Prelims

About Me: Robert Barner

After completing my first graduate degree in counseling psychology, I spent the next few working in rehabilitation counseling (counseling young substance abusers and prisoners in an innovative therapeutic correctional facility). I also maintained a private practice in the area of adult transition counseling. The next 30 years of my professional life were spent working in the corporate world, as both an internal talent management executive and executive coach. A lot of this work involved performing executive coaching, both with individuals who were getting in the way of their own success, and with identified high-potential leaders who were being groomed for broader leadership roles. My work experience during this time spanned sectors that included media, engineering, hospitality, biotech, logistics, and insurance. Along the way, I obtained a second masters and doctorate degrees in the field of organizational psychology. I also wrote a couple of books (the one that you are reading is my eighth), was fortunate enough to see my writing translated into five non-English languages, and began to test my concepts about human development in the tough crucible of academic writing. (Nothing makes you more humble than watching the academic journal article that you have written being ripped to shreds by your peers in blind reviews.) Thirty plus articles later, that process has helped me establish a more disciplined approach to my writing and thinking.

Five years ago, I decided to make a major career change to take on a new vocation, that of university professor. I had spent the previous five years working as an adjunct instructor, but this is the first time that I had assumed the role of a full-time faculty member. Since that time I have never looked back. I love the high level of job satisfaction that I obtain from my teaching, as well as the opportunity to pass on what I have learned to others. Part of my teaching job involves conducting graduate courses in executive coaching, so I have had the pleasure of training hundreds of students in our university’s Executive Coaching Certificate Program. This experience has shifted me into the role of mentor to new coaches.

During my first coaching class session, I always caution my students that every coach’s practice is shaped and informed by an implicit theory of what happens in the coaching process to help leaders make significant and sustainable changes in their performance. This “theory lens” shapes the practitioner’s views about how change comes about in coaching, the diagnostic and intervention tools that are appropriate for use in coaching, and what constitutes the boundaries of the coach’s role in the change process. Because of this, I convey to my students that it is important that they, as new coaches, articulate the theory positions that inform their practice. It is only by doing this that their clients and their clients’ organizations can make informed choices regarding how each coach approaches his or her work.

With that in mind, I view myself as a practitioner who has been strongly shaped by the fields of behavioral science, social constructionism, and systems theory. As I have honed my craft, I have periodically tested my ideas about coaching by writing about them, and then running them through the gauntlet of peer review for academic journals. Through this exercise, and by engaging in in-depth conversations with other executive coaches, over the years I have received a great deal of valuable advice from my fellow academics and professional colleagues. For me, this feedback has been invaluable, given the wide range of research that is continually shaping and refining our field. My own research interests include the role of narratives and metaphor in coaching, and the application of mindfulness to transformational learning in leaders.

Concurrently, along with my teaching I maintain a boutique consulting business in the areas of executive coaching and leadership development. I continue to teach, write, consult, and coach, while on a personal level I enjoy the great partnership that I have with my wife of 30 years, our three adult children, and our grandkids. I continue to be excited about our field, and try to model for my clients my role as a life-long learner. I still have an avid curiosity about art, history, and culture, and always enjoy the learning encounters that my wife and I experience in our travels across the globe.

About Me: Ken Ideus

I read once that some life trajectories only make sense when you look at them in reverse. Every strand of your life leads to the present moment, and therefore, must tell a connected story, however chaotic it may have felt at the time. That is certainly true for me. While the themes of social concern and human development have always been a part of my life, they played out in very different arenas. The same goes for my love of voice, music, flying, exploring and simply being alive and living with intention.

I was raised on a farm, where, in the days when I was young, you started doing a man’s work at the age of 10. Farming was fun, complex, and often dangerous. Horses were replaced by tractors, hand tools with power tools, and small vehicles with larger faster ones. Equipment was powerful and industrial safety wasn’t yet a phrase any of us on the farm had ever heard. What we would now call coaching and mentoring helped you navigate the complexities and the physical realities of the farming world, and often, kept you alive.

Coaching came at me formally through sports. At the age of 7, I had a wonderful baseball coach. Isn’t it funny how we remember those who had such a positive influence in our lives? He had a wooden prosthesis leg as the result of artillery fire in WWII. He never complained and coached instead of played. Through his gentle, yet specific coaching and encouragement, and watching my father play an excellent center field, I came to learn and love the game. And (no accident here) I got very good at it.

Next came American football. Again a great coach who taught well, questioned well, and encouraged well. While very small in physical stature, I grew to love the game and played well above my grade. Later, both my sons took part in challenging physical pursuits. Andres, my oldest took up Kendo and Kyudo (Japanese swordsmanship and archery). The coaching he received was amazing to watch and hear about. In both these forms of art, the whole system is in play, and a coach addresses the whole person through the smallest, most precise exercise.

While focusing on the minutest practice, the coach not only addressed the whole person but the entire context. My second son, Rodrigo, took up sculling. Again, the coaches I met and experienced by accompanying him through his career always amazed me. Again, the coaches that could address the whole person, in context, produced the best results. Rodrigo proudly competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

And me specifically, I took my systems and organic view of the world through various stages that included stints in mental health, corrections, substance abuse, government and eventually corporate life. In 1995, when I was thinking of exiting the corporate world and setting up a private consulting practice in London, one of my colleagues suggested I simply continue to do what he said I was known for in the business. That thing was providing a safe place for people to come and discuss issues and problems, finding ways to get through those issues themselves and finding further direction for their future.

Sounded a bit strange, but I put it on my list of “Things I Offer.” It’s still there and has been a foundational element of my work since then. My deepest joys and memories in the coaching arena come from real transformational shifts that people make in their work and lives. Hopefully, those insights and experiences translate into something you can use and apply as you too seek to work in the transformational arena.

That’s about it. We hope that you enjoy the literary journey on which you are about to embark and that somewhere in these pages you will encounter a few ideas that can support your coaching practice and, perhaps, encourage you to continual this learning conversation by putting your own ideas in print.

Authors’ Note: For questions regarding this book, inquires regarding how to apply this book to a university course or training workshop, or for inquires concerning related workshops offered by the authors, please contact:

Robert Barner at ibscribe@me.com or Ken Ideus at ken@i-deos. co.uk

Robert Barner

Ken Ideus

Authors