The first era of Coaching executives in organizations was to improve skills, and since most of the Coaching thinking came from Sports, Coaching was more associated with training.

Training through the external observations of ways of doing and making the necessary adjustments.

A natural emergent of this was that coaching was hired for people who were doing something wrong, in order to help them revert their mistakes.Nobody was very proud to be given a Coach at the time, since it meant they had to repair some “personal flaws”.

At the beginning of this century, partly because of the learning and advances in neurosciences, the approach to Coaching changed and started focusing on working on the unfolding of natural potential of executives and individuals in general.

That was the time when I started my Coaching Education which, initially a curiosity, turned into a heartfelt vocation and I have been An Executive Coach since the early 2000s.

These have been the years in which Management education shifted to Leadership development, where motivation gave way to inspiration, where directive leadership shifted to inspiring and servant leadership.

Communication became all about improving the quality of conversations and Millenials started bringing, and requiring new work conditions in order to deliver their technology enhanced skills and talents.

Yet, Coaching is still pursuing improved performance and productivity. Shareholder value imposes very demanding ways and conditions at the workplace and this is creating unwanted and unexpected results, which is also requiring new perspectives regarding coaching interventions.

BECOMING

The change in workplace conditions and demands created new challenges in work life balance, personal relations, communication, and emotional breakdowns.

An increasing lack of meaning and Observing this over the last years, when more and more executives where feeling difficulties with their life balance, emotional challenges and anxiety disorders became increasingly evident. 

Under the increasing demands of productivity and profitability and and overload of information that made everything relative and uncertain what many executives starting seeking was sense making and meaning. 

Increasingly more Senior executives are in a pursue of identifying the kind of life they would like to live and this turns into a search of meaning and significance in their work and life.

The pandemics lockdown created a disruption and a halt where the big request became understanding what is this all about ?…

I have been realizing that these topics require a different kind of frame, a different mindset and foremostly a different kind of Conversation. It was not about discovering the right answers anymore. It became about going deeper into placing the right questions. Coaching intervention models are sometimes useful and many other times not. Meaning calls for depth, and depth calls for a different kind of reflection. 

Dialogue, that ancient way of human understanding and mutual exploration of the Universe and all in it, has become a relevant need for these times of paradoxes, where despite a myriad of social networks interactions with hundreds of “friends and connections” feelings of loneliness and miss-placement are in the grow.

I have been involved in Dialogue practice and development for several years now and I firmly believe that this is the communication approach that the times require, today and into the future.

I am committed to bring more Dialogue into our workplaces and into our personal life. As a Trustee of the Board of the International Academy of Professional Dialogue I contribute to this at larger scale . Individually I want to benefit as many persons as possible through one to one meaningful dialogues that bring clarity to the paths of each onés life journey, at whatever stage of it they may be.

As much as Coaching is very helpful to learn what to do and how to do it, Dialogue is what will allow you to understand the why and the what for of what you are pursuing, giving you a sense of meaning, and clarity of purpose.

That clarity of purpose is what underlies your needs to contribute to system life, which is what every living species in this world is here for.

And living and working in our field of natural contribution is what happiness and professional fulfillment are about.