Matthew’s Blog

On Lines and Drawing Them

     2005 was a wild and crazy of a year full of challenges, discoveries, and deep profound learnings for me. In December I made a new friend at the Thought Leader Gathering by the name of John Lenker. Now John is an artist, creative, designer, and entrepreneur with a brilliant mind and perspective. When we met, he seemed entranced by the name of my company, WorkingIntentionally™. I could sense the gears turning and locking in his mind. Ever curious I stayed with him in our wisdom circle conversations. He had found in our conversation the lynch pin to a long brewing epiphany. His epiphany hit me hard and struck deep. The the ensuing days and weeks have been full of ricocheted ideas and perspectives into every nook and cranny of my life. I thank John for sharing it me and now allowing me to share it with you. What he said was:

• It is NOT O.K. to draw outside the lines

• It is equally not O.K. to have someone else draw the lines for you

• It is reckless to draw outside the lines before ever having drawn them

    We live in an era which has come to glorify drawing outside the lines. We think it is creative and clever to draw without lines. We’ve let this morph into our business practices. Coaching is no exception. I believe we actually pride ourselves in our ability to draw outside the lines. We may even chastise the idea of drawing the lines altogether. Quite ironic given that a cornerstone to coaching is accountability. In Arbinger speak, I found myself saying “I’m the kind of person who doesn’t need lines.” (Now that is a scary self justifying image).

    What happens when we do draw inside the lines? I remember watching my mother color with me. I loved the way she colored. She would trace the inside of the line very firmly (marking the edge for herself) and then gradually fill in from the edge getting lighter and lighter as she reached the middle. It was mesmerizing to me and a meditative practice for her. Somethings she would fill in completely and others she would not, white is a color too remember? She had a sense of satisfaction upon completion that I never achieved drawing outside the lines. When we fill in the curves: we go deeper; we complete things before going onto the next; we choose to color or not to color; we get stronger; we get more defined; we can claim our work and claim our lives; and lastly perhaps most profoundly we manifest what we’ve drawn.

    WorkingIntentionally™ is about doing the work that was meant to be (intended) to be done. It is about doing the work in a deliberate way that honors who you are. John’s comments echoed in my ears until I realized that I was not living my company’s calling. Speaking from my own experience, my practice did not grow last year. I drew all over the place yet never within the lines because I had never drawn the lines to begin with.

    I have been reckless. I have spent the past three years of my business drawing outside the lines, more aptly – never drawing the lines at all. Never having a business plan. Never fully treating my business as a business. I know I am not alone. Almost every coach I know, with a few exceptions, are in the same boat whether they admit it or not. Does this sound familiar? We have all been drawing outside the lines. We are drawing recklessly without ever drawing the lines. This has got to stop!

    So, as a part of my drawing my lines anew, I am drawing up a business plan this week (I’ve never had one). At Thanksgiving I started a rowing challenge which I continue today. I am scheduling my weeks fully. For the community, I am launching a six month teleclass in February in professional foundations to help coaches bring themselves into alignment around who we are as professionals, help us draw our lines and for some, for the first time. I am engaging my plan, going deep, and building my business within the lines of my business plan. How about you?

     In our resistance to drawing the line we often forget that we can always move the line later. Its like declaring our niche. Without the line no one know who or what you do. Start somewhere, get good at it and then move the line if you want.

Who Is Your Community?
Lately I have been thinking a lot about community.  I have also been thinking about our standard coaching business model – solopreneurship – and I have come to an odd conclusion.  That is that solopreneurship is slowly killing us.  The solution, the antedote, I believe  is in  community and provocative conversation.  

We are social creatures, even we introverts.  We need external stimulation and expression. Solopreneurship, however, results all too frequently in our isolation.  Since the overwhelming percentage of coaches are introverts this isolation is exacerbated when we fear marketing and that fear keeps us from engaging, connecting and being social.  Despite our regular contact with clients and our own coaches, they are not a substitute for our need for external stimulation.  

I re-discovered this month a remarkable thing.  I had a week of having one provocative conversation a day with someone on the outside.  I discovered that my energy level and enthusiasm shot through the roof.  This experience was even richer when I met them in person.  

I have often known of the impact of socializing and powerfully connecting with people.  This was first brought home to me while I was doing my coach training with Corporate Coach U Intl.   In a class called Professional Foundations for Masterful Coaching, we worked on the skills and the environments including communitie needed to become a professional coach.   That class inspired/provoked me to to create a thinktank in Milwaukee to service this need and make me a better coach and more balanced professional.   

I discovered through the process that one of my gifts to share with the world is building community.  In Minneapolis one way I have built community is through hosting conversation circles where provocative questions and expansive thinking are the norm.   It is also why I am a member of the Thought Leader Gathering.  I find that these external stimuli fuel my passions and enhance my coaching abilities. 

Last year when I noticed that seasoned coaches were suffering from isolation, I created the MCA Seasoned Coaches Circles as an opportunity for community, comradere and discovery for seasoned coaches (FYI the next circle is Friday Oct 21st).  

The Minnesota Coaches Association is a significant part of my inspiration – Every meeting, every board meeting, every MCA SCC, every interaction with all you wonderful coaches.  One of our guiding principles is being a "Provocative Learning Community."   You are my community, one of many. 

What about you?
Who is your community? 
Who is inspiring you? Who pulls you out of isolation?
 I want to know, drop me a line

Matthew Egan Rochte ~ MCA President 2005
president@minnesotacoaches.org

Curious About The Coaching Industry

Several Thoughts this month.

In May 2004 I received on my doorstep a book, The Radical Leap by Steve Farber.

This unexpected gift allowed for a great realization to appear in my life (see my review that I did for the July 2004 Catalyst on my blog http://www.matthewsblog.com/2004/06/15/radical-leap-book-review/ )

This epiphany being that while I truly love coaching, I love the coaching INDUSTRY even more.

This was a great awakening. It spurred me into action on the MCA board. It prompted me to bring Steve Farber to Minnesota last August. It drove my decision to become the president of Life Coach Alliance LLC. It shaped my leadership style and focus for the past year. It still is. Every action we have taken this year as a board has been to strengthen and build a strong coaching community and thereby create a strong coaching industry. The electronic elections last month and the engaging of a new Virtual Office (Peggy Bushee Services) are the latest tangible results of this energy. And we keep going.

Mark your calendars for the October MCA Meeting – It is going to be something special. Not only do we have a world class presenter coming to talk about PrimalBranding (wow, what a great visceral name) we, the MCA, will have our great reveal. Don’t miss it. Invite your colleagues, your friends, and your clients who might benefit from a powerful brand.

“A coach only has one item on his agenda – the client’s success”

I found this when reading a back issue of Choice in an article by Kelly O’Neil. This really strikes a chord in me. YES, we do have an agenda as a coach. YES, this agenda is what makes coaching powerful. And WOW, how often is that NOT our agenda when we are coaching. What does this bring up in you?

As part of my passion and love for the industry I read a lot about the industry. My favorite resource is a new online magazine/newsletter/blog about the coaching industry. Its called the Coaching Insider. It is a mix of NYTimes style reporting “with a healthy splash of Variety magazine.” II believe it was started by Susan Austin of Coachville fame and has contributors from all over the globe. Not only that, you, the reader can talk back to the articles, add your experience, offer your rebuttal, share your epiphany. It is free and wow – what great insights. View the current issue.

Lately I have been reading up on back issues of Choice Magazine. If you are like me, I was a little skittish about signing up for this magazine. I don’t know if was because of its price or sporadic printing, but I held off for quite some time. Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought all the back issues and signed up for a year. WOW! What a GREAT magazine for our industry. Insightful and professional and they bring in great authors to write and share their wisdom and tools. Our own Marcy Nelson Garrison, CPCC is a regular contributor on the latest coaching tools and toys. The ETHICS side of me really enjoys the “Sticky Situations” regular article. http://www.choice-online.com

• What about you?
• What are you reading?
• How are you keeping abreast of the Industry? - I want to know, drop me a line