Coaching for real

Trying to become real is not easy. We certainly can't start with a definition of real. Real is one of those words that the Germans call "ur" words, words that are so comprehensive that they define definition. Love, truth, beauty, reality -- these are like sunlight that enlighten everything else but we can't look directly at them.

So let's back into real.

It is hard to imagine anyone more backward than Sarah Palin. She divides America into "real" America and the rest of us. She does flagrantly what most of us do surreptitiously: real is what we identify with and or like. The Lakota Indians defined themselves as "the real people." (That's what "Lakota" means). So the first thing we have to do is learn that what we experience is real to us and coaching will endeavor to enlarge and perhaps alter what we experience.

For example, when I coach style Six, I admonish them not to watch the news broadcasts because those are calculated to frighten us: "If it bleeds, it leads" starts things off, followed by murders, rapes, car accidents, lost children and used car salesmen. News is when the fabric of humanity is torn. The unexpected, the disastrous, the frightening -- these make the news. If you are a style Six, this confirms your worst suspicions about the way the world is. But the news isn't that. It is a description of what went wrong that day. It is so narrow and selective it doesn't have much that is real. Television is always entertainment, regardless of what else it is, and entertainment is diversion from reality. The evening news is suffering as entertainment.

Get real

At one time or another I've done therapy, coaching and spiritual direction. Is there much real difference?
Only in resources and context.
A lot of religious writing and traditions talk smoothly about spirituality. I think that is a good thing. The coaching sites usually promise a felicitous combination of prosperity and happiness. I think those are good things.
People looking for spiritual direction usually come in search of virtue. In moderation I am in favor of virtue.

I don't promise and can't deliver any of those things. Perhaps my promise is captured best in a brief story. Houston Smith, the famous comparative religion author tells of his experience taking his Zen students to Japan to meet a famous Zen teacher who had a small group of intense disciples. The master walked into the assembled class and asked abruptly, "Why do you want to study here?" One graduate student responded that he understood there were some things about Zen that could only be learned by experience, not from books. Houston Smith said he thought was a good answer, but the Zen master was gruffly disapproving. So the student asked, "Well, what is the reason to study Zen?" The master's answer was brief and clear: "To see things as they are."

When I coach or try to heal or direct, the purpose of all three disciplines is to become more real. Within the enneagram tradition that starts with seeing things --especially ourselves -- clearly and then trying to become more real.

I received two unusual compliments on my coaching last month. One woman pronounced my help "yummy," which I thought was delightful! But the best compliment was from a man who refused to talk to me because he told my partner, Marie, "he is too real."
Well, the mission was not accomplished, but he did understand the mission.

More later. This will be a recurring theme.

No conscience

With "drill, baby, drill" morphing into "kill, baby, kill" with the rise of oil from the ocean's floor and the rise of the consequences of the Cheney energy ethics, perhaps we should take a look at what a sociopath is and how they work.
A sociopath, according to Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, has no conscience and cannot feel the pain or even the affection of anyone else.
I found it illuminating to learn the motivation that prompts them to disregard any social and moral norms. It is the desire to dominate.
In sociopathic people, community or cooperation is not valued. Nor are emotional bonds. Life is reduced to a desire to win. Dick Cheney dismissed moral considerations as he wrote "What good are principles if in the end you lose?" The lust for domination knows no limits.
We see this limitlessness when it is written large on a national scale. Project for a New American Century (PNAC) enthusiastically embraced America as ruling the world as the only super power. No talk of cooperation or community - military supremacy fueled by oil from Iraq.
But closer to home, 4% of people sociopaths - that's one out of 25. They look like us, the talk like us, but they don't think like the rest of humanity. They are only interested in winning, domination and control.
On a more muted note, domination is the default position in many relationships if the emotional bonds are frayed or broken.

Name your reward

Which would you rather be praised and recognized for == your effort or your talent? (And if you are a coach, teacher, parent or manager, which will you choose to reward?) Shows like "Britain's Got Talent and the American knockoff, American Idol spend most of their time and gush on talent.
Bad choice.
When you praise or otherwise reward achievement, when you praise effort, you empower the recipient. They are in charge of effort. If you praise talent, you praise them for what they had nothing to do with.
A lovely research experiment praised one group of students for effort and the other group for talent. Then they gave them choices around some other tests. The students who praised for talent chose the easier tests (to prove they were smart). Those praised for effort chose harder tests, probably because they felt more powerful and in control of the outcome.
If this topic interests you, may I recommend to my fellow coaches and teachers the book, Talent is Over-rated. Unless of course, this seems like too much work.

Failure is a noun

I love language and when I do my coaching by phone, I pay the kind of attention to language that a hungry dog pays to barbecuing hamburger.
I especially watch for nouns. Nouns are lumpy. Nouns lump all sorts of things like time and place and circumstance and effort and evaluation into one word. A word like failure, or issue or trouble or in a degraded form "well, you know."
But most of all nouns leave out "how." If have an "issue," instead of looking at a behavior that irritates or frightens me, I leave out "how." Let me give you an example.
I have an issue with right wing zealots. Translate: when they blame all problems, past and present, large and small (I told you nouns are lumpy), personal and social on "the liberals" or "socialism," I am alternately frightened and irritate. Here's HOW they do it. They are NOT "wingnuts" (a noun) they are people who do specific actions (blame, lump, coalesce, complain) in public for the sake of Fox news.
More personally, when someone says "I am a poor student," I want to know how you do poor work, how you fail, how you don't cope, how you talk to yourself. I want those verbs.
I find it most helpful to combine my career as high school grammar teacher and executive coach. If those CEO's would use verbs have their problems would go away.
Buckminister Fuller, a hero of mine, observed, "I think I am a verb." He was right.

Power of symbols

One of the tragedies of communication in this country is the substitution of the word "literal" for "true," or even for "real." A woman called me on the phone all excited about a speaker and said he "was literally on fire." I was so tempted to ask about 3rd degree burns.
I suffered a symbolic tragedy last week. My beloved KU basketball team lost. Really. They did. The whole country went into shock and the tires went flat on my life for a while. All because a group of tall young men couldn't put a ball through a hoop one more time.
How did they do this to me? Sacred space (96 X 48 lovely hardwood), sacred time (exactly 40 minutes of playing time), high priests wearing striped shirts, commandments (no fouling!) congregation forming one body (all wearing the same color). As a priest I recognize great liturgy when I see it.
So, boys and girls, here's what we learn from this. Symbols are not only real, they are more real than real real. So if you would like to change anything about your life, the first place to look for leverage is in your symbol world. Changing the way you dress, talk, eat, drive, etc in any small way will bring about changes far more powerful than any kind of grim resolution.
And I'm glad Kentucky lost, too.

Reform

Dennis Kucinich is being compared to Ralph Nadar because he won't compromise on what many consider an idealistic position.
There is good enneagram reason to compare them. Both are style Ones. When not quite on their game, Ones cannot compromise because they have strict inner rules. DK not only has inner rules, he carries the constitution with him. He carries his rules inside and out.
What Nadar and Kucinich do, they do in the name of virtue. What harm they do, they do because of rigidity. Obama, Clinton and McCain are all Ones, too. They were sure they were right and were intent on changing the world to fit their vision. That's what social subtype Ones are all about. Nadar and Kucinich have the same agenda, only with stricter principles.
Healthy Ones have to make a distinction between standards and expectations. They have a keen sense of standards but the ability of others or themselves to live up their standards has to be taken into consideration.
Ones like Nadar and Kucinich and all ones take a deep consolation is being right. But they have to ask themselves if being right is as important as being effective. They will answer that it doesn't do any good to be effective doing the wrong thing. The problem comes with the word "wrong." Few things are totally right or wrong (including my opinions!) but Ones are often guilty of black/white, right/wrong thinking that leads to polarization.