Hello, I am Roach the Coach and I am your guide through the Coaching Chronicles. There are 4,500 species of us cockroaches so we are well placed, across the globe, and across time, to tell you about coaching…

Galileo is one of the most formative ancestors of coaching.

The son of a musician, it is rumoured that his father asked his good friend, Franco Mercury, what his baby son’s first thoughts might be.

Franco paused, and in a hushed tone said, “I suspect he would say something like: ‘Is this real life or just a fantasy?’ ”
Born an Aquarian on 15 February, 1564, near Pisa, Italy, Galileo allowed his star sign to rule his destiny. For the astrologically challenged, Aquarians, or water bearers, have a desire to understand life’s mysteries and a secret need to be unique.

Galileo held a deep-set belief that by asking obscure questions, it was possible to come up with a previously unimaginable answer for something.

He was fond of chickens and was intrigued by some of their self-destructive behaviour. He likened much of this to the behaviour of his clients at the time. So his guiding question was always: Why did the chicken cross the road?

The first of his scientific works that helped the coaching field was the improvements he made to the telescope. Galileo loved studying the skies, and he worked day and night to improve the magnifying capability of the telescope. In his coaching, he believed that helping people see things more clearly would enable them to see the reality of a situation and thus find better solutions. Today, coaches still refer to looking through different lenses – all rooted in Galileo’s work.

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Answer: To get a better look at the stars

A second finding to aid the coaching world was Galileo’s discovery of sun spots or, in coaching parlance, hot spots. Galileo discovered that sun spots were created by intense magnetic activity. They also have two poles.

Many experienced coaches refer to hot spots in a coaching conversation where the client’s energy (like magnetic activity) coalesces around a point of interest. For many clients there is a paradox attached their issue – rather like polar opposite views.

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Answer: Because it was drawn to the magnetic activity of the rooster on the other side

Not all of Galileo’s discoveries were coaching-related – he also helped the FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) market develop some of its brand-defining technology. Galileo researched the phases of the planet Venus, which later, in the form of a razor, freed women from unsightly leg hair:

Phase 1 :             Lather up

Phase 2:            Gliding shave

Phase 3:            Rinse off

Phase 4:            Pat dry

Galileo was a team coach. He believed that everything in life was joined together in some way and that people all too often suffered from FAE (fundamental attribution error). Never more was this the case than when Galileo developed the Copernican Theory – that the sun was at the centre of the Universe, not us.

Galileo believed that deep down, everyone wanted to be at the centre of things and that the rest of the world should revolve around them. He often found this desire playing out in his team coaching work and frequently battled with how to restore balance and peace to a conflicting team.

One day, Galileo was facilitating the team who ran Pisa Pizza. The whole team were at odds with each other, arguing about who should do which jobs, and all making a play for the others to fall into line with what they wanted them to do.

Galileo could sense he was at the tipping point with this group so he asked them to take off their shoes and hand them to the person on their right. He then got them all to put on the shoes they had been handed and to walk about in them – literally, walk in another man’s shoes. The team realised that they had been seeing things only from their own point of view.

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Answer: It didn’t. The rotation of the earth made it appear as if it had

As a coach, Galileo brought a lot to the world. It is said that his name may even have been the inspiration behind one of the most famous pop songs of all time….

Sam Humphrey is an independent coach