The polarisation of opinion that erupted among ordinary people during Israel’s incursion into Hamas-held Gaza in January was extreme indeed. Fuelled by media images and stories of devastated homes and families, and of broken children, most watchers aligned themselves with the Palestinians.
The accusation of “disproportionate response” was hard to dispute given that the Israeli death toll was 13 and the Palestinians’ more than 1,300, but that does not justify the kind of blanket condemnation of Israel and her people that we’ve seen from many quarters.
I have stayed and worked in Israel a number of times, in the 1980s and 1990s, visited many ancient sites and spoken with many Israelis of all persuasions, and some Israeli Arabs too.
Before the Gaza incursion I had accepted an invitation to speak on coaching and leadership at an Israeli Defence Force Psychology Conference. I arrived in Tel Aviv shortly after the fragile ceasefire, and spent the following afternoon with a dozen or so Israeli coaches before setting off to dine with other conference delegates at a military museum and training centre.
The absence of hierarchy was apparent as we were warmly hosted by two male and two female teenage conscripts. I was impressed by the caring, supportive relationships among the reservists. Trust was the pervasive word, but trust can be sustained only where there is authentic responsibility.
My presentation was well received.
So how well is coaching established elsewhere in Israel? The coaches that I met there were serious, knowledgeable and inquisitive. Without exception they were interested in the use of the transpersonal in coaching. Some saw it as a means of countering religious extremism of all kinds. There was also concern that the word “coaching” has become devalued by a small minority of poor practitioners. But how best to address that? While most coaches and would-be coaches in Israel speak English, or at least one other often-used language, there is, for example, a move to have my book, Coaching for Performance, translated into Hebrew.
I had travelled to Israel with Philip Goldman, a well-respected, UK-based corporate coach. On our last night there we dined with his friend Doron Almog, a retired major general who had taken coaching to an art form in an unusual way.
He and his wife had had a severely autistic son. They had devoted an enormous amount of care and energy to his well-being and happiness. They created an extraordinary community for the mentally disabled, a village of joy and love, one that also provides a unique learning environment for everyone – from corporate leaders to prison officers.
So outstanding was their success that Almog has been invited all over the world to promote similar initiatives. Their son died two years ago at a young age, yet happy. Some 7,000 people came to pay their respects.
Almog is undoubtedly a great coach and leader. He was also part of the highly successful 1976 raid on Entebbe airport, Uganda, where Israeli commandoes rescued more than 100 hostages from pro-Palestinian kidnappers.
It’s the type of strange contrast you encounter all the time in Israel. The reality isn’t about demonic warmongers, and unless we accept the fact that the truth is more complex than we’d like to believe, we’ll never come to understand what’s really happening there.
John Whitmore is executive chairman of Performance Consultants International, an honorary vice-president of the Association for Coaching and author of Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose (Nicholas Brealey Publishing), whose fourth edition is due out in June.
johnwhitmore@performanceconsultants.com