Jedi Master & Master Coach

Who is Wiser!

In the first movie of the Star Wars series, we were introduced to the Jedi Knights and the Force. Around the same time, in the TV series The White Shadow, the coach was the gentleman hero of the basketball team’s story. A Jedi Master was like an autonomous frontier lord, where wisdom, goodness and philosophical maturity met action. Anyone who followed the movies from 1977 onwards has probably dreamed of becoming a Jedi at some point. It is still exciting to think about the almost magical effect a Jedi Master can have on people and crowds, simply by using a lightsaber or the Force.

Over time, while the figure of the Jedi Master has solidified its place in our imagination, another discipline, coaching, has earned its place in the realities of everyday life with its “professional” nature. Its variations have multiplied: life coach, executive coach, career coach, and so on. The masters of this craft have become “Master Coaches”. In a way, they have turned into the Jedi knights of the internet and hyper-self-awareness age.

Coaches have become the sages of those struggling in the chaotic storms of the modern world, the monks of career escapees who have lost their way, the scholars serving the chronically dissatisfied mass consumer. They have offered a light of hope to white-collar workers by creating increasingly packaged and over-engineered sub-disciplines. At times they have promised more than they could deliver. Sometimes coaching has been hyped, either to make it easier to sell or because that hype has been good for the coach. And, realistically, coaches also have financial concerns.stic, coaches naturally have financial concerns as well…

Coaching Adds Value When Used Properly

At this point, as a consultant and trainer who uses coaching as an effective development tool, I would like to summarise a few observations and suggestions, with the intention of reducing the erosion of the concept of coaching in society. Ultimately, my aim is to define the coaching discipline in concrete terms that ground the idealised stories and allow it to have a positive impact on real lives:

• Professional coaching requires turning a communication-based skill set into actual behaviour, and using the tools and techniques developed by masters in this field only when and where they are genuinely needed.

  
  

• Being aware of and using coaching skills is a human and humane stance. However, it does not make a person wise, does not require them to solve ontological questions, and does not turn them into magicians who can prescribe perfect lives for others.

  
  

• In terms of intellectual capital, there are only a few people in the world who truly work on the development of coaching as a discipline. The rest of us are largely using the existing literature. We should not fall into the illusion of “becoming wise” through coaching just because we know the tools and models.

  
  

• Coaching has a direct impact on people’s self-awareness and behaviour. For this reason, anyone using coaching for business or life development needs to be ethical and must avoid unnecessarily influencing clients with techniques (like a Jedi Knight using “mind tricks”) for purely commercial benefit.

  
  

• It is valuable to keep reminding our clients of the difference between structured professional coaching and the use of coaching skills by a manager or teacher in business processes. Both can be valuable in their own right, on their own paths.

  
  

• We need to accept that basic coaching skills are a minimum requirement for balanced human communication.Therefore, it is important to stop treating basic coaching skills as high-priced “premium content” and to keep reminding all coaches of this mindset.

  
  

In summary, for coaching to find its rightful place in society as a discipline, professional coaches themselves must first embrace it with a simple and humble perspective: knowing what it is, observing its effects and side effects, and acknowledging its limits.

Maybe neither the Jedi Master nor the Master Coach is “wiser” by default. Wisdom appears not in the title, but in how consciously and humbly we use our influence on others.