The recent surge in the personal coaching profession indicates that people today are hungry for answers. What drives someone to pay anywhere from $250 to $1200 (or more) per month for a weekly 45 minute phone call?
I believe it’s partly due to our innate, God-given desire to grow, improve, and succeed.
During the past week I’ve spent time in two Athens – one in Greece and one in Ohio. Conversations with friends who invest most of their time with college students gravitated to the issue of life-change. Today’s students are overwhelmed with choices, data, and information. As a result their filters are high – most won’t even answer their cell phone if caller-id doesn’t show someone they know.
Contemporary educational theory purports that if students are given more information they will make better, more responsible (can we say moral?) choices. But the evidence doesn’t bear that out. Studies reveal (see Made To Stick) that more choices typically lead to analysis paralysis. Maybe that explains the 3.5 hours per day that the average guy spends gaming or surfing.
People today want coaches because they want to know how to live better.
What does a good coach do? In sports, good coaches teach the fundamentals, observe performance, offer affirmation and correction, inspire with an arm around the shoulder or a well-placed kick in the rear, and work with a player to chart a course for the future. The best coaches find a way to extract an individual’s dreams and keep them in view.
Smells a lot like life-on-life discipleship to me. When Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he wasn’t just talking about theory or religious ideas. He meant “I am the way to live – do it this way.”
Each of us needs a few friends to help us sift through the mountains of information we’re inundated with each day and convert that into knowledge leading to wisdom. Wisdom is simply knowledge applied well. Wisdom, like a good coach, offers teaching, reproof, correction, and training in good living.
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