John Lazar:  In 2004, I completed my involvement with Landmark.  I engaged in a conversation with the folks in Newfield about being a mentor coach in their coaching program. At Newfield, I found a spiritual as well as practical home, a community.  It was an opportunity to be engaged in a conversation with like-minded and like-valued people.  For three or four years, I worked as a mentor coach for Newfield. I then did the same kind of program coaching, I think in 2008, for Bob Dunham and his Institute for Generative Leadership. I knew Bob when he and I were both studying with Julio and Fernando and Rafael in Logonet and Hermenet and their Ontological Design Course.

Bob had started something, a 2-year program, called Coaching Excellence in Organizations.  I immediately saw that it spoke even more directly and powerfully to me in terms of the direction that I wanted my career to take, than the work that I had been doing with Julio.  I enrolled in the CEO program and also became one of the program coaches in the program.  Several of us were concurrently taking the program and coaching others in the group on how to move through the CEO program.

I’ve been a program coach for CEO ever since, going on eight years.  I completed the two years of the program.  In fact, as participants we successfully lobbied to add a third year of the program.  Bob listened to our arguments and did develop a third year for us all to take.  You can consider the program as it currently stands to be a premier, graduate-level program for experienced coaches on how to coach even more effectively in organizational settings.

In CEO, I’ve got a lovely group of fellow program coaches.  Bill, you were a program coach at CEO, too, as I recall and that was wonderful!  I get to be actively engaged in these leading-edge conversations and challenge myself as an observer and reflective practitioner in order to continue to raise the bar on who I can be and what I can provide.

Leading in Institutions:  Professional Stewardship

Bill Carrier:  We’ve talked a lot about the way you grew up and actually worked in the profession.  I know that you’ve also been involved in a couple of organizations pretty fundamentally supporting the work of the profession of coaching itself.