When the same topic comes up during two teleclasses for executive coaches, I give it detailed consideration. What are the ethics of coaching a client toward producing a specific result that will have direct, significant impact on the coach’s personal finances. At first, I felt okay making an agreement to share in my client’s increased sales, profits, stock price, etc. I was also comfortable with making my fee contingent upon the client producing a particular result.
I am now sure that is a bad idea.
“…to make a statement about ends that do not justify all means is to speak in paradoxes, the definition of an end being precisely the justification of the means”
I shifted my opinion during the second teleclass. I saw that if I, as an executive coach, become attached to a particular tangible outcome, whether it affects my compensation or not, I will be taken away from executive coaching toward some sort of manipulation. The coach would (more…)
Tracy Goss has long been closely associated with Werner Erhard, the originator of EST and Landmark Education Corporation’s Forum. I expect happy graduates of those programs to be very happy with this book (I am and I am). The book presents the central concepts of those programs very clearly and in a format designed to help business people put the “distinctions” to work immediately. I doubt, however, that a person not trained in ontological coaching could get much sense from these pages. It can seem to be merely jargon and wild promises unless you have actually put the techniques to work for yourself with the assistance of a coach (as I have and I do).
For people experienced with the methods, this book is an effective refresher and spur to action. A friend and I (more…)
…the killer apps that have really worked on the web have always been about connecting people to one another. So, whether it is instant messaging and e-mail as communications to connect people to one another, whether it’s photo-sharing as a way to connect people to one another through photos, or blogging as a way to connect people to one another through the words, people have always been social and the killer apps that have really succeeded on the web have always been social.
Randy Pausch’s short commencement speech at CMU on May 18, 2008.
The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
Scientists argue that the brain has evolved to see a split second into the future when it perceives motion. Because it takes the brain at least a tenth of a second to model visual information, it is working with old information. By modeling the future during movement, it is “seeing” the present.
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
The best part about having the flu last week was the enforced leisure to read Philip Pullman’s amazing trilogy of His Dark Materials. Central to the plot is a state described by the poet Keats in a letter:
…several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean NEGATIVE CAPABILITY, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason… ~John Keats
Pullman cites this state as a requirement for the most important and powerful work a person can do.
Reminds me of the insistence by one of the greatest coaches, Julio Olalla, that coaches must be comfortable with not knowing and withholding unanswered questions.
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Capsule Review
…the killer apps that have really worked on the web have always been about connecting people to one another. So, whether it is instant messaging and e-mail as communications to connect people to one another, whether it’s photo-sharing as a way to connect people to one another through photos, or blogging as a way to connect people to one another through the words, people have always been social and the killer apps that have really succeeded on the web have always been social.
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