The pilgrim fathers
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…
King James I of England decreed that anyone who challenged the value of non-directive coaching and refused to use this approach, would be locked up or banished.
This was a bit of a ‘deal’ for the Puritans. They weren’t known for mixing styles, approaches or theories, but for remaining true to the ‘founding father’ – mentoring.
The Puritans valued the knowledge and experience sharing that came with mentoring. They were heavily into creating and sustaining networks and recognised the importance of role models.
Faced with James’s ultimatum, they moved to Holland, where they founded the first mentoring group.
Many locals came to find out what these Puritans were all about. It ignited a flame of enthusiasm in one boy in particular – Robert Farrell. Robert was the great, great, great, great grandfather of Bobby Farrell, who went on to found the immensely popular disco group Boney M (or Boney Mentoring as it was known in Holland) which he formed in honour of his mentoring heritage.
Robert, though, was a troubled child and didn’t fit in with his peers. He could often be found by the local river, the Lon, which had smaller branches or baby rivers that he often picnicked at.
He made friends with the Puritan children. He spent hours teaching them Dutch and helping them with their homework. As the Puritan children’s Dutch improved, they started to make friends with some of the other Dutch children and to copy their behaviour. They then refused to go to mentoring classes.
William Bradford, head of the Puritans, discovered that Robert Farrell had turned their children against them. Determined to scold him, William asked the children where he could find him. As one, they shouted:
By the rivers of Baby Lon
Where he’s sat down
That’s where we met
When we were learning pronouns.
William, appalled, gathered the Puritans and set sail for the Brave New World.
So in 1620, 100 boarded the Mayflower and sailed across the Atlantic, bound for America.
The trip over gave the Puritans time to reconnect with their mentoring values and regain the purest of mentoring mindsets.
The first place they spied was Cape Cod, a long-established and much needed coaching pitstop for weary travellers. Many sailors arrived at the Brave New World with no clue what to do, where to go or how to start. Coaches soon saw a business opportunity.
They realised that non-directive practices were perfect – no-one knew the full extent of the country, and could not give great advice or counsel. As word spread, coaches flocked to Cape Cod – reported in the press as “a place full of flightless creatures who gobble up overwilling clients”. Cape Cod was, of course, an abbreviation of Coaching on Delivery, named after the reputation it had grown in that short period of time.
As the Pilgrims approached land, they were so disgusted by such flagrant practices that they decided to continue sailing, landing at Plymouth Rock instead.
The Pilgrim Fathers had a hard landing, arriving in the midst of winter. A kindly native American called Squanto, helped them build houses and sow seeds for food. As Squanto did not speak English (or Dutch), he had to show the Pilgrims how to do all these jobs, and used many of Pilgrim’s mentoring techniques.
The winter was a very hard one and half of the Pilgrims died that year. At harvest, the Pilgrims were so happy with the food they had grown they decided to have a big party to celebrate their mentoring cycle in action:
Accompanying – each other on the Mayflower
Sowing – seeds of doubt to test their faith in mentoring
Catalysing – chosing not to go to Cape Cod and forging a new way of life with mentoring
Showing – Squanto demonstrating how to grow food in the local area
Harvesting – food and happiness
(Source: Aubrey, Bob and Cohen, Working Wisdom, Timeless Skills and Vanguard Strategies for Learning Organisations.)
The Pilgrims decided they wanted the party to be a thanksgiving for Squanto and his tribe. There was much debate about what the centrepiece for the meal should be.
William Bradford said a turkey, to remind them of the gobbling, flightless coaching creatures at Cape Coaching on Delivery, and why they didn’t want to be like them.
Everyone was deliriously happy, apart from one young mother who burst into tears. William asked her what was wrong: “I have no idea what I am to dress my little boy in for such a thanksgiving dinner!”
“That’s easy”, said William, “A harVEST!”
As a result of this, you can now always spot a mentor as s/he will be wearing a vest.
Sam Humphrey is an independent coach
Coaching at work, volume 8, issue 1