed to cushion problems and imbalances emotionally and thereby introduce elements of the new regenerative paradigm into organisations. But the real power is still firmly anchored in the old paradigm. CEOs allow coaches to do the care work. But woe betide the latter if they really want to grab power and more radically transform structures and cultures. If we assume that the new paradigm is more comprehensive and higher (in the sense of being more inclusive and multi-perspective) than the old one, then we are faced with the dilemma that the lower competence decides what influence the higher competence is allowed to have. This cannot go well.
So what is needed instead?
We want young talents to help build our future with full power and not just indirectly influence it as background figures.
We want the old economy and tired political structures to say goodbye. We would like to dismiss them with dignity, because they have contributed significantly to the prosperity of the 20th century. But today many of them create more baggage than benefit and stand in the way of the much-needed future, even survival, of the planet. Some time ago, a guest at one of our events at Das Dach told us about the idea of a hospice for organisations and companies, whose purpose has already been fulfilled and which now have to make room for something new. Let us say goodbye in a dignified but clear way!
Against the background of these considerations, it also makes sense to look with a fresh eye at the much-vaunted conflict between Boomers and Millennials. Many public debates are dominated by the Boomers and in them the Millennials appear as a spoilt, self-indulgent and overly depressed generation that is no longer up to the demands of the meritocracy.
But what if these are not pathologies but rather healthy reactions to a world that is out of balance and devoid of meaning? Why should young people adapt to a world that makes them sick and that we kill in the same breath? A world whose arteries of power are so clogged that young people see few opportunities to express themselves and create alternatives?
What now?
If you are working as a coach or counsellor, check what your role is in an organisation or in a personal development process. Where are you on the continuum between coach-washing and real transformation? Are you putting your energy into the old paradigm or the new? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?
If you are interested in a coaching career, ask yourself if there is a topic that really engages and fascinates you and where you can integrate the transformative approach of good coaching while being in the forefront and shaping it yourself. And then dare! Start your own business or take a leadership position in a company or institution that is serious about building a new future.
And one more thing: the needs and interests behind the coaching boom are real and valuable. Just as the skills acquired are important and future-oriented. Therefore, in the spirit of Start a Revolution, let’s join forces, exchange and support each other and together invent new professions and roles in which we ourselves and the world can flourish.
