The CoachAccountable Blog

“Existence system” is not a phrase commonly known or used in English.  A Google search for it in quotes yields a paltry 7,470 results and none of the first few pages of results contain the meaning I intend to share here, so let’s look at the phrase newly.

Said another way, I mean: systems for keeping things in existence*.  We all know the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind”, right?  Keeping something in existence means keeping it present over time: it is the antithesis of letting something fall through the cracks. Many people don’t need an existence system: it is easy to remember the big things like going to work on Monday morning and brushing the teeth at night.  If those are your only responsibilities in a typical week, you really don’t need to check in with a day planner first thing in the morning.  And if you should happen to forget Aunt Pam’s birthday, well, she’ll probably understand.

But if you’re Up To Something, something that demands more of you than getting through a regular work schedule and maintaining basic hygiene, then an existence system is quickly relevant.  When you are Up To Something there are actions to take, promises to keep, appointments to attend and so on, and each thing has its place in time.  Letting one of these things slip through the cracks is counterproductive, and so staying present to all of them is very useful.

Coaches are almost invariably coaching people who are Up To Something.  Thus, coaches themselves are almost invariably Up To Something.  Existence systems become doubly relevant in the coaching profession.  What is your existence system?  How about your clients’?  Do they ever intersect?

Next: What makes an existence system great?

*You probably know of many existence systems, even if you’ve never called them by that name.  PDA’s, MS Outlook, day planners, Google Calendars, a cell phone that beeps at you 2 minutes before you’re supposed to hop onto that conference call… these are all examples of systems to keep you present to what’s going on and when.

Yesterday I wrote a piece about transparency of coaching, or how accessible the coaching industry is (or is not) to the more general public.  Now I want to take a look at transparency in coaching, or said another way, how easy it is for a client to perceive the progress and process over time.

Clearly we can agree that any coach worth their salt will be providing perceptible value for their client whenever they are interfacing.  It’s industry standard, you could say, that during a coaching session a client is realizing valuable insights, solid direction, and a more or less immediate experience that “yes, I am more clear/focused/ready for what’s next”.   But what about such clarity over the duration of the coaching engagement, whether weeks, months or years?

In my experiences with being coached I’ve seldom had, at the end of the coaching, a crystal clear view of where I had been and how far I’d come (let alone at any point during!).  I knew I’d gotten value, I just couldn’t easily tell you how much.  Our team’s collective experience with being coached suggests that a coach who can (and does!) provide a client with a comprehensive view of what was accomplished during the relationship is an exception, not the rule.  Failing that, we as clients are left with a collection of emails, printed worksheets, and hastily scribbled notes, and it’s up to us to keep it all straight and organized.

Much of CoachAccountable was designed with just that in mind.  From experience, I assert that clients are much more present to value they have gotten/are getting when the course of the whole relationship is easy to see, because keeping the coaching process and progress transparent at all times keeps clients having clear sense of ongoing accomplishment.  Would you agree?

One of the things I’ve run into time and time again during the course of CoachAccountable’s development is having to explain coaching (in the personal development sense) to friends who have never heard the word used outside the sports context.  Even despite many opportunities to practice giving my explanation, I seldom have it resonate with my listener.  The best response I can usually hope for goes something along the lines of “Ah, that sounds kinda cool for those people that need that.”

Those people that need that.

People generally understand that athletes do well to have someone who is not them looking at how they’re playing and offering guidance from an external perspective.  To score more points and win the big game, this makes perfect sense to most people.  But somehow when you apply that same concept to living one’s dreams, career advancement, and quality of life the concept goes sour in people’s minds.  Somehow a concept that enjoys “of-course-you-do-that-to-be-the-best” status in sports becomes far less obvious when applied to the grander scope of life.

What if we consider how transparency of coaching impacts this?

Coach/client privacy is a very important consideration of any coaching relationship, and it should be.  Being coached on the quality of your romantic relationships is much more personal than how many steps to take towards the basket for a layup.  A candid look at how you’ve been being with your team at work hits much closer to home than how many laps you ran during warm up yesterday.

So generally speaking, what happens in a coaching relationship stays in a coaching relationship.  An unintended consequence of this is that coaching (as we know it) remains relatively shrouded in mystery to the general public.   Consider this logical loop:

• The only way to know how coaching works is to experience coaching.
• The only way to experience coaching is by knowing well enough to choose to get coaching.
• The only way to know well enough to choose coaching is by knowing how coaching works.

Is this strictly true?  Of course not.  But it’s true enough to be interesting and worth finding ways to circumvent.  To that end, we’re throwing our hat into the ring.  As part of our effort to champion the benefits of coaching we’re going to get coached, and we’re doing it publicly.  We’ll use the CoachAccountable platform as a showcase of our progress (AND process).

Addressing transparency is obviously not a silver bullet for bringing coaching to a more mainstream understanding and interest.  But it is an interesting avenue to pursue with many possibilities.

I am a hacker.  (“Hacker” in the sense of programmers who really love to create things in code, NOT people trying to break into the CIA)   It is said in hacker circles (specifically in several essays by Paul Graham) that the best software is that which hackers write to scratch their own itch.   Why is that?  Because they are their own users.  It is the rare and magical combination in software development of (1) knowing exactly what is needed and (2) being able to create it.  If anything is cumbersome or annoying, they can fix it.  If a little shortcut is an obvious time saver, they can put it in.

One of the reasons we are looking for a coach is to position CoachAccountable more like that kind of software: built by and for the people who use it.  We want the regular experience of being clients in our system, using it like your clients will use it, and being in constant contact with the coach’s user perspective.  We’re going to expand on what we like and tweak/fix/scrap what we don’t.  We designed the sessions and file sharing features of CoachAccountable as an answer to what I would have used when I had between 4 and 8 coachees during my year in the Team Management and Leadership Program.  I’ve since graduated from that program, so there’s a lot more we can do to get into the shoes of our users.

When we nail it for ourselves, we nail it for a lot of people.

The four of us had a most excellent experience this weekend, and that was attending the Big Omaha conference: a gathering of entrepreneurial-minded tech folk.  Attendance covered the gamut from established thought leaders in the field to freelancers who just quit their job eager to create something themselves.

As a group of creatives on the verge of launching our first web app, we felt right at home.

Jeffrey Kalmikoff’s presentation on transparency was a real hit with all of us.   He posited the big question: “what does it take to be so genuine and authentically connected with your customers that you could screw up big time and have them still love you?”  There are a couple of things that  jumped out at me when looking at that:

• Never trying to appear as though you are something you are not. We’ve been a team of only 3 or 4 for a while now, but Lord knows the earliest drafts of our design agency website tried to pass us off as big and corporate.  Turns out we never needed to be: appearing big and deeply established never got us a job, being talented, commited and reliable did.
• Being accessible. Allowing a two-way rapport with customers, with emphasis on the two-way: if our customers take the time to give us feedback or comments, we owe it to them to give a thoughtful reply.
• Publicly owning up to mistakes. Nothing makes failure on someone’s part more painful than having it come with some song and dance trying to hide or justify the problem.  Being open and responsible about mistakes can turn an “us-vs-them” situation into a collaborative community effort to work out a resolution.

It may go without saying given all the above, but for the record I’ll say it plain:

We want to have that kind of relationship with the Coaching community.

While sitting out at the wine tasting rap party at the Big Omaha we came up with a few ideas on how to cultivate just that.  Stay tuned.  In the mean time I invite you to do the same: take a little time sitting outdoors (possibly with a glass of wine) and think about how you could foster such relationship with your clients and the communities you serve.  I’d love to hear what you come up with.