Coaching and Coachville: Past Present and Future

I came to coaching via Thomas Leonard's Coachville. I wish I remembered who or how I came upon that delightful find, but I don't know if I found it in my web surfing, or if someone told me about it online. It was a wonderful discovery, the sort of thing I love--cutting edge, a new way of doing things, changework of the best kind, and at the center, a charismatic, sparkly, authentic and generous innovative wizard. Some call him genius, maybe he was. He was certainly brilliant, and creative like the wind.

I jumped right in, found there was a term for folks like me, "early adopters," and began to soak up the goodies provided so freely and inexpensively at Coachville. I learned I was a coach already, had been for years without knowing it, and now I could add more and better to my changemaking toolbox. Pig heaven for me.

Thomas was the hub around which coaching expanded and deepened. He was a source of rich content and excellence. I took ecourses and telecourses from him, printing out lessons and filling notebooks with pages carefully inserted into plastic page protectors for future use.

I wanted to help, to share what I can do. What I could do for Coachville and Thomas was start a coaching email discussion list. I'd been running lists for a few years, and knew how to make them work. I knew one specially for coaches and Coachville would be a great asset for everyone involved, so I volunteered. I couldn't get through the bureaucracy, small as it was, at Coachville. I was shifted to one person and another to get permission to set one up.

Eventually, I managed to ask Thomas directly, and almost immediately, as was his habit, I had the OK, and the list COACHV-L was up and running. Thomas gave me permission to do it on a trial basis only. He said, "I test everything." If it didn't pass the test, he dropped the project. COACHV-L passed its test quickly, and I operated the list independently from that time until this year when I gave it up to another manager at the new and very different Coachville. COACHV-L is practically defunct now.

What happened to COACHV-L is a bit like what happened to Coachville. COACHV-L was removed from its original hosting its format changed, and it was given to a different manager. It lost its vitality, and has dwindled away to almost nothing.

The heart of Coachville, and I think coaching too, was Thomas Leonard. He was the life force at its center. In Coachville's case the life force, the vitality, slowly dwindled away after Thomas' died.

When he died, Coachville, with all its assets, the knowledge base he'd created himself, and with the help of his famous R&D team creation method, and the knowledge base created by others, was willed to one person, coach Dave Buck. It was the one decision, the one project Thomas could not test. And, it was a mistake. Such a costly mistake, I'm sure no one even knows how costly, that it has set the whole world of coaching back.

Money Thomas left for the maintainence of Coachville disappeared via several holes in the safety net he hoped would be there for Coachville and his crew of Coachville regulars. The regulars he worked with have left the ship, for the most part, leaving Dave Buck at the helm, on a decidedly different vessel, bound for ports unknown, changing course often, with makeovers aplenty.

I started a new email discussion list COACHTALK-L some time before I handed COACHV-L over to its new home and managers because I feared the coming hosting changes would be the death of the list, and also because I wanted to create a coaching list that would be independent and not vulnerable to shifts and management changes or edicts about what could be posted on it.

There seems to be a sort of an ennui in coaching now. And a milling around of the crowd, doing this and that on a small scale, many trying desperately to sell things--particularly to each other.

There is no central force in coaching, no personality at the center with the strength of presence to act as both magnet and outflow source of plenty. The glory has departed. Where once there was a sense of adventure, now there is a sense of disappointment, confusion, and the sounds of get-rich-quick hype. Where once there was team and true community spirit, now there is factionalization and the forced, false, "created community."

Coachville was not the only coaching show in town, not the first one either. But, because of Thomas Leonard's place there and his place in coaching, because of his huge presence--made even larger because he did not seek to be the top bananana--Coachville was coaching's metaphor. It's the meta place to watch in the coaching world.

What's going to happen with Coachvile, and coaching? Were does it go from here? I'll make some predictions:

There will be more milling about.

Dave Buck will either sell Coachville, or sell part of it, or it will continue a downward path, hacked to pieces by his constant makeovers. Or he will manage to successfully remake it into a feel-good academy for change that has little resemblence to the Coachville of Thomas Leonard.

I think he'd be smart to sell all the old Thomas Coachville material to a coalition of the original team and let them revive it as it was, and then take it in the direction they think Thomas might have, not messing with his original work, but innovating as he did, with the help of a large R&D team network of coaches and other contributors.

There will be a proliferation of coaching rip off artists, some legitimate services as well, who attempt to exploit the newness of coaching.

And, somewhere out there, someone will have an aha moment and say to themselves, "Why not use Thomas as a model. Why not go back and look at what he did and how he did it, what his operating principles, techniques, and methods were, and use them as a basis to create a new Coachville from the ground up."

Somewhere there is another charismatic person, or a small group of people who have a Thomas-like ability to create and to utilize the creativity of others, to ring true right down to the middle, and to project that clear integrity and generosity in the low key way manner of Thomas. Not a Thomas, but not too many miles distant from being a Thomas.

When that happens, coaching will recover, slowly maybe. And the sun will shine on coaching again. I hope it's soon.

Comments

[Christian Mickelsen]

Wow! Someone finally said what is really happening in the world of coaching. I agree with you 1000000%! This is what everyone is thinking and few are saying.

Thanks for writing it so perfectly.

love
Christian

[Lyle]

Spot on Pat!

I was seduced by T, and loved every minute of it. Belonged to many R & D teams and felt part of something grand and like we were building something important.

The current CV is a ship going nowhere.

But, I've been forced to forge my own goals and chart my own course.

Maybe not a bad thing

[leslie]

Great post, Pat... you succinctly stated the thoughts of so many of us who actually connected with Thomas in one way or another. And I love your idea of a coalition of the original team... I can picture their faces in my mind!

[m smith]

I am researching getting into coaching and after talking to someone with CV and ESPECIALLY after listening to just one of their "Caffeine" calls... i was really questioning them.