Sam further indicated that he hopes Rachel might assist him in mapping out a strategy for building better relationships with the men and women whom he supervises. While his organization has never done much with coaching services, Sam believed that he could obtain funds to support the coaching services and that Kurt, the President of his organization, would approve of this allocation of funds. Kurt is a strong advocate (at least on paper) for “developmental” services in his hospital.

Rachel and Sam established the contractual obligations and began working together for two hours once a week. They initially met at Sam’s office, but given the frequent interrupts of these coaching sessions by members of Sam’s staff, Rachel and Sam decided instead to meet in a conference room located in a building that was owned by the hospital, but was located several blocks away from Sam’s office. The coaching sessions inevitably began with Sam’s sigh and eyes cast toward heaven. Then something like “everything is a mess” would come out of Sam’s mouth and the work would begin.

There were many issues that Sam wished to confront during his coaching sessions with Rachel—after all everything was a “mess.” Many years ago, Don Schön wrote about the “messes” being confronted by contemporary professionals. These messes are multi-dimensional, requiring multi-disciplinary perspectives and multi-strategy approaches to the coaching process itself. As Rachel and Sam face the initial task of deciding how to proceed and where to leap into the mess, they must make several important decisions that reveal something about the contemporary state of this field called professional coaching.