Here’s Your List: Brilliant Coaching Questions

Many thanks to all who commented and offered their brilliant coaching questions.
Now, here is the part where we make it easy to share the wisdom and pass it around. It’s what the Coaching Commons is all about – gathering the wealth of knowledge and experience from the coaching community and passing it on in a simple and practical way.

Professional Liability Insurance – Do Coaches Need It?

I have carried professional liability insurance as a coach since 2002, a little over a year after I started my own business. I took the plunge into acquiring the professional liability insurance primarily because of my years of experience in healthcare where litigious activity is high.
 
Shortly after initiating my first policy, one of my [...]

Professional Coaching: Friendship for Sale?

Are coaches just high-priced buddies?
Are people becoming so dependent on “experts” that they can’t make personal or professional decisions without hiring one?
Yes, according to Charles Eisenstein.
In  The Ascent of Humanity Eisenstein says, “A further example of the professionalization of friendship is to be found in the proliferating professions of life coach, grief counselor, psychologist, spiritual adviser, and so forth. [...]

The Future of Coaching: Where Are We Going?

The past few years I have been intensely involved with the International Coach Federation (ICF) serving on the board since 2004, as President-Elect (2007) and President (2008). 
I have had the privilege of talking with or visiting with thousands of coaches in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. This year I am [...]

Take This Opportunity to Answer Two Coaching Questions

Kim Gørtz is doing a minor investigation in regard to the utility of coaching. Here’s how you can join in.
Topic: A Global Perspective on a Specific Point in Regard to the Utility of Coaching (the limitations)
Just answer these two questions:
What can coaching do (and perhaps does)?
Please write no more than 1-3 issues/themes.
Example: It can bring [...]

Are Coaches Artisans?

In whatever way coaching resembles the Professional culture as identified by Bill Bergquist and Vikki Brock in our forthcoming coaching anthology, it may indeed be useful to think about coaches as artisans. In a paper I wrote recently, I described it as follows, “it is a new era in which coaches are seen as people [...]

Virtual Dialog on World Changing: Some Pathfinders

In support of the Virtual Dialog on March 13th, I offer the following links. Each one represents an experiment in changing the world. More are being launched every day as a growing number of people around the world are seeking innovative ways to collaborate in addressing the issues we face. Any of these initiatives would [...]

What is Team Coaching?

If this caught your eye…then you might also be experimenting with a form of Team or Group Coaching. I have been developing a flavor of this with Senior Leadership Teams for over two years, and I am anxious to see who else might want to share stories and ideas about the topic. Here [...]

What Do You Have Energy For?

I was reminded the other day of this Native American poem as I sat with the notion of what it takes to create a legacy. In this age of relentless change and what Linda Stone called “continuous partial attention”, how can we sufficiently gather and focus our energy and use our power wisely?
Where do [...]

M1: What do you need to know to be effective as a coach?

We begin our manifesto-inspired conversation (hence the M in M1), with a curiosity about what we need to know as coaches to be effective in and for the future. I would suggest (p. 2) that there are four primary domains of knowledge which contribute to mastery in coaching. However, we are just beginning to understand [...]

Listen to an Uncommon Conversation from March 13th, 2008 Topic: Three Ways Coaching is Changing the World and How You Can Join the Action

Listen to the recording below:

Call Topic: “Three Ways Coaching is Changing the World and How to Join the Action”
About the Call: Coaches are increasingly called on as resources to help political, corporate and community leaders make decisions relative to social responsibility, ecological sustainability, workplace culture, community development, and the like. This can be heavy stuff!
Using [...]