"Transformation Plus Mastery is the Future of Coaching" ~ Jim Selman at CAM2012

After the Day with Werner Erhard at CAM2012, we were treated to a day with Jim Selman, who created Transformational Technologies with Werner decades ago and was the president of that organization, building it to a $30million company.  Transformational Technologies was a network of consulting firms licensed to use the transformational technology in businesses.
The day with Jim was profound on many levels and for me was the highlight of CAM this year. Below are a few of my notes from his day with us:
Money reflects value.
Transformation + Mastery = the future of coaching.
Specific conversations about possibility.
Inquire:  what is it that makes coaching work?
Coaching is the opposite of control.
Management is about predicting the future and control
Coaching is a different way of relating to people, a different way of relating to results.
Conversations are the whole story; it’s how things get done.  In order to be relevant, useful, and produce an impact, conversations need to be focused and have a point.
One of the values of a coach is helping people put the past in the past.
Intervene in a deliberate, rigorous way.
Articulate it and express it in the context of an intention to be able to complete and let it go.
Coaches come from a different point of view about the future; that the game is already won
Specific intention to have a breakthrough and start from a point of view that it’s already accomplished.
Life life as if the future’s already turned out.
Coaching is the same as leadership.
Mastery may be the future of coaching.
Value of coaching is about its application — to change the nature of reality.
Aging:  what is the possibility of age?
Intention to complete the past to be 100% present.
Answer for yourself, Who Am I?
What would you personally be committed to accomplishing if you were not limited by what you think limits you?
We have to see bigger possibility than our clients.  Not in reality. The possibility to allow other people to find meaning in their lives.
Demand in the world to be heard and be seen at the human level.
None of us as human beings can observe ourselves in action.
Complexity.
Rate of change.
Solutions are obsolete before we can implement them.
Navigate in world that’s completely changing and unpredictable = mastery.
The art:  work with people in a state of uncertainty to create the future.
Coach sees what’s not happening.  Looking at what’s missing. The coach is a different observer than the expert spectator.
Implicit in effective coaching is coming from a point of view that the future has already happened.
The only place you can stand to observe what’s missing is the future.
Leadership = the pursuit of creating a new reality
Helping them see what they can’t see.
None of us can see ourselves in action:  cognitive blindness.
Transformation is about your relationship with the world.  It’s about changing yourself.  You always have a choice about how you relate to something.
Not about giving people skill; it’s about giving people new observation.
Big part of mastery is knowing you’re blind.
What’s your relationship to your own blindness?
Awareness of blindness = power to drive conversations to breakthrough.
Mastery = relationships that define:

1. relationship to self (what conversations keep us stuck)
2. relationship to other people
3. relationship with circumstances
4. relationship to time

Time is an interpretation.
Struggling on a recurring basis at the effect of what you’re dealing with.
Mastery is a function of mastering those four relationships – no longer at the effect of anything in these four domains.  Shifting relationships.
Satisfaction
Personal power
Mastery
Serene Ambition = foundation mood for a coach: ability to accept things absolutely as they are as completely perfect AND committed to a possibility
We treat age as an individual malady.  Sick fish = polluted pond.
Age is a big conversation.
Mastery = opposite of control.
Early 1900’s, the term “management” had to do with training horses.  Horses/riders, carrots/sticks, controlling people.  We live in a culture of management.
If you are committed to being in control, you must produce what you say you don’t want in order to stay in control.
You get what you resist.
Wisdom = ability to take the best of what you know in your experience and give it to someone in a way that brings out the best of them.
Stay tuned…more notes from Jim Selman to come…