Yesterday, on november 11th, ICF Sweden kicked off this years annual conference. Having now left the board I was for the first time in years there as an attendee only, enjoying and mingling around. The event team had put together a really powerful setup of speakers including visionary thoughts as well as directly applicable coaching tips.
I found Helena Blackbright’s way of introducing us to the impact of AI really interesting. She thins of Artificial Intelligence as “the new electricity”, something that will profoundly impact our societies and the way we live our lives. She also stresses that AI is something we create and as we design its codes we design our future, “don’t leave that entirely up to the programmers of silicon valley” she says. I thin she is right on that one. i am not particularly interested in the coding and the technical stuff per se, but it is extremely interesting to think of how having AI around in our daily life will change us, the way we interact and the expectations we have on life. Values and what it is to be a human will in the next years be hot topics I guess. As coaches maybe we should initiate more of those conversations, skilled as we are in facilitating conversations including values, actions and visionary goals. Who would be better equipped to stand by the technicians in the work of designing our future? We could help include the important groups in realistic conversations on the impact of the solutions already at hand.
Did you for example know there is already neuron stimulators possible to insert into the brain that will significantly expand your working memory capacity. Cool. And it means we need to start having the conversations on how this technology is to be used. Should it be available at own expense and allow us to buy brain advantages? Commonly funded available for those who need it to cover for inherent lesser capacities? There are all kinds of questions to be addressed and as we do so (or choose not to participate) we co-create the future we and our children and grandchildren will be living in.
Another thought that stayed with me was Christer Olsson who pointed at reflection as the mother of all learning. We have as human being been learning from each other with our daily life tasks as pedagogical tools since ancient time. We observe, we test, we reflect and learn. Without reflection no real learning occurs. it is like short-cutting the steps of learning going from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence without passing the conscious stages. According to Christer that is the root of the wide spread sense of being an undetected fake, scared that “some day they will get me, realize I am not really equipped to do this”. As experience is added without reflection no conscious learning happens and we loose touch with our own learning processes. Including reflection in daily life is therefore essential to be able to show up in the world an authentic self according to Christer. Good thing then the number of coaches in the world increases daily. ;-)
Morgan Bailey also gave us an interesting presentation on why coaching is so helpful to engineers promoted to leaders. In coaching an arena can be set for experimenting with the new mindset that engineer needs to develop going from practicing engineer to being a leader. Morgan explained it in terms of how an engineer thins and perceives the world where problem solving and effective processes are focus areas while people are not. People are mysteries, not possible to control and thus not suitable in the equation when solving problems, but as a leader they are inevitable part of the task. By using the engineer vocabulary in his leadership coaching Morgan has shown good results in developing engineers into good leaders. As an example he presented system thinking, engineers now system thinking. By introducing Product, process and People as parts of the system the solving becomes familiar ground to the engineer.
I can see direct links in this towards my own work. Of course in coaching engineers and people with more mathematical mindsets than me but also in my coaching entrepreneurs. They to tend to be heavily oriented towards a mindset where the real work is done where something is built, produced or sold, leadership, administration and other essential but less practical tasks are not perceived as “working” and thus the entrepreneur doesn’t feel he/she has been working when doing them, and tend to instead waste their time on what they consider working. Quite often driving their employees crazy by micro managing where they could let go and let people do their job.
I love it when a conference both opens doors towards areas I hadn’t seen that clearly and gives me new expressions and examples of the issues I have at hand in daily work. So proud of my ICF Chapter who has taken this concept to where it is today. under my presidency we started small and financially robust to ensure possibilities for members and market to meet. it has since our first attempt with 40 people in a room expanded annually and Stora coachdagen is now becoming an established event in the market. This year attracting bot coaches and possible customers. it is so cool what people can do when they put their heart into it and i really appreciate the work the event team has done getting this together, for me to simply come and enjoy.
