Preface

The spark was ignited at the 2012 Santa Fe Conversations. More than three years ago, a small group of experienced and dedicated professional coaches came together in Santa Fe, New Mexico to discuss the future of coaching. In front of a glowing fire, there were many glowing conversations – that led to the formation of our Board of Directors, a new quarterly publication called Future of Coaching [a digital magazine located inside the Library of Professional Coaching (LPC)], and several other initiatives that are in various stages of development. It also led to a decision regarding LPC’s celebration of its 500th published document, and our rapid growth towards the vision of a massive, robust, online, open-access resource for the entire coaching community.

With so many valuable contributions to the LPC’s growing collection, our colleagues at the Santa Fe meeting wanted a way to access the best of the best…in essence, to further curate the curation that is the LPC. Thus, we decided to publish this compilation of LPC’s best, and our intention is to make this an annual publication. This very special publication is available exclusively to our patrons, benefactors and sponsors – those women and men who have provided the financial support and good will to keep the LPC going and growing.

You might wonder how the articles in Curated: 2015 were chosen. It was a difficult selection process. Many people have contributed articles to LPC (more than 200 authors at last count) and many more people are accessing the documents we have placed in LPC (usually more than 1,000 page views per week). The selection process began by dividing the LPC documents into five categories: (1) coaching concepts, (2) coaching tools, (3) coaching support concepts, (4) marketing of coaching services and (5) case studies. We then used the following criteria for the initial sort: (1) popularity (the document has been frequently viewed and/or downloaded), (2) diversity (of perspective and background) and (3) length (some short and some long).

We have also restricted the number of documents from any one author (including the two of us!!).The documents in the first and third category tend to be a bit longer (usually 5-10 pages), while most of the tools and marketing documents are short (2-5 pages). We initially selected 10-15 documents for each category (except Case Study, which we treated differently). We then invited colleagues from the Santa Fe meeting to be reviewers of documents in one of the first four categories (we have already picked two documents for the case study category) and their input determined the final selection included in this compilation.

What you have now downloaded is the outcome of this selection process—the best of LPC. We have kept the five categories (each constituting a section of the book) and have included essays of different lengths, addressing different topics and offering diverse perspectives regarding professional coaching and the concepts that provide a foundation for or source of new ideas for this exciting human service field. We hope that you enjoy and find many insights in the documents we have provided, and we thank you for your ongoing support of the Library of Professional Coaching.

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