Talking ’bout a revolution

‘Reinventing ourselves’ was the theme of the ICF European Conference, and delegates were not disappointed. Liz Hall reports on a memorable event

For two days, speakers had called for a revolution in ways of being and recognition of our interconnectedness. And that is exactly what happened as the conference closed.

UK ICF member Jan Portillo spoke out for many when she expressed anger, frustration and a sense of exclusion and separateness.

Speakers including Charles Eisenstein, philosopher and author of The Ascent of Humanity and Richard Tarnas, professor of philosophy and history of culture at the California Institute of Integral Studies had been calling for humankind to reinvent itself, to embrace interconnectedness as one way to respond to crises such as the state of the environment and the likely collapse of the monetary system. Yet until Portillo spoke up, there had been much talk by speakers and little chance for delegates to act in an interconnected way.

“There had been a palpable sense of separation but then the emotional field actually softened. The platform was opened up for us to share ideas, wisdom and a sense of purposefulness, becoming what we are,” referring to Tarnas’ quoting of philosopher Nietzsche: “Become what thou art”.

UK ICF president Deborah Price said: “What we’ve just witnessed here today is what I love about being a coach. While the ICF core competencies provide the framework within which we work, it is in the ‘spaces in between’ where the magic really happens.

“The transformational power of emotion was beautifully demonstrated.”

Another UK ICF member Carole Elam spoke out about the lack of females on the closing panel, which consisted of all the keynote speakers and a male workshop facilitator, Jonathan Passmore, prompting the remaining female workshop presenters to join the panel.

Other themes included the need to embrace both yin (moon/feminine), the collective and yang (sun/masculine), the individual.

“Mother Nature has been seen as something you can sweep away. If nothing is sacred, everything can be exploited”, said Tarnas.

“You don’t have to be psychic to see we are living in one of the great ages of critical transformation. A whole mode of being is dying and a new one is struggling to be born,” he continued.

Other speakers were Julio Olalla, president of Newfield Network, Sir John Whitmore, Richard Barrett, founder of the Barrett Values Centre and creator of the Cultural Transformation Tool, and Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money and co-designer and implementer of the convergence mechanism to the euro.

Around 450 delegates flocked to the conference from countries including Greece, Spain, France, Dubai, Oman, Switzerland and the US. Workshop facilitators included Lisa Bloom on the art of storytelling, and Viviane Launer and Sylviane Cannio, who presented a well-received model called ‘The Wheel of Revival’ for use with clients in transition.

The first ICF Global conference outside North America will be in London in 2012. Paying tribute to her predecessor, Kathryn Pope, for “fighting tooth and nail” to secure this landmark turning point in the ICF’s history, Deborah Price, UK ICF’s president, accepted the baton for the next conference from Luis Carchak, president of the European Coaching Conference 2011.

What the keynote speakers said…

On the collapse of the existing monetary system

  • “We all need to work together to foster a gift culture to replace the old paradigm of money – one in which people give away what they have more than enough of, in which it’s not true that more for me means less for you. Gifts create a bond. There is a hunger for community and community is created by gifts. Coaches need to hold people in the story of the connected self, a story that it is not insane to want a world with gifts” Charles Eisenstein
  • “Capitalism is not the problem but the monopoly of money is. We’ve had 425 monetary crises since 1970 – one every six weeks. How many more do we need before we change it?” Bernard Lietaer

On interconnectedness and lack of separation

  • “Coaching is a desperate act to reunite our interior and exterior worlds which have been separated for 500 years” Julio Olalla
  • “We’re on the verge of reinventing ourselves as a species… We create the world we experience and humanity has created a civilisation based on two stories. These stories are no longer working and have to change. The first story – that of the people – is that we are almost there, all we need is the next breakthrough, perhaps in nanotechnology: this is wearing thin. The story of the self – one of separation – is also breaking down” Eisenstein
  • “It’s a narcissistic fantasy to think we can self-actualise on our own, it’s in relationship with the other… We are the cosmos in human form… We’re the part of the universe that is seeking to become conscious of itself in a new way” Richard Tarnas

On what we need to do

  • Change how we observe the world
  • “If a person changes their actions but not how they observe the world, the results will be the same. Coaching lets us observe how we observe, helping us realise we all see things differently” Olalla

  • Change how people manage and lead Sir John Whitmore
  • Change the stories… to ones of having enough to go round and interbeing, fostering a community – coaches – to hold these new stories:
  • “I don’t think any of us are strong enough to stay in new stories. We need a community of people to hold the stories and this is what coaching does. Coaching says we’re on the verge of something new” Eisenstein

  • Embrace the yin (moon/feminine) and yang (sun/masculine), have a sense of our history, the ground and transcendent, and serve the individual and community
  • “The double challenge for our age and the coaching profession is to serve two very different principles, the solar and the lunar, and to help the individual actualise themselves and hold the good of the whole and the community” Tarnas

  • Change our interpretations and stop seeing the world as separate
  • “We’re always interpreting reality and it tends to respond to our interpretations. We shape the world with our assumptions. If we see it as meaningless, we will create a mechanistic world” Tarnas

Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 4