Coaching to a New York City State of Mind

The next step is to sort through these reflective sessions to find out what lingers: what remains special over several weeks or months? What remains surprising or puzzling? What remains compelling? This is the process of discernment—the reflection on rich lessons learned in a complex and busy life. A coach can be critical to this discernment and sorting process, especially if the coach does not let her own personal preferences and values get in the way. The coach is to be a skillful and knowledgeable guide to  the New York City State of Mind. She helps the visitor (or resident) identify and articulate what they (the client) most wants to see and experience, rather than trying to sell the client on a pre-planned tourist package. All of this work as a coach leads a client to the Intersections and to the rich opportunity for effective use of diversity.

The Intersection Opportunities

Frans Johansson writes extensively about how to forge Intersections in ourselves and in our organizations. He offers many suggestions in his original book, The Medici Effect (2004), and his more recent books (Johansson, 2006, 2012). I will identify only a few of the strategies offered by Johansson in his first book and suggest that the reader/coach turn to his abundant toolkits for more ideas. Johansson first suggests that we expose ourselves to a range of cultures. This is certainly possible in New York City and with a coach’s encouragement this can also be part of the agenda for a client when considering ways to expand the number and diversity of Intersections in their life: travel, reading, or lingering around the less-often visited neighborhoods in their own town or city.

Second, Johansson suggests that we learn to learn differently. While he doesn’t mention the work of David Kolb (1983), I imagine that Johansson would be in full support of Kolb’s description of differing learning strategies and Kolb’s recommendation that we learn how to learn using each of these strategies: (1) concrete experience (learning by going out into the world and experiencing it directly), (2) reflective observation (learning by watching how other people engage their world and reflecting on one’s own experience of the world), (3) abstract conceptualization (building a conceptual model of the world into which to place, categorize, and interrelate various experiences) and (4) active experimentation (directly engaging the world through specific actions that yield feedback for use in further modification of the action).  Intersections are likely to be more often encountered with the use of this diverse set of learning strategies. A coach can not only encourage this diversity, she can also emulate this diversity through the different ways in which she engages with her client in his own work as a coaching client.