“Coach”! This uncontrolled designation of origin covers the best and the worst. The best, those who, with expertise, have the right combination of technical and interpersonal skills. The worst, these improbable “professional coaches”, these “consciousness awakeners”, these “cultivators of collective intelligence”, these “developers of potential”, these “executive coaches”, these “team, manager and organization coaches” (just that!), these “happyculturists”, these “life designers” and these “sowers of well-being” (I’m not making this up!) who , despite their emphatic titles, have no legitimacy but are found in abundance on professional social networks.
So how can we distinguish the wheat from the chaff? A question all the more inconvenient as right-thinking egalitarianism is intensifying, levels are blurred, transmission is replaced by analogies of experience, certified titles or expensive university diplomas are taken for state diplomas and online training, placed on the same level as academic training. In this confusion of genres, how can we distinguish the professional from the amateur, the authentic from the imposter, the true from the false?
By not giving in to the narrative sirens of certifications! Solid training is training that is academically recognized by the State. However, to date, there is none for coaching. This is only the subject of certified titles or expensive university diplomas. Remember that unlike academic diplomas issued by the Ministry of National Education once and for all, certified titles remain temporary, to be renewed after three to five years and depend on market needs. However, few coaches renew their title, which they often shamelessly keep for life. Furthermore, as the national directory of professional certifications (RNCP) becomes more demanding, fewer and fewer coaching training courses are listed there. Also, let’s not trust the certifications that some proudly brandish as keys to legitimacy, they are not.
Are great sports coaches, cooks, speakers, musicians and writers chasing RNCP certification? Of course not… Their discipline has required so many hours and years of practice from them that their experience alone is enough to make them legitimate. However, professional coaching (that of the business world) is not subject to the same requirements. We also see coaches of leaders who have never led, specialists in public speaking who have rarely had the opportunity to speak in public, leadership coaches who have no charisma… The principles of reflexivity and non-contradiction (however basic) are clearly not taught in the (however rudimentary) coaching training.
While a certain amount of experience remains necessary, it is not, however, this common-sense explanation that justifies the late “coming out” of coaches. Because, in fact, the choice to become a coach is generally made in full maturity. Who has not seen one of their friends recently menopausal, or a “fifty” full of benevolent neutrality, pursuing the ambition of a new professional adventure, embark on coaching, one of the most rewarding reconversions there is, because no unpleasant feeling of failure accompanies it. The coach immediately finds himself placed in a position of superiority, power, and ascendancy over the most vulnerable people he is supposed to help.
Watch out for quick recipes
We do not begin this new profession at the bottom of the ladder, in the feverish humility of a beginner, but higher up than our clients. The narcissistic satisfaction that this feeling of sudden superiority provides explains the irresistible attraction for this professional orientation which resonates like a new beginning. But shouldn’t coaching be the exact opposite of a new beginning, namely the culmination of an experience? Sports coaches have practiced their sport for years before coaching. Chefs have worked hard in this field all their lives before training. Executive coaches have managed businesses throughout their careers before consulting. Their teachings are the logical outcome of their journey, the natural end of their career, the obvious epilogue of their professionalism. Let us therefore remain vigilant about professional reorientations, sudden ruptures, unexpected bifurcations, which do not make coaching the logical outcome of a long experience, but the sudden opportunity for deliverance.
Let us not succumb either to the attraction of the quick recipes generally offered by pseudo-coaches: “management in four steps”, “the keys to authenticity”, “well-being within reach”… Everything must be done instantly without temporal inscription. Here again, some know perfectly how to play on the attraction of a reduced temporality. But by what miracle could management become the subject of a lightning mechanism? How could happiness (just that!) be achieved in a few steps? Isn’t the good coach, on the contrary, the one who does not use the recipe of the recipe but measures the need for a long time for the evolutionary learning necessary for any accomplishment? Becoming stronger, intensifying, becoming better, flourishing, accessing oneself takes place over a certain period of time. Learning to be slow to become strong allows you not to disperse your energy at the slightest request and to gain power. It is through long-term effort and regular discipline that the self is forged. It is necessary, says Nietzsche, for a force to grow within us, like a long process which gradually accumulates energy: “Whether the expected being is a thought or an action, faced with any essential accomplishment, we do not have other possible attitude than that of pregnancy.”
In short, to be as consistent and strong as possible, we must not multiply the tips and tricks but limit the requests and favor repetition: “Whoever wants to be lightning must remain cloud for a long time”, guarantees Nietzsche. The need to submit to strict, arbitrary rules, and to tirelessly repeat the same gestures, is one of the conditions for self-realization. An athlete, an actor, a writer, a dancer and any professional know what they owe to their work, their rigor, their long-term effort. No density is acquired without constancy in the same direction. Obeying at length a goal that we have set for ourselves with what Nietzsche calls the “seriousness of an artisan” provides more life to our being than any recipe. So let’s prefer this to coaches who are fond of driving kits.
Let us not let ourselves be moved any further by these pseudo-coaches who demagogically deny any form of authority, to better fit into a logic of aid that is not vertical but horizontal, even friendly and full of egalitarian empathy. In this they respond to the desire of the modern individual who no longer wishes to feel dominated by any form of superiority or authority. But shouldn’t a good coach demonstrate authority? Can we imagine for a single moment a great football champion putting himself on the same level of authority as the players he coaches? A charismatic boss putting himself on the same level as the young people he mentors? A chef placing himself on the same level of authority as his apprentices? Authority is not a bad word, no education, no learning, no coaching can do without it, because it responds to its very purpose: to make better, improve, increase… Authority, let us remember, derives from the Latin verb “augere” which means “to increase”. It consists of making those who submit to it grow.
A friendly coach is not necessarily a good coach
From the same root as the word “author”, authority is what will allow those who submit to it to become “author”, “autonomous”, in the discipline undertaken. Whether it is parental authority or that of the coach, it is always a question of developing and deploying the learner’s abilities until they become autonomous in the chosen activity. Condillac (Treatise on animals, 1755) points out that man owes his development to his capacity for imitation. We need models to imitate to create dynamism and elevation within us. The good coach must therefore be an authority, a model, a person known and recognized in his field. Faced with this recognized authority one should not feel submissive, demeaned, but on the contrary increased, since one tries to rise (as much as possible) to the height of the master’s requirements by giving the best of oneself. But enabling you to give the best of yourself is the very objective of coaching, and cannot be achieved without a certain form of authority. The coach should therefore never deny authority, without which he inevitably fails to achieve his goal.
Finally, let’s not take qualities for skills. A quality is not a diploma, a quality does not in itself legitimize a practice. A friendly coach is not necessarily a good coach. He may have great personal qualities without any professional skills. In short, we prefer experience to dubious certifications; to behavioral recipes, the seriousness of a craftsman; to egalitarianism, authority; personal qualities, professional skills. It is by rigorously maintaining these distinctions that we will make coaching not a self-righteous imposture (which it so often is), but a demanding practice (which it too rarely is).
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy and columnist at L’Express
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