The Edges of Coaching: A Conversation with Joel Monk

In this thought-provoking episode of the Stepping In Podcast, host Adam Klein welcomes Joel Monk from Coaches Rising to explore the evolving landscape of coaching. Together, they examine coaching’s foundations, shadows, and future possibilities, diving into questions about individualism versus interconnectedness, the impact of AI, and how coaches can continue growing at their developmental edges. From their personal journeys into coaching to their insights on wisdom versus success, Adam and Joel offer a rich dialogue that challenges assumptions and invites listeners to consider what lies beyond conventional coaching approaches in our rapidly changing world.

Chapter Marks for “The Edges of Coaching” – Stepping In Podcast

0:00 – Introduction and Background: Joel’s Journey to Coaching
11:12 – The Shadows of Coaching: Progress, Performance, and Enhancement
21:33 – AI and the Future of Coaching: Opportunities and Limitations
33:40 – Moving Beyond Individualism: The Relational Nature of Coaching
46:47 – Staying at Your Edge: How Coaches Can Continue Growing
58:34 – Closing Thoughts: Ethics and the Evolution of the Coaching Field

More on the Episode: The Edges of Coaching

In this insightful episode of the Stepping In Podcast, New Ventures West managing partner Adam Klein engages in a profound dialogue with Joel Monk from Coaches Rising, exploring the evolving landscape of coaching, its shadows, and its future possibilities.

The conversation begins with both hosts sharing their personal journeys into coaching. Joel describes his transformation from a hedonistic lifestyle as a community artist and DJ to a spiritual seeker who discovered coaching through Ken Wilber’s work after experiencing an existential crisis. Adam shares his parallel path, moving from engineering to founding an intentional community called Reimagine, eventually finding his way to New Ventures West through his interest in the Enneagram.

Together, they examine fundamental questions about coaching’s foundations and limitations. They discuss how coaching often emphasizes success and improvement, potentially perpetuating a sense of lack in clients. Adam notes that New Ventures West’s approach has evolved to be mindful of this shadow, recognizing that not everything needs to be about performance enhancement.

The conversation explores coaching’s relationship with wisdom rather than success, questioning whether coaches should be provocateurs who challenge the status quo rather than simply helping clients adjust to unsustainable systems. Joel emphasizes the importance of recognizing our interconnectedness, moving beyond the hyper-individualistic approach that has dominated coaching.

A significant portion of the discussion examines AI’s impact on coaching. While acknowledging AI might democratize access to coaching, both hosts agree that the human-to-human connection remains irreplaceable. They suggest AI might actually reveal what makes coaching truly powerful: the aliveness that emerges between two human beings in authentic relationship, which can’t be replicated by algorithms.

Adam describes New Ventures West’s approach as helping people “be in contact with their own aliveness,” highlighting that coaching isn’t merely about frameworks or techniques but about the mysterious process of helping people connect with their unique life expression.

The hosts explore what it means for coaches to remain at their developmental edges. Joel describes the thrilling state of working at one’s edge, where coaching feels alive and fresh rather than habituated. They agree that being part of a community of coaches who can offer refined feedback is essential for continued growth—something New Ventures West fosters in its cohort-based training model.

The conversation concludes with a brief mention of ethics in coaching and concerns about regulation, leaving listeners with questions about how the field might evolve while maintaining its integrity.

Throughout the dialogue, the New Ventures West philosophy shines through in Adam’s contributions: an emphasis on the whole person, the importance of practice, the value of community, and a commitment to helping clients discover and express their unique aliveness. This thoughtful conversation exemplifies the depth and wisdom that New Ventures West brings to the coaching profession, inviting coaches to consider how they might continually evolve their practice to better serve their clients in an increasingly complex world.

Transcript

Adam Klein (00:00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Stepping In Podcast. I’m your host, Adam Klein, managing partner at New Ventures West, and in this episode I’m joined by Joel Monk from Coaches Rising. In my conversation with Joel, we look at the coaching profession, all the different styles and ways coaching can show up in the world, the different ways that supports clients, and then we turn our attention to looking at what does it mean as a coach to continuously be looking at our own growth so that we can better serve our clients. I found it to be a really enthralling and enlivening conversation. I trust you will as well look forward to hearing from you. Stepping [email protected]. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Joel. How are you today? You’ve had your day or a good portion of it so far?
Joel Monk (00:00:55):
I have, yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty good. Thanks. Yeah, it’s been quite a busy day because my daughter’s still off school, the school vacation, so I had her and then I was doing a bunch of other stuff in between. Yeah, but I’m doing very well. Thank you. Yeah, in good spirits. How old is your daughter? She’s just turned five. It was her birthday yesterday.
Adam Klein (00:01:20):
Oh, how fun.
Joel Monk (00:01:21):
Yeah, and we have a 17-year-old in the house. It’s quite interesting. Different dynamics at play,
Adam Klein (00:01:29):
I’ll say. Wow. Yeah, we have a 12-year-old and we just started the school schedule. We’re in week two now.
Joel Monk (00:01:39):
Oh yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah, America goes the US seems to go back a bit earlier. Yeah.
Adam Klein (00:01:44):
Well, yeah, we used to go back later and then all of a sudden in the last, I think maybe five years or something, earlier and earlier, but it’s nice. I like moving back into the school routine. I’m looking forward to it very much. Very much. It’s like, yeah, we had the unstructured, that was fun. That was a good time. Okay. The structure be nice.
Joel Monk (00:02:13):
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Adam Klein (00:02:18):
And remind me, where are you in Denmark? Do I have that right?
Joel Monk (00:02:22):
No, I live in Amsterdam.
Adam Klein (00:02:23):
Amsterdam.
Joel Monk (00:02:24):
Just on the edge of Amsterdam. Yeah.
Adam Klein (00:02:25):
Okay.
Joel Monk (00:02:26):
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. I’m from the UK originally, so yeah. Yeah. I’m guessing you are San Francisco area ish.
Adam Klein (00:02:38):
Yeah, ish. Yeah. I’m in our office today, which is in San Francisco, and then I live about 30 miles north in a little town called Petaluma.
Joel Monk (00:02:47):
Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. I was up in that area. Sonoma visiting Samuel Bonder, went to stay with him for while. I dunno if you know him. He’s a teacher. He’s quite cool actually, but he lives in that area. It’s beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a beautiful area. Look at
Adam Klein (00:03:04):
You. Yeah, it’s a really beautiful area.
Joel Monk (00:03:07):
Yeah.
Adam Klein (00:03:09):
Well, I don’t know if you looked at the notes from the previous time, I thought we could just kind of use these as a guide, and one of the places I was curious to start, Joel, is really even contextually for people listening to this episode who may not know you. What brought you to coaching originally? What’s some of the backstory for you?
Joel Monk (00:03:40):
That’s an interesting question because there’s a simple answer and then there’s a slightly more elaborate answer. What happened was I was actually a community artist and a dj, so my lifestyle was quite hedonistic, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and it was a lot of fun, actually. But one morning I woke up and I burst into tears, and I just knew that I’d lost touch with myself, and so I sold all my records and went on a pilgrimage to India and spent, I think six months there mostly hanging around with the Tibetans deepening in my practice or starting to deepen into meditative practice. Was that your first
Adam Klein (00:04:32):
Exposure to a life of practice in that way?
Joel Monk (00:04:37):
Yeah, I was about 23, 24, and I’d been going to the Krishnamurti meetup groups funnily enough before that,
Joel Monk (00:04:47):
Which was interesting. But Krishnamurti doesn’t give you much to go on in terms of practice. Right, right. Yeah. So yeah, they were cool people. Anyway, I’ll just keep it super short, but it is interesting. So when I was in India, I became a Buddhist and was really practicing, and I came out of seeing the ka mapa one day who’s quite a prominent figure in the Tibetan tradition. He’d been giving a teaching, and then there was these two guys there, and they started challenging me about why would I cut myself off from the world and meditate, and I got really triggered, and in that moment I decided to hang out with them, and they introduced me to all these things, Neota teachings. The more you practice, the further away you move from the truth of who you are. And I actually had a kind of mini awakening experience from exploring that.
Joel Monk (00:05:44):
But what happened was by the end of the week of hanging out with these two guys, I felt like they turned my world upside down so much that I was like, I hate you. The last thing they mentioned was Ken Wilbur, and by that point I was like, I don’t want anything to do with anyone you mentioned next. And then it was through getting into Ken Wilbur at a later date on a retreat where I came across his book, there’s an outdoor retreat, and his book just kept on showing up. I tripped over it coming out the shrine tent, and then I sat next to it and I was like, there’s Ken Wilber again, get away. But when I started reading his work, I was in an existential crisis after this mini awakening experience and just like it was a complete loss of identity and just really trying to find my sense of ground again. And Ken Wilbert answered all these questions that I was wrestling with in his work. So I just felt I lit up a Christmas tree and then I discovered developmental psychology and then this thing called coaching. And so that was a slightly long answer to your question. But yeah, it was amazing to come at it through that route because coaching felt like it encapsulated everything I was passionate about.
Adam Klein (00:07:08):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. To me, it feels like, I dunno long, but more like a full answer. I was wanting to bring in some context piece. We’re going to talk about coaching and what the future and all of that. And as I was sitting with the theme of our conversation was just feeling into, well, it might be helpful for us to share a little bit about what’s the context that brought us here going to certainly inform even how we orient to some of these questions we’re wanting to explore together.
Adam Klein (00:07:41):
Yeah. So my pathway in is not, well, it’s parallel in some ways in the fact that I came into it through more of a spiritual trajectory as well. So I remember in the US when you’re 18, you graduate high school, then you have to decide what are you going to do? What are you going to do in college? Whatcha are going to study? And then whatcha going to go on to make a career in? And I didn’t really know. I had many things that I was kind of good at, things that I enjoyed, but really, and I remember this very distinctly, I remember exactly where I was. It was in the basement of this, it was actually a church. And I said, I just really want to help people become who they are. That’s what I want to do. But I had no frame of reference for what that would actually look like, how it could be practical.
Adam Klein (00:08:33):
So I went on to study engineering. That was the pragmatic thing to do, and I could see, oh, I can make money doing this and maybe do something alongside people inside of that. But it was in graduate school that I had been doing different things in the more fringe sort of mystical arena of Christianity and was doing my graduate studies and kept hearing this little voice inside that said, this isn’t it, engineering’s not it, do something else related to more full on with people. So I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but I had a friend in San Francisco that I had been connecting with over the years. So I moved here. We started a little intentional community and then a nonprofit called Reimagine, which was all about a center for life integration and how do we integrate things like justice and creativity and simplicity.
Adam Klein (00:09:37):
And it was there then that I started to think about, well, how could I do this? Not in a nonprofit context, but more in a more market-based context because I was doing consulting work, computer consulting to help pay my bills, and people there were very interested in this other part of my life. They’re like, what is this thing you do on the weekends and these workshops that you lead? So then I got introduced to coaching and I’m curious to know a little bit more. You said you found coaching. My first introduction to coaching was like, I don’t think this is it. My first taste of it was more, it felt like it was going to exacerbate someone’s suffering rather than help it.
Joel Monk (00:10:27):
I’m very curious what you were doing.
Adam Klein (00:10:30):
Yeah, well, it was more like how do we get people to just accomplish things and really achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. And I could tell based on the work I had already been doing that, that might be helpful for some, but it certainly wasn’t going to be helpful for everyone. So then I started looking around more and I found the Enneagram. I had been studying that for many years, and I thought, oh, if someone includes the Enneagram in coaching, maybe that’s a place to go. And that’s ultimately how I found New ventures West. Beautiful. Yeah. So when you first encountered coaching, what was that like for you when you mentioned it briefly there in that passing comment, but
Joel Monk (00:11:12):
Yeah. Well, I ended up moving in with a guy. I was a Buddhist household. I’m not practicing Buddhist any longer, but I was back then, and he was a coach and he was also a counselor, Rogerian counselor. I remember when he did some counseling on me and I was like, whoa, he’s like a magician. I feel completely seen by this man. So yeah, he had a lot of depth to him. So I was quite lucky to meet coaching through him. And so I just started following my notes really in terms of what were the trainings in Manchester where I was at the time. And there was a coach training based on NLP and creativity stuff. So I was just kind of grabbing hold of what I could at that age. But it wasn’t long until I discovered Integral Coach in Canada. I actually have never trained with them, but I started to become inspired.
Joel Monk (00:12:18):
Doug Silsby’s work had a big influence on me because actually I’d say the practice that really started to have an influence on my coaching was a practice called Circling, which has since gotten quite bigger in the world. But back when I got into it, actually, it was in the Bay Area that it really started out, but other than that, it wasn’t much of it going on anywhere else. But yeah, I was like, oh, this is the modality where you can really practice being in a relational meditation with another person in a way that unlocks thriving, aliveness a certain kind of growth. So by dropping the change agenda. So the mix of things just started to influence me. And Robert Keegan’s work of course just had a big influence, but I didn’t, until Jennifer Garvey Berger’s work didn’t really get a sense of how can you apply that to coaching? So yeah, it was kind of an eclectic journey for me really. But yeah, I was quite lucky I think in that sense of, in what you are describing, I didn’t have too many negative experiences around it.
Adam Klein (00:13:38):
For me, it was just that initial one. I was like, I’m not sure this is it. And then the more I, like I said, hung in there and looked around, I thought, oh, this is quite a wide field, which I know I’ve heard some of your podcasts is coming up and it even comes up in our school is like, well, is coaching really the best word for some of what people are doing? I don’t know. We can get into that maybe later. And that’s I think part of our conversation to bring in is given the wide spectrum of coaching, what sense do you make of that? Yeah,
Joel Monk (00:14:20):
Of what do I sense of,
Adam Klein (00:14:21):
Yeah, of given the wide given, maybe put it this way, I have people asking me, is coaching what I should be doing in terms of not necessarily training but looking for a coach or do I need a different kind of modality? So how would you support someone in navigating the wide spectrum of what coaching is if it’s something that they were interested in pursuing, either as a client or as someone wanting to train in it?
Joel Monk (00:14:51):
Great question. I mean, there are several schools I find myself recommending, including new ventures West. I just often would be like, okay, because a lot of people reaching out to me about with that kind of question actually, because they know me via the podcast, and I could kind of tell roughly what kind of coaching and I just say, Hey, you’ve got to find a school that really speaks to you, but these are the five or six schools that I really recommend. But yeah, if I step back from that, it’s a big question really. Yeah, I think it depends really on who the person is and what they’re looking for. I do feel that I know of Steve March’s work, and that’s had a big influence on me in the more recent years, and I think he’s articulating very beautifully some of the wider transitions that we’re making on a societal level and therefore what impact that might have on the work we do as coaches, what it means to be a coach.
Joel Monk (00:16:06):
And that’s why I’ve been exploring the topic beyond coaching as well, playfully really, I am not attached to that phrase beyond coaching. It just kind of came up and then it kind of stuck, and I’ve been getting a bit of pushback for it. And I love coaching, so I’m not trying to say coaching’s, not it. I’m not trying to create the next new shiny thing to sell people either. It’s just more like what are some of the deep beliefs that coaching was based upon originally, and what do we need to question about that just as we’re doing in society wide? I’m not sure I answered your question there.
Adam Klein (00:16:46):
No, yeah, you did. And we could pick up that thread you just named. I think of, oh, I just lost it. Coaching, and what is it going to become I guess in the world these days? And in what ways? Oh, this is what it was built on. What was coaching originally built on that may be needing to be at the very least, looked at freshly and possibly let go of? And I know one of the questions we were entertaining and our conversation that’s connected to this is what current worldviews are becoming more clearly broken. I think some of them have been broken for a long time, it’s just that it’s more prominent. The clarity of it is more.
Joel Monk (00:17:51):
Yeah, it’s interesting just to preface answering those questions that I spoke to David Drake recently, and he met with John Whitmore and Timothy Galway. So two of, not the only, but two people who had a real influence in what coaching became. And I think one of them coined the term coaching, and I dunno if it was Timothy Goer who wrote the inner game of tennis, and they were like, we don’t like the word coaching actually, but it stuck. That’s what they were saying to David Drake, we never intended that word. I thought that was a fascinating thing to hear. I was like, because when you put a name on something, it has such an imprint on what it is and how it’s seen. So I think the first thing I’d say about that question about the deep beliefs, I think, and I want to tip my hat here to Peter Lindberg, who’s a friend of mine, a colleague, and influenced by his thinking is like success.
Joel Monk (00:18:59):
So in a sense, this is very generalistic, just caricaturing here a little bit to make a point, but in some ways coaching is based on becoming successful at something, getting something one wants that one doesn’t have. Whether that’s, and it’s some more forms which are more, I dunno, superficial about chasing goals in some way or even certain ways of being that one might have. But I think what’s becoming more important is becoming wiser. And that’s not to say being successful isn’t a good thing, but for me becoming wiser, what if coaching really started to orient people to developing wisdom? And that’s to say I think it does already. So in certain ways it’s not to say no coaching makes people wiser. Of course it does. But yeah, I think a lot of clients don’t come into coaching because they want to become wiser. Success has a lot of credence in our current worldview.
Joel Monk (00:20:17):
And by success we often mean status monetary success. I think some of these things are not inherently problematic, but when you situate them within the current kind of capitalist system, which again capitalism, I’m not critiquing that as a thing per se, but the way it’s been deployed around the world and it seems to just extracting resources that are unsustainable rate and stuff. Then I think from that view we can say there’s issues with it and that you’ll have heard this before too, Adam, but are we just coaching people inside of organizations to maintain the status quo when the status quo isn’t sustainable and isn’t making people feel happier? Or do we as coaches need to be provocateurs one foot in what’s emerging, one foot in the current worldview to be challenging? So yeah, that thing from success to wisdom I think is interesting for me as a belief.
Joel Monk (00:21:33):
And then I’ll volley it back to you now, but just to tee up, I think what is it to be a human being? Actually we’ve inherited this idea of what it is to be human being, but it’s very hyper individualistic and separate, and I think that has many problems to it, and I think that’s actually breaking down right now and something new is emerging, but that’s what a lot of coaching seems to be about. It’s like how can I improve my solo self to become more successful in the world? And again, there is some nice things to that too. It’s not black and white. But yeah,
Adam Klein (00:22:21):
I definitely have clients that come in with that topic said in different ways. And then there’s also some who come in, they don’t use this language, but it’s more like, how can I feel more at home in my life or more at ease in what I’m doing? Everything is so crazy. My work is crazy, and then I have family life that’s demanding and I have all of these demands and I can’t keep going. What do I do? So I think it’s back to this question you brought in. So what does it even mean to be a human being and questioning some of the premises that we hold is true about what’s important. How do we utilize our energy and our time and all of that, which is big. Those are huge questions to ask, especially when you’re in existing systems that perpetuate a particular answer, which I think is where the rub comes.
Joel Monk (00:23:22):
I think that’s a really fantastic point. I know in the past I haven’t given that enough space inside of my coaching that yes, and let’s get back to my prior point. We’re here with this individual on one level, but we’re embedded. We’re so deeply interconnected within these systems, and a lot of it’s very intense right now. There’s a lot of complexity and a lot of stimulation, and maybe these systems aren’t ontologically designed in optimal ways, and that’s being challenged right now. So yeah, I think there are certain practices and ways of being that we can take on as coaches and we can invite our clients into that can help us to navigate the intensity of times. And in fact, I think we’re in a dojo right now that’s actually inviting that kind of practice and evolution and it is a crazy world and it’s a lot to conduct.
Adam Klein (00:24:31):
And I’ve been reading this book by, well, he is a Catholic priest and then also an Hindu Raymond. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Raymond?
Joel Monk (00:24:43):
No. Yeah, cool.
Adam Klein (00:24:44):
So he’s really fantastic and deep, but in the book I’m reading now, rhythm of being, he’s speaking about how these questions we’re in don’t have a singular answer. So also in the question of what does it mean to be a human being? Something I’ve been sitting with is, so what then does it mean to have a diverse answer to that question rather than sometimes the mode I can find myself in, which is, oh, well, we’ll inquire into that and then we’ll come to an answer. That’s for everyone. And he’s like, you can’t because we’re all in different contexts and you can’t remove, that’s why I wanted to start with our own context. We can’t remove ourselves from that. So our answer is inherently influenced by many, many factors. So what is it like to have a diversity of answers to this question? What is it to be a human? How does it to be alive these days? So that’s an interesting question, especially from a coaching standpoint of how am I coaching this person in front of me and am I coaching them or am I coaching me?
Joel Monk (00:25:51):
But Adam, what I really like about what you bring up is actually I feel relief, right?
Speaker 3 (00:25:58):
Yes.
Joel Monk (00:25:58):
Isn’t it you leaving? It’s like, ah, okay. Yeah, because so trained to find that next answer. And maybe that’s also another one of these beliefs that coaching is based on. Again, I’m characterizing caricaturing coaching to make a point. I think a lot of coaches would really resonate with this idea of not coming to one answer. But yeah, I just feel this sense of relief, there’s multiplicity that can be possible in any moment that I can take on, and it doesn’t need to be the right thing.
Adam Klein (00:26:36):
Yeah. So maybe wise, we’re in this conversation, one of the questions that’s occurring for me is because we’re kind of touching on it already a little bit, but what are the shadows of coaching?
Joel Monk (00:26:52):
Yeah. What do you think? I mean, would you feel like sharing one first? I’ve got some ideas, but
Adam Klein (00:26:58):
Yeah, I’m happy to share one first. My sense is, well, we’ve kind of been talking about one, which is having people become more successful. So the shadow of performance and enhancement and progress can be built into the whole modality in some respects. So to me, that feels like a thing to be aware of. And is it okay to, no, we don’t have to progress. You don’t have to change. Nothing needs to move here. And I can imagine just having that be on someone’s website, yeah, come to me as your coach and we’re not going to do anything to change you or shift anything, everything’s fine.
Adam Klein (00:27:42):
So that’s not very far extreme, but I feel like that’s an inherent shadow that is so antithetical to even think that or to have that be explicit, like, whoa. So to me, that feels like an edge to pay attention to. And I think it’s coming in more. I know we included here, and I know other schools are including more of this, well, let’s be mindful and very conscious about everything not having to be about performance and improvement. And you named it in the capitalistic mode of the progress really is a myth. And what happens when we let that go? The myth of progress. So I think that’s one. Yeah. Anyway, so I’ll pause there and I’ll hand it to you and we can maybe just kind of go back and forth here.
Joel Monk (00:28:32):
Yeah. Well, just to build on what you are saying, I think you’ve named something so important there, that sense of the improvement agenda that we can get caught up in, which can perpetuate this sense of lack at its core, it’s like where we are right now isn’t enough, so we need to get somewhere else and then it’ll be okay. And actually there’s often subtle, but sometimes very palpable tension with that sense of deficiency that I think is quite a big shadow of coaching at times. So I’m glad you named that really in a way, I think I’ve already named quite a number of the shadows, like this approach. I think another one is reducing transformation to a simplistic set of heuristics, or we can codify it, we can really code, and there’s value in maps and codification, but I think that’s one of the things we’re being invited into really, is to live inside of a living realization, a living unfoldment of being human and or growth in commas. So I see that as there’s so many assessments about and maps and models and competencies, static competencies, and they’re getting challenged a lot right now.
Adam Klein (00:30:27):
I’m smiling, it’s funny, I dunno if you ever scroll on LinkedIn, you see all of these, a lot of models and modalities and those little infographics, and then you’ll see the same one look like in different colors and different branding. And the also way in which, oh, that one’s catching on, so you see it over and over again even though it’s touted under different names and different things. I’m like, but that’s the same thing. So yeah, I agree. I hear you and I see it as well, this shadow of, well, we just need the right technique or the right method or the right framework or the right, fill in the blank and we’ll find it and that’ll be it. And then the other part of it is then touting that as the solution for everyone.
Joel Monk (00:31:16):
One’s coming to me, it’s kind of a shadow, maybe it’s more of an ethical dilemma, but maybe sometimes an overexaggeration of the benefits. Now
Adam Klein (00:31:32):
The coaching’s going to make you experience enlightenment in Nirvana and you’ll be happy for your life
Joel Monk (00:31:39):
And what we’re going to be able to accomplish now. I think coaching is incredible, by the way. I think it can unlock incredible things and actually is just so amazing for people to have long-term coaching. And that’s the way I’ve grown the most in my life. And sometimes it can be kind of portrayed as happening in this very mechanistic, linear way, but for me it doesn’t work like that very often seeping the transformation, the changes like seeping in the back door and unbeknownst and it sudden jumps where I go like, whoa, where did that come from? Exactly. It’s like I can’t directly attribute it to one specific moment per se, but it’s also undeniably connected to the coaching work I’ve done. So yeah, maybe we need to be a bit more humble and yet also really own the magnificence of coaching.
Adam Klein (00:32:48):
And for me, our conversation really to me feels fueled by the impact coaching has had for each of us, our love for the field and the questions and conversations are kind of out of that place. So these wanting to talk about shadows and not critique, but come in with questions. That’s the place I feel like we’re coming from. So there’s one I think that’s connected to this as we’re talking about it, and it is a whole other thread, but I think there’s also some connection to the shadow piece, which is the big concern about ai, how’s that going to impact coaching? And to me, one of the tangential pieces of that, that might be some of the shadow of coaching is the economics. So part of what I hear in the AI conversation is this going to have coaches become unemployed? There’s many, many other dimensions to it.
Adam Klein (00:33:48):
So I’m not simplifying it to that, but I’m curious about this. One of the sort of economics of coaching and other ways that it’s been talked about is like, yes, it seems helpful, but it also seems to be for a very select group of the population not so widely available. So to me, another shadow is the whole economics of it. And in fact, just maybe a couple weeks ago, there was an article in the New York Times about therapists moving into coaching and one of the reasons it can be more lucrative from a financial standpoint. So that to me is also something I feel like is getting tossed around in the whole coaching space and wrestling with this question. And I’m wondering for you what you see in that or thoughts you have on it.
Joel Monk (00:34:41):
Yeah, so I think what’s interesting is how AI will impact the economics of coaching, but then how AI will impact our economies. And then even just the wider broader economic disruption that we could potentially maybe we even already are moving through in the next decade. So linked to the conversation we’ve had about growth, perpetual growth and our resources, and if you listen to people like Nate Hagens who talks about the great simplification, it’s a very confronting thing to hear about how really our economic worldview systems are actually tied to energy and it’s actually about energy. But anyway, so yeah, again, there’s no right answer to this. So on the one hand, am I for coaching the democratization of coaching and absolutely I love that. And also my for coaches getting paid well, do I like to get paid? Well, I do. So there’s not one answer to this.
Joel Monk (00:35:58):
Yeah, we’ve done some podcasts with people who are quite prominent in the field and with ai, and I personally, I feel like maybe we’ve just passed the peak, the hype peak, a little bit of ai. And that’s not to say that it isn’t going to keep exponentially improving and blow our minds, but somehow the cracks started to appear and the initial hype wave of what it’s going to be able to do, I noticed some of the news articles in the last two, three months starting to challenge some of the claims. And anyway, because saying that, because I think for a while I was quite pessimistic about what’s the impact it’s going to have on coaching, because it does seem like they’ll be able to create AI coaches that will have access to every coaching theory out there, and we’ll be able to draw upon that.
Joel Monk (00:36:59):
But it seems like it’s still going to be, of course we know, and I’m not an expert on AI by any means, but it’s not alive. It’s not relating to the human being in front of you. So it’s only able to respond in a particular way, looking back and drawing upon knowledge. And I think that will serve people. So I think AI can play a role in democratizing coaching. I had a conversation with Nikki de Blanche, and that was one of his big hopes is that for people who are never going to be able to afford the kind of fees, coaches I know charge, they’re going to have access to AI coaches. So that feels potentially, it could be positive. I think there’s a lot of caveats as well about AI coaching. We could get into that. Maybe I’m not all in favor of AI coaching by any means. I’m very skeptical and I’m not resistant to either. I’m trying to be open and just play with it. But yeah, I think a lot of the things we’ve already talked about, what is a human being? What are some of the deep beliefs and values we base our societies on, and what are the problematic ones that have been based in a modern worldview? They’re getting baked into ai, so they’re going to accentuate a lot of the challenges we have.
Joel Monk (00:38:27):
But I do think there’ll be a place for human coaches still. That’s my feeling. But the economic model around coaching, I dunno, there’s going to be a commodification of coaching. There’s going to be a McDonaldization of coaching. I mean, I just don’t know, but I think it behooves us to do the deeper work, the deeper kind of training that you guys do at Adventurous West, where it’s really about your being and the deeper spiritual elements of our humanity. And yes, so we could get into that. But anyway, again, I kind of weaved in a lot of different perspectives there.
Adam Klein (00:39:09):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s
Joel Monk (00:39:10):
Fantastic. Feel free to,
Adam Klein (00:39:13):
Yeah, I mean, I would echo some of the things you said about it, helping some of the democratization becoming more accessible. I mean, even though it isn’t, I don’t think intelligent, it’s statistical models from what I understand, just putting things together, it can be quite helpful in many respects. And I do think there’s significant limitations you’re pointing to. And one of the things I’m curious about is even in its helpfulness, we’re in the midst of, from some things I was just reading and studies that have been done in the midst of peak loneliness, I don’t know, peak, but accelerating loneliness and what’s it going to be like to now interact with the screen rather than another person, even though it might be saying things that are helpful, is that really going to be helpful or is it going to be just more cognitive distinctions that still have the person feel distant, not connected and isolated from others? So that’s a big curiosity I have around it. And to me, one of the things I think AI is revealing back to the thing we were talking about, frameworks and the right technique. I think it’s going to reveal that that’s not what coaching is
Joel Monk (00:40:37):
A hundred percent with you there. That’s the thrilling side of it. Actually, I, it’s pretty bleak, and I don’t want to spend time here too much, but to think that more and more of our interactions might be with the AI avatars that seem human-like whilst we’re consuming art that’s created by ais, and I’ve been reflecting on that, there’s something about the transmission of aeros and create an evolution that comes from live living beings interacting together. And that sense of emergence that comes and what happens when a lot of that’s happening through AI generated content. Do we, at first it seems okay, but then after a while we start to feel even more down and depressed and lonely consuming McDonald’s grade art and interactions. Now, I don’t know if it’ll definitely be like that. There’s going to be a lot of positive things coming out, ai, but back to your point, the positive side of this I really think is it is going to suddenly put it right in our faces. What’s actually beautiful about being human and what we actually need, these human to human interactions and contact and intimacy and this kind of aeros and aliveness that can come through to human and the novelty and the emergence that will come from two or more human beings together. That I think could be huge when that starts to dawn on us more and more because the other side of it is getting louder and louder and we’re getting less and less fulfilled.
Adam Klein (00:42:25):
Right? Exactly. Exactly. And to me, I think it reveals one of the essential things that coaching is up to, which is having people be in contact with their own aliveness. What’s the life inside of me that’s only going to come through me? I’m only here once and how does that live through me and get expressed in the world? To me, that’s the fascinating thing. And I think AI will reveal like, oh, it’s not a model that helps with that much more as you were pointing to earlier. It’s a much more mysterious process and one that can’t be done in isolation.
Speaker 3 (00:43:09):
That
Joel Monk (00:43:09):
I think is where we’re being invited as coaches to enter into the magic and the immediacy of the moment of being with another human being and the revelation and the unfolding that can occur. There’s a way I wanted to put it, but beyond, if you think about ai, I think one of the things we’re being invited into is we are coming out of an era where we valued knowledge a lot and knowledge and analytical breaking things down into their parts and measuring them. And I think in a way that’s getting baked into ai, that’s what it does. It can look back over all of our accumulated knowledge and then kind of estimate what an answer the best answer would be. But the most exciting coaching sessions I’ve been in with master practitioners and the communities I’ve been in is beyond that space, what you are pointing to, where people are really just letting go of a change agenda, just dropping into the moment with another human being.
Joel Monk (00:44:27):
Now they might be calling upon beautiful distinctions that they know like the Enneagram, but that’s not in the lead, that’s in the background. What’s in the lead is this living sense of contact and aliveness, the felt sense of being human with another person, and that there’s a kind of intelligence that comes online and can guide that sense of evolution taking place. And it becomes even less about me being the coach coaching you, but actually life evolving through us in this moment. Now, there’s an art to that because I’m still a coach and I’m still holding space, and you might be still paying me, but I’m participating and even revealing impact of what it’s like to be with you. I don’t think AI will be able to reveal that kind of impact. It might from facial recognition and tone of voice, but it’ll only be referring back to all the data. But as another human being, I can be like, ah, as I’m with you right now, this is what I’m noticing. This is what I’m feeling.
Adam Klein (00:45:38):
Yeah, it’s beautifully said. I think it’s pointing to that we are alive beings and we’re creative beings. So as we come forward into the world, we’re not going back into some model that which is AI is drawing on, it’s fresh, it’s new, it’s never been done. I’m me and me in the next second isn’t the me that I was yesterday or a second ago. And in fact, if we go off of prediction models, it kind of hems people in like, well, this is what you were doing yesterday. This is how you wrote yesterday, which is one of the ways AI does things. It’s like, oh yeah, this is your tone of voice, so this is how you should say it. Again, that feels so limiting.
Joel Monk (00:46:25):
I wonder, I hear now large coaching organizations, they’re developing their own AI and even maybe using coaching sessions within their organization to then codify these AI coaching platforms coaches. But then if that does have the impact that less and less people are coaching and more and more coaching is done by ai, that evolutionary tone that we’re talking about, I don’t know what’s going to happen to that. Is AI going to start to suddenly come up with new novel ways of coaching? It might do. Again, I want to be careful to say that no human being will ever get beneficial regulation and contact from an ai. I know that’s already happening from studies I hear. But yeah, again, it comes back to if more and more stuff is created by AI and we’re just consuming it and not creating it, what’s the long-term impact of that?
Adam Klein (00:47:35):
Well, yeah, as you’re talking, it’s like another way we’re shaped by the things we use, shaped by what we engage with. And there’s all this now shift recognizing how we’ve been shaped by cell phones and social media. So there’s a growing, at least especially in where I live in the school districts, a move of no phones at school, even in public schools because of the way that it’s impacting development of kids and shaping them in a way. So I’m wondering, as you’re talking, as people interact with ai, what’s the positive of it? And I do think there are positives, but also what’s the shaping that it’s going about? How is it shaping us as human beings, and what will we learn about that in 10 years? It will take time.
Joel Monk (00:48:27):
Time. You made a great point there. The phones, I don’t think we’re going to look back on our phones and I don’t know from now from when, I don’t think people are going to look back and go, oh, they were pretty good for humanity. I think they’ll be like, it started out. But it started out
Adam Klein (00:48:48):
And then there was, whoa, what happened there?
Joel Monk (00:48:51):
Unprecedented levels of loneliness. And I just saw an article in the paper today, like Britain, 15 year olds, they called it a happiness or wellbeing recession. It’s not. So I think a lot of that is on the phones, in social media and all that. So if we bake that stuff into ai, it’s like on steroids. I mean, if you dunno, you’ve listened to Zach Stein. I haven’t.
Adam Klein (00:49:16):
No, but I’m going to look into him after
Joel Monk (00:49:17):
This. Yeah, I mean, make sure you’re in a good mood when, because he is a brilliant guy and he has some really amazing points about the dangers of what we’re about to do. So yeah,
Adam Klein (00:49:33):
So you’re saying make sure I have a friend to call right after I listen to a read up on Zach Stein.
Joel Monk (00:49:38):
Yeah. And of course, his work is broad and he’s not only talking about ai, so
Adam Klein (00:49:44):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. So we’ve been talking while we can keep going on this AI thing, but I’m wondering if you wanted to bring in another place to go or another question you could wondering about.
Joel Monk (00:49:58):
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Great. I mean, I think we’ve talked a little bit about the worldview shift, but I think I was just thinking before we came on about some of the shift, the shift we’re going through. I mean, I could talk about that for a couple of minutes and just what might be some of the implications for coaches? And then I think you brought some amazing questions in as well as we were planning for this, but just this sense of this mechanistic worldview, Newtonian worldview of fixed parts, mechanistic parts, and how I think we’re moving into where we recognize our interconnectedness. And actually if you look at the work of people like Ian McGilchrist, but also in systems theory, Dave Snowden, people like this who are actually, the relationship between things are actually more primary than the things themselves, which is kind of like at first I found that to get my head around that pretty, it was an interesting process. And Dan Siegel talks about from me to mui,
Joel Monk (00:51:23):
So MWE, so this sense of extended self that you alluded to with our phones and how it’s actually the relationship between things. I think that that’s a high currency for transformation when you start to recognize that and include that in your coaching, whether that is through more of a systemic approach by including the world at large, or the environment or the team, those perspectives inside the conversation, or even from the level of the phenomenological felt experience of being in a flowing relationship in the moment with your client as things are unfolding, I think because in a sense we’re moving closer to the currency of process and of transformation. And I think I want to include something else here, which I’m curious what you think about, but the other thing we’ve done with modernity I think is privileged knowledge, as I said, but we’ve tended to abstract out of our experience in a way.
Adam Klein (00:52:38):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Joel Monk (00:52:40):
I felt that with Wilbur when I, it’s like the more I was learning, actually it did light me up. It is always nuance, but there was a point where I started to feel burdened by the maps and that I was accumulating and this sense of I’ve got to know all the maps and accumulate them all in order to get the answer to finally know everything. And I think we’re being invited into that dissent back into the immediacy of experience. And it’s related to this relational quality I’m talking to, talking about, and this experience of notice, of moving from knowing about to knowing from, so epistemology and ontology coming together, and it’s like as we’re talking about the coaching topic, we’re actually talking about how it’s showing up in this moment, and that’s beautiful. But then we can drop even deeper into this sense of how the things we’re exploring are actually, we can start to speak and explore from how they are in this moment.
Joel Monk (00:53:52):
And qualities often start showing up here like love, presence, strength, compassion, but just to knowing wisdom and kind of knowing and we start to know from those experiences rather than about them. I find that a really thrilling experience speaking from love, speaking wisdom, from the sense of connection I have with another person. Thomas Huble talks about this when word and energy, cohere and word and energy connect. And I think this is an incredibly thrilling place to land inside of as a human being. It’s very alive. And so yeah, I’ll leave it there and just see, I could bring in a couple more of things.
Adam Klein (00:54:47):
Well, I think that this is, to me, in some ways we were talking about AI revealing the limitation of frameworks. And what you’re pointing to me feels like it’s not about the framework necessarily or having the right knowledge, but more from where is the coach, speaking from where internally and having these different maps, frameworks, models be ways of finding territory inside that I might not have been able to find on my own. And then the relational part, and this is, I think so powerful, is when I’m with someone else and they’re speaking from a place that like, oh, I didn’t know that place existed, or It’s been so long since I’ve accessed it, and you have invited me back to this place inside myself. And wow, all of a sudden I feel a little bit more me because you were an invitation for me. You invited me back to that place.
Adam Klein (00:55:52):
And I think that’s really one of the magic parts of relationship. And we see it in our cohorts. It’s just amazing to see working. And it’s often behind the scenes in the background. People don’t know it’s going on until later. But the magic we can be of inviting one another into different dimensions of being a human because we’re different in some respects and the same, but it’s, it’s like little awakenings like, oh, you just woke up a part of me that’s asleep for a long time, and that feels, wow, I didn’t know that was there. That feels so wonderful. Or Whoa, pain. I haven’t accessed pain like that. And I can feel whatever I feel about it, but it rounds me out. Feels
Speaker 3 (00:56:44):
Right.
Joel Monk (00:56:45):
Yeah.
Adam Klein (00:56:46):
Yeah, it feels right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Joel Monk (00:56:48):
Yeah. That’s beautiful. Beautifully articulated. And that, I dunno, with ai, we keep referring back to, I think that’s the joy of being together with human beings, isn’t it? Where it can be vulnerable and tender. And I go in with groups sometimes and it’s like, oh, I can feel things that I don’t want to feel coming online, but most of the time I come out feeling like that was fulfilling and enriching. And
Adam Klein (00:57:21):
I feel like this is part of the frontier of coaching is leaning more into and sort of dissolving the individualist narrative, which you pointed out at the very beginning of our, when we started talking, the individual pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and no relationship is, it’s challenging for sure, oftentimes. And there’s this possibility of enhancing our sense of ourselves, expanding that, reconnecting to different parts and wow, the suffering that’s going on now with this loneliness pandemic where that’s not happening.
Joel Monk (00:58:06):
Yeah, what you share. I think that’s another challenge is we’ve atomized ourselves, we atomize leaders, so we see them as being separate from the systems they’re in or that leadership is residing within one person. And it’s another side of the coin of this loneliness kind of epidemic in that, yeah, we actually decontextualize a person, and I think it ties in with what we were saying earlier about needing to be, have the right answer or the one thing, but in a sense, we’re being created in every moment in each context. Me and you right now are deeply part of one another’s identity as is the reason that we’re here, the purpose of the conversation and the room that I’m in and the chair I’m sat. And I think this gets into what some of the perennial traditions, the wisdom traditions have pointed at is that that separate sense of self actually is part of our suffering and not as easy to find when we start to look at it. So yeah, a lot can open up when we see the world in this way of relationality.
Adam Klein (00:59:36):
Yeah. One of the things I’m curious about, something that we’re exploring here is this question of given this in relationality and also not centering the guru in something, and what does it mean to acknowledge all that informed that person and being in relationship with them as a person, not as something on a pedestal, but in this move to more collective orientation. I would love to hear your thoughts on that about as we’re kind of in this transition, because we’ve been talking about it in different ways, relationality and things like that, in a world where personality is how we kind of learn about something or get introduced and like, oh, I heard about it from this person, this key author or this key speaker. So how to have that be present often, how we hear about something and maintain a sense of, yes, this is just one person though, and let me remember that they were influenced by others and remember the group not centered, just this individual personality. So anyway, I’d love to see if you have anything on that or Yeah,
Joel Monk (01:00:53):
Yeah, it’s a good one. I think it’s both and right? And because it’s also amazing to be around people who are just very individuated and at ease in themselves or expressing their gifts and their, it’s thoroughly enjoyable and something’s coming through them. It’s like, but even that actually that phrase, something’s coming through them points to maybe what’s beyond their personal stuff. But yeah, I think is, if I think about my own spiritual journey, the positive side of gurus is they can inspire you and the charismatic, but we project, basically, we project all our own golden qualities onto ’em.
Joel Monk (01:01:54):
But I think what we’re being invited into is, I’ve seen this in the spiritual world happen more recently where Scott Killby, Jeff Foster, people like this were like, Hey, you know what? I’m human too, and I’m fallible and I’m struggling with things. And that’s a taboo subject in the spiritual world because a lot of spiritual teachers project this image that they’re kind of perfect. And Jeff Foster writes about how he went round staying at a lot of their houses, and he was pretty shocked about what was going on behind closed doors. And maybe he was exaggerating that a little bit. But I think, so I think we can apply that to the coaching world and the world of celebrated theorists and authors. And so I think what I find inspiring are the people I’m meeting who can have both, they’re not denying their greatness in a way or their uniqueness, that there is something they can uniquely do in this life. There’s a unique music they’re here to play, but also they’re vulnerable and they share themselves and their flaws not out. Nothing has to happen, but in the right moments where that feels appropriate. And they’re massive supporters of others. So they’re very attuned to their own shadows and they offer, distribute the leadership in groups. They’re not always in the center of the stage. They lift others up and others take leadership. So that combination of the fluidity feels like a thrilling possibility for us, but we’re not historically very good at,
Adam Klein (01:03:54):
That’s the thing, right? Together are we at least not in western culture. And I think that’s the invitation that is creeping in more and more is to have both and to remember the group and especially welcome more and more people who we don’t traditionally welcome or whoever we might be to see what can we learn as we have space for everybody to belong.
Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
Yeah.
Adam Klein (01:04:31):
Yeah. I’m just going to look, I had other questions here. Oh, you had this great question that we could maybe take a look at. How can coaches remain at their developmental edges?
Joel Monk (01:04:47):
Yeah. I like this question because what I noticed was there were times where it felt like I made a leap towards my developmental edge as a coach. And what that feels like for me is that I’m with another person and I feel thrilled to be there. I’m almost in a flow state, but it’s not, there’s exactly the same thing as being in a flow state, but there’s just a sense of being at my edge, and I just feel really alive, and I’m taking a bit of a risk, even there’s something new and fresh about the way I’m coaching with someone. And I can contrast that to, I might be at that edge for a while, and then suddenly it might start to feel a little bit habituated, a bit normal, and the edge starts to go away a little bit. And I’m just a little bit less excited.
Joel Monk (01:05:56):
It’s not that we always have to be feeling excitement in a coaching conversation, but just painting a general picture. And I just noticed the contrast between those. And I just noticed that when I was at my edge, I just felt like my coaching was just a lot better in, my coaching is a lot better when I’m at my edge. And that’s not to say I’m not serving people when I’m not there. And actually maybe there is a natural cycle if you think about the path to mastery that we do plateau at times and then we make these leaps. But the thing that I started to, when I actually started to notice that that was the key, so I was like, oh, I can feel a little bit plateaued, a bit habituated. So that in of itself was quite powerful because it already kind of opened my senses up to what was going on. And then a question I found really useful was actually to start asking myself, what’s the experience that I want to be having inside of the coaching session?
Joel Monk (01:07:04):
I often ask myself almost the opposite, what kind of experience am I creating for my clients? Of course, they’re coming in with a clear motivation, and I’m honoring that too. But this question of what kind of experience do I want to be having, I found to be just really joyful to start to think about and to include myself in my own reflections on my coaching practice in that way. And there are other things I think that help us get to our edge being introduced to new ideas and teachers that are different than the way we’re doing. So I think those a bit more familiar to people listening. But yeah, I just feel there’s this felt sense of being at our edge and we’re so attuned at those moments. And yeah.
Adam Klein (01:08:00):
Can you say more, when you say edge, just for people who may not be familiar with this term, what is that for you? How would you describe Edge?
Joel Monk (01:08:11):
So I think there’s a way that I can describe it both from a place of what’s it like in the moment, but also if I look at my overall growth of a coach as a coach, what’s going on there? And in a way, what’s it in the moment is a little bit like what I’ve been describing. So
Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
I come into a session and
Joel Monk (01:08:48):
The theories and ways of being of a coach that I have that collected are in the background firmly. And even as someone who’s felt like that for a long time, that I want to operate in what’s unfolding in the coaching relationship in the moment, there are some, in a way, we’re meaning making creatures. And what I found over time is that a lot of those maps and methods and beliefs, the axioms that I hold, they’re subjective. I don’t know I’m holding them, but there’s this sense of really being in beginner’s mind, perhaps really being in a place of where the unexpected unfold, not as an idea, but as a felt experience. And it’s the same as my meditation practice. It’s like I’ve done a lot of open awareness meditation practice, and there’s this opening into this bright, spontaneous, fresh awareness, but then the mind reifies it subtly quickly, it fixates experience. And that can happen very subtly and over time with practice, you start to notice that more and more. And I think there’s a similar process happening. So maybe I’m kind of saying the same thing from a different angle.
Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
I feel like there’s something else I could say, but
Joel Monk (01:10:52):
It’s not, maybe I’d have to sit for an
Adam Klein (01:10:56):
Uncomfortably long amount of time. We’re riding the edge at this moment where exactly isn’t available. Right. That’s exactly what’s like, well, here we are. And what do I say about it? I’m not sure yet.
Joel Monk (01:11:12):
Yeah, I was about to say it. It’s like, in a way, your question has invited me to the edge of, so there’s a sense of palpating what might come next. So yeah, I’ll leave it there.
Adam Klein (01:11:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s beautiful. One of the other ways I feel edge, so I’m not going to repeat all you said, I echo it sometimes. Also edge to me feels like when I’m with a client and I can feel what would be helpful, the helpful response, and my body is like, well, I don’t have access to that right now. And that feels like edge in a different way. Oh, I’ve really reached maybe more of a limit on my capacity on that side of the spectrum. So that’s then an invitation for me to go explore that later. What’s going on there. That my response was either it felt, maybe it was there, but it was muted. It felt muted, and what would’ve been helpful is a fuller expression of it. So what was that about?
Joel Monk (01:12:25):
Yeah. I love what you’re saying because I’m like, oh yeah, that’s another way of seeing edge, which is so important, so beautiful. It’s like these moments in a coaching session where something happens and I’m like, oh, what was going on for me there? What was that? As opposed to other moments where I feel very clean and attuned, and so that I think is another, you are, in a way, it’s like what I was trying to articulate, but in beautiful from a different way. And one of the conversations I have with some of the coaches I know is a friend of mine, Sean Wilkinson, had this idea of mixed mystical arts. So you’ve got MMA fighting, which is all the different styles, and if you’re not a generalist, people have specialties, but if you can’t do the jujitsu, then if they get you on the floor, you you’re screwed.
Joel Monk (01:13:28):
So his idea was, what if we get together high level practitioners and we start to sense, get into some coaching, kung fu wrestle and offer, be able to offer very refined, subtle feedback or reflections to one another, these distinctions that really open up something. And Sean is like that for me. It’s like, we’ll explore something and he’ll offer a perspective and usually from the sense of immediacy of how it’s shown up in the moment. And it’s like you said before that Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. Now I’m feeling that. Wow. That I think is something, as coaches, that is important for us to engage in that.
Adam Klein (01:14:25):
Yeah, absolutely. Be in a community of coaches where that kind of thing is happening and possible. It’s also for me, endlessly exciting to know that, oh, it’s never ending here.
Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Yeah.
Adam Klein (01:14:39):
Well, Joel, I want to see if we’ve been talking a long time, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this. We might have to do this again, but as we’re kind of coming to the end here, I’m wondering if there’s anything else you wanted to bring in before we wrap for today, question or topic?
Joel Monk (01:14:57):
Yeah, I think we can tee it up for next time, but you may mentioned the role of certifying bodies and regulation.
Adam Klein (01:15:05):
Oh, yeah, yeah. That might be a bigger topic than, yeah, it’s a good one. I would love to talk about that
Joel Monk (01:15:12):
As a kind of cliffhanger. I saw someone post about this on LinkedIn the other day, very articulately, very, very beautifully. And man, it was like a lot of responses, a lot of comments, a lot of likes to this. And the challenge was about the danger of collapsing coaching into a set of static competencies. And in a sense, rather than us training to become the masterful and mysteriously magical coaches, we can be things becoming a real business with levels or stages of beginning intermediate mastery coaches and things.
Adam Klein (01:16:03):
Yeah.
Adam Klein (01:16:05):
Yeah, I agree. So this is good. We’ll leave with the cliffhanger, so people have to wait for the next episode to come on. That’s exactly that part. And then this other part of, because I think some of this question for me was stirred by an article again, that came out of maybe a couple months ago, and this is, I think another shadow of maybe more the industry not coaching itself, are the people who are in it for maybe other kinds of purposes, other than helping clients just making money. So there was this thing about a person who had invested tens of thousands of dollars over several years and really felt burned. And when they started talking about it, it was like, oh, yeah. Because the school was like, well, the reason you’re not succeeding is because you didn’t do your training well enough and you need to hire us again to do your training.
Adam Klein (01:16:52):
So it became this thing, and I was like, wow, this is so unfortunate that coaching has traction now. And of course, that it brings in people who may have other intentions around it and how to help people navigate. This is back to that question of how to navigate this, the wide spectrum of what’s called coaching of the different levels of people’s experience in terms of training and all of that. And I don’t know if a regulating body is the answer, but it just for me brings forward this question of how to help people navigate and not be taken advantage of.
Joel Monk (01:17:33):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s just as a last sentence from my side, I see ethics gaining traction now in the field, which is nice. And ethics for me, I was always like, oh, ethics. But actually it goes right into the heart of what it means to be human. It’s an fascinating way to, it’s actually, ethics is coaching in a way. And then the other thing is just David Drake, I think has been writing a little bit about this dilemma of the word coaching being diluted and different players in the field and all this. So yeah, people might want to check out his recent papers on that as well.
Adam Klein (01:18:20):
Well, I’ve really enjoyed our time together. This has been fantastic, and I do think there’s a whole thing we could talk about where we’re ending here and more. So I really appreciate your time, Joel, and being in conversation with me.
Joel Monk (01:18:34):
I really enjoy myself, Adam, thoroughly. Yeah. I’ve just felt a lot of aliveness and enjoyment from your questions and your passion, obvious passion for what it is to be a coach.
Adam Klein (01:18:49):
Well, until next time, be well take care of yourself.
Speaker 3 (01:18:53):
Thank you. Yeah, you too.
Adam Klein (01:18:58):
Well, we can in there officially. And yeah, really, thanks, Joel. This was real delight.
Joel Monk (01:19:03):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I can go off on one on tangents about things.
Adam Klein (01:19:08):
Oh, no, it’s great to me. I love conversational nature of these things. People appreciate as a listener, I appreciate the podcasts that have that genuine feel to it, where it’s not so staccato and focused, it feels more alive.
Joel Monk (01:19:24):
Definitely. I appreciate that about you as a podcaster. Actually, I forgot to say it in the actual interview, but yeah, you hold a really nice conversational space, which I also, I can’t listen to podcasts where it’s too, so Derek, can you tell me? And then they answer it, and then they ask the next question as if it’s too like, well, you didn’t go into that. You hardly spoke.
Adam Klein (01:19:49):
Yeah, exactly. Well, it’s been great to get to know you too. I’ve enjoyed that.
Joel Monk (01:19:57):
Yeah, me too. Me too. Let’s keep in touch and happy to share this when it comes out if you want me to. And
Adam Klein (01:20:03):
Yeah, that’d be great. So I got to get on the editing and I’ll let you know, and that would be wonderful. All right, Joel, take care. Bye.