The wisdom of the coaching model pioneered by Sir John Whitmore, is that the coach aims to raise the awareness of the coachee and then leave the responsibility for that awareness with them.
We have taken on that concept fully in the last three months as Justin and I have been writing our book, A Gift to Yourself – a 7 step guide to creating your unique manifesto. We have been driven by the task of distilling the service we offered you in my manifesto into a 7 step guide with which you can coach yourself into creating your own personal manifesto. We have had mixed feelings about this: is it fair to leave you unattended in your journey? Will it work without an active coach?
Our answer is: you are not unattended; the book has everything that we believe will assist you AND far from being unfair that we are leaving you to take responsibility for the insights you gain, it is coaching in its purest form. We can’t step into the space and become mentor/advisors even if we wanted to! As to whether it will work without an active coach, the proof will be in the pudding!
Currently our draft book is out there with a cohort of friends and supporters undergoing a road-test! We have had the courage to ask them to read our book, undertake the 21 exercises – 3 per each of the 7 steps – draft their raw material for their manifestos and refine their finished product! Our courage has been rewarded by a resounding yes! ! Our hope – and delight – is to add case studies to each chapter of our book which are drawn from these road-testers.
Each of our road-testers has been asked to complete a small survey giving us feedback on the process they experienced. We have asked questions such as:
With fingers crossed and nerves intact, we await the results of this road-test.
We have come from the best of intentions; in our book we remain true to our shared philosophy of servant leadership: to empower, to put the needs of people first, and help them develop and perform as highly as possible.
We are also in congruence with the coaching tradition: we raise the awareness; you take responsibility for what you now know. We trust you will.