Barnabas File

In a recent webinar, Peter Hawkins presented a new coaching paradigm.  Using the title “From Ego to Eco Coaching:  Creative Value Beyond the Client,” Hawkins challenges coaches to take a broader perspective on their work and their relationship to the client.  Here are his five challenges:  1.     1.   You are never just coaching an individual but coaching with and through an individual. When an individual changes, he or she can change a system. 2.       The person being coached is not simply your coaching partner, and it is the joint purpose that creates the partnership not the partners.     Bob Dale called this relationship “thought partners.” This conveys the same idea.     We join together around an idea that the person being coached identifies and the coach embraces. 3.       The team dynamic, organizational culture, the wider community, and the ecology are not out there to be talked about but are present in the room (literally or virtually) with you.     No one being coached lives

We need to understand that modern psychology developed from helping people with major emotional problems.     It was aimed at “fixing” what was wrong with people. In other words, on studying and responding to pathology.     In the late 20 th   century, a group of practitioners and researchers, led by Martin Seligman, took a different approach: “What if we studied people who were mentally balanced and functioning effectively?     What could we learn from them?”     This led to the birth of a field called positive psychology.     You can learn more about positive psychology   here .   Positive psychology provides both a practical and conceptual framework for coaching.  In some ways, practitioners find themselves overwhelmed by various models and interventions applying positive psychology to coaching.  A  recent article   by Joseph Ciarrochi and other researchers seeks to provide a framework that brings together the core processes of change related to the coaching conversation, processes

I met with a group today that is providing consulting to several churches in different parts of the US.     Each coach provided examples of the challenges their individual churches are facing.      One church made up primarily of immigrants from Asia is negotiating how to deal with the progressive and traditionalist proponents in their congregation.  A church is working to support the unhoused and the working poor.  Another is seeking to support a member dealing with pressures related to gender identity.  Two are dealing with denominational disaffiliation.   This is where many of our churches are today.  The COVID-19 pandemic was considered a time of volatility and change, but we live in an era of continuous and disruptive change.  This is the “new normal” where churches struggle for clarity and to pursue what is important as they do Kingdom work.   This is the world in which we live and serve.

The religious denomination is, in many ways, a uniquely American concept that has not only thrived in North America but impacted the rest of the world.     Many of the denominations with which we are familiar were born in the 19 th century.      Some sought to preserve national (European) identity or an economic stance.     Others sought to bring the growing independent missionary societies under the wing of the churches. Some organized for less idealistic reasons.     For the most part, however, denominations were expressions of entrepreneurship.  In the secular definition, an entrepreneur is  someone who has the ability and desire to establish, administer, and succeed in a startup venture along with risk entitled to it, to make profits.   From the religious perspective, the entrepreneurs who founded American denominations sought to create a new way to expand the ministries of the churches and consolidate financial support for those ministries, basing the risk on their faith in the mi

Search was recommended to me by a ministry colleague.     Although she did not know that I had served on a pastor search committee a couple of years ago, I welcomed the recommendation and found the topic intriguing.     Most ministers do not have the opportunity to be part of a pastor search committee and those who do may have a difficult time processing their experience.   Author Michelle Huneven has written this novel about a congregational search committee told as a memoir with recipes.  I shared with a group that I found it both amusing and terrifying!  In the novel, Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer who is also a longtime, but increasingly dissatisfied, member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Coming off a successful book launch, she is asked to join the search committee for a new minister. Seeking her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. Search follows

How do you make the most of the gifts, experiences, and passions of those in your organization?     By encouraging questions. Whether you are leading a church, a judicatory, or a not-for-profit organization, asking questions and providing an opportunity for everyone to ask questions, provides a pathway to growth, excellence, and sustainability.   In Leading with Questions, Bob Tiede and Michael J. Marquardt  suggest developing a questioning culture in every organization.   A questioning culture has six hallmarks. When an organization has a questioning culture, the people in it:    Are willing to admit “I don't know.”   Go beyond allowing questions; they encourage questions. Are helped to develop the skills needed to ask questions in a positive way.   Focus on asking empowering questions and avoid disempowering questions.   Emphasize the process of asking questions and searching for answers rather than finding the “right” answers.   Accept and reward risk taking.   This is not some

In leading a session at a church once, I talked about the terms used in the New Testament for the followers of Jesus.    I noted that the word “disciple” is found 263 times in the New Testament and the word “Christian” only three times.     The word “member” is found 45 times in the New Testament, nine times in the Gospels.     Disciple seems to be the term used most often for Christian believers.     As I unpacked the importance of being disciples of Jesus, I received some push-back that the word “disciple” had negative connotations and perhaps another word would work better. I was a bit surprised.     Perhaps it is time to reclaim the word and use it more in our coaching practices with believers.   What is your definition of “discipleship”?  In general usage, a disciple is one who follows the example and teachings of another person.  In the Christian context, a disciple is a follower of Jesus Christ, one who seeks to practice his teachings and make them a part of her or his life.  Li

Powerful questions are essential in any effective coaching relationship.     Now Bob Tiede and Michael J. Marquardt have joined forces in the book Leading with Questions to show how asking powerful questions can transform organizations and teams as well as individuals.    The subtitle—how leaders discover powerful answers by knowing what and how to ask—provides the theme of the book.   As coaching has evolved from a one-to-one relationship to an organizational opportunity, the art of asking the right questions has opened a path to growth, employee empowerment, and sustainability for every setting.  Marquardt has been an advocate of this approach for years; in this third edition, he joins forces with Bob Tiede to share both practical examples and a decade of research on this topic.   Part One of the book explains why questions can be powerful in helping both individuals and organizations become best expressions of themselves. Part Two offers practical guidance in asking questions effec

In a blog for the International Coaching Federation, Diane Craig discussed leadership styles for aspiring leaders.     Some are suited for short-term situations where immediate impact is needed.     Others are best when there is time and space to provide leadership over the long term.     Most pastors find themselves in situations where long term strategies of leadership can be implemented.     Craig identifies those as Visionary, Participative, and Coaching. According to Craig,  a visionary style “establishes standards and monitors performance in relation to the larger vision.” This might be called an inspirational or aspirational style.  The  participative leader “invites employees to participate in the development of decisions and actively seeks opportunities for consensus.” The goal here is to develop a smoothly functioning, cohesive team of people to accomplish something.  This often complements a visionary style. Participative leaders tend to reward the team, not individuals. Th

The Gallup organization did a meta-analysis of 100 million employee interviews to identify what makes a highly engaged team.  The key factor is the manager, but one with a particular style of leading.  In a recent blog post, Jim Clifton reported, “ Gallup has discovered -- through studying what the best managers do differently -- that great managing is an act of coaching, not one of directing and administrating.”   At the center of compassionate accountability is coaching.  Good managers engage in regular coaching conversations to encourage, develop, and support team members.  In the blog, Clifton suggests several ways to implement this game changing strategy in an organization.   1.        Recognize that Millennials and Generation Z individuals want to learn and grow.  Coaching provides this opportunity. 2.       Announce to your organization that your leaders will move from administering teams to coaching teams. 3.       Do away with all evaluation forms and institute this approach:

In our coaching and coach training, our focus is usually on the partnership between the coach and the client.  In this process, the coach leads the process with the client providing the agenda—the subject for discussion, resource discovery, action plans, and achievement.    In an online presentation, Professor Peter Hawkins suggested a new perspective for the coaching relationship. His presentation on “From Ego to Eco Coaching:  Creating Value Beyond the Client” offered a challenge to place the coaching relationship in a larger context.  How can the coaching relationship benefit the organization, society and the world? Hawkins outlines the change in perspective in this way:   For the coach it means moving “from facing the person you are coaching as your client, to going shoulder to shoulder with them as your partner, jointly facing what their world of tomorrow is asking them to step up to.”   For the coach and client, the new orientation is one “where coach and client are jointly in se

When we discuss the value of coaching, we usually focus on the difference it makes in the lives of individuals, but coaching also has benefits for the churches and organizations that provide it for staff and employees.     In an article in the February 2016 edition of Coaching World, Odile Carru and Mark Weinstein discussed the growth of internal coaching in organizations and its value to employees at all levels.     Carru and Weinstein presented three of these benefits:    talent retention, leadership development, and improving soft skills   When a church or organization provides coaches for leaders, the person who is coached not only develops new skills and abilities, but they appreciate the investment being made on their behalf.  This encourages them to stay with the organization longer rather than seeking another position “where the grass is greener.”     According to Carru and Weinstein, key areas for coaching in organizations are leadership development, onboarding (bringing new p

Have you come to a point where you feel that you are stuck?  Perhaps new ideas don’t come.  Or you think your leadership has plateaued?  You no longer seem to be making an impact.  Let me share a story with you.   When Mark Tidsworth, Pinnacle’s team leader, approached me in 2008 about joining the team as a coach, I really did not know what he was talking about.  He told me about his own coach training and coaching practice and assured me that I had been doing coaching for years, although I did not call it by that name.  I agreed to come on board with the understanding that I would pursue formal training as a coach.   Fifteen years later, I have coached over 1000 hours with some 50 clients, held a coaching credential with the International Coaching Federation for ten years and am working to move to the next level, and have been able to be a co-creator of Summit Coach Training.    I think you can surmise from that experience that I believe in coaching.  I have seen the difference it has

I n a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. — Eric Hoffer, writer and philosopher   In his article, Human Knowledge is Doubling Every 12 Hours , Amitabh Ray notes, “The  volume of knowledge is doubling every 12 hours. The doubling rate used to be 25 years in 1945.”    He reports, “There was a stunned silence when I told a group of young students that the jobs of tomorrow, for which they were preparing themselves today, haven’t yet been invented. I received a similar response when I said that things that are being taught today in our schools and colleges would be redundant by the time students graduate.”   When I graduated from seminary in the last century, I felt that I was well equipped for ministry. In addition to biblical, historical, and theological studies, I knew how to develop and deliver a sermon, craft a Bible study, provide pastoral care, and  even do some administrative tasks.  My confidence didn’t last long. Not only was the quantity and quality