Elias Scultori, MCC (00:03):
So coaches, I have a surprise for you today because a long time coming here. We have been waiting for my friend Amy to join me in these episodes of French Space. Hello, Amy.
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (00:19):
I'm back. Hi Elias.
Elias Scultori, MCC (00:23):
We missed you.
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (00:25):
I know, and I've missed doing this as well, but I'm back and I'm really excited about today.
Elias Scultori, MCC (00:33):
Yes, I'm excited too because you wrote a stellar blog post and I remember when a couple of weeks ago when I was reading the blog post and I finished the blog post and I was like, wow, this is the Amy that I know. This is the heart that I know that you have the commitment that you have to this profession, the passion that you have for this profession, and it's all there in that blog post. For those of you who are listening, the blog post is in our PRIME EDGE blog post at our prime coaching academy.com website. So please go and read the blog post. It's the latest one. It's called "In Service of Something Greater." And Amy, wow, I just have to say wow. And thank you for writing that blog post.
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (01:29):
Well, I'd say you're welcome. However, that just kind of came through me, and I'm going to say this at this point, I'm speaking on behalf of a lot of other coaches here. This is not just my voice, this is honestly what I see in the heart of just about every coach I've met. Excuse me, I'm choking here. Sorry, I'm getting choked up even just talking about it.
Elias Scultori, MCC (01:59):
I know. And that shows your passion, our passion for this, for the concept, for the core, for the purpose, for the proposition of coaching. Coaching is not just skills, right? We go beyond there and you are sharing exactly about this. So let's dive in. You start this blog post saying that the first 30 years is dress rehearsal, so what do you mean by that?
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (02:34):
Well, in the 30 years that coaching has been formulating as a profession, I should say, I see it as a dress rehearsal Now, I didn't 30 years ago, what I saw was, holy cow, this stuff's powerful. This could change the world. But oh, right at that time we were just trying to explain what coaching was to people and just praying that they would get it on some level and not keep equating it to sports coaches. So we dared to think that in the very beginning because we saw how powerful this could be and it was barely formed.
(03:20):
There was no ICF, there were no core competencies. There was no understanding a universal understanding of coaching or definition of coaching. There was no regulatory boards, there was no code of ethics, there was nothing. Just an idea. And a group of people who came together who said, we can do this differently. We can behave with one another in a different way to help lift one another up and to live in that space. And here we are. And here we are now with all of these systems in place that bring together tens of thousands of coaches in over 140 countries all the way around the globe. And it's become something that is just amazing to me. And so with International Coaching Week coming up, and this being the 30th year anniversary of the ICF, and I stepped back and I said, well, what have we been doing for the past 30 years? And it dawned on me in context of looking at where our world is today. This was just a dress rehearsal. The real work starts now.
Elias Scultori, MCC (04:31):
Wow. I so appreciate that. And it's a way for us to look back at these 30 years of International Coaching Federation. The ICF is celebrating 30 years now and realizing the tremendous work that the ICF has done in the standardization, in putting the pieces together, in putting the pillars for our profession to be a solid profession. And I have to say, I'm always amazed that from nothing, as you said, not even a code of ethics, nothing, not even a definition of what coaching is. And now having 60,000 people, members of the ICF coaching being what is estimated to be a $15 billion industry, how amazing has been this transformation in the growth of this profession? And I always say, if he happened this fast and this much, there must be something here. There must be something that people really capture there. The other thing that you talking about in this blog post is this idea of scaling or looking at coaching beyond the one-on-one sessions. What do you mean by that?
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (05:48):
Yeah, so it's really easy for all of us to get mired down in servicing our clients. That's always first and foremost we want to service our clients, but building our practices, marketing all the things that keep us busy, busy, busy and what we do, but also keep us shortsighted in the power of what we do. And I think that we have to start looking at this in a collective way. What is our collective power? It goes well beyond one-to-one coaching sessions or even now team coaching. It even goes beyond teams. It goes to a much larger scale. Coaching is one of the few things we look at social injustice, we look at all the volatility of our world now and our politics and that there's so many challenges on so many levels in our world today. And coaching is one of the few things that can span across all of those things and touch all of those things in a profound way if we just have the vision to think bigger about how coaching can be applied.
(07:06):
And so it's kind of a call to think beyond the 60 minute session or 45 minute session, one-to-one you have with your clients or building your practice or how am I going to make money doing this? I've told coaches, I've taught over the years, I would've figured out a way to support my coaching habit no matter what I would've had, and I did. I rode two horses for several years doing my other business and building this business, but I would've done coaching no matter what because I just felt it in my bones that this was going to do something someday and that day is here. Now,
Elias Scultori, MCC (07:47):
This is so fundamental to me, and this is one of the reasons that I say that coaching is not just something that we do. Coaching is who we are. Oftentimes when we say this, there are other people that say, well, I can't be following the core competencies in every single conversation that I have. I can't be establishing a session agreement with my partner and my friends in every conversation. Of course not. That's not what we are talking about. The concept here is the premise of coaching, the proposition of coaching, the idea that coaching just this concept of the person in front of us is resourceful, is capable, is whole. There is nothing to fix. These types of concepts are not something that we can just turn it on or off when we are in front of our clients. It's something that we live by. And if we truly believe in this core proposition of coaching that every human being is equal and every human being is capable and every human being is resourceful, there is beauty in every single person, not because I have more degrees or experience regardless of that, regardless of my position, every single person is equal.
(09:11):
If we abide by that, this is of tremendous power and of possibility of transformation to the world,
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (09:21):
And I truly believe coaching can heal the world. I truly believe that when it will happen, I don't know. It depends how much vision each and every one of us have for this. And I'm just going to challenge everybody listening to this. Where does your vision end? Is it with a full practice or does it heal the world? You can think as big as you want with this because I truly believe that coaching can change things in a positive direction so that we can move forward as a human species. And it's one of the very few things that can touch so many things, so many people, communities, organizations, societal constructs, there's so many things that coaching can inform. Yes, there's other things out there too, and let's work with them too. Let's all join our hands together. There's a lot of ringing of hands that goes on and a lot of gloom and doom.
(10:27):
I get a lot of emails and sharing insta reels and things like that of some really negative stuff. And yeah, there's negative things going on in the world, but we as coaches hold a crown jewel in our hands to change those things. And the ringing of hands is usually, what can I do? What can I do to change things to make things better? Stop wring your hands and get the hell out there and do what you do no matter where you are or no matter who you're with and think big. Think big. You don't have to go out and do the things, but just join a collective thought that we're all in this together trying to make a better world through coaching.
Elias Scultori, MCC (11:13):
And you mentioned this in the blog, really thinking beyond profession from profession to movement. And if we pay attention, that's the invitation. I was just talking with someone that is asking me to be his mentor coach, and we were talking about the checking of the boxes and we were both agreeing that we want to, in the mentor coaching process, we want to look beyond the boxes. We want to look, if the ICF came up with these markers and these concepts, there must be a reason behind them. What is that reason behind when we ask ourselves to listen deeply, to give our presence to the other individual, to honor this individual for who they are? The power of these concepts is way beyond that moment of coaching, the power of that concept. If we bring this to our day-to-day lives and we treat every single person in front of us in that way, it's truly a movement to transform the world.
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (12:30):
And we have the infrastructure in place. This is the beauty of this, right? We have the infrastructure in place. And let me add here, when I said I speak for many other coaches, there are coaches who have put a good part of their lives and careers into volunteer hours to make this stuff happen. There's a fuel behind this of belief that can become seismic if we allow it to, but we have to all come together and begin thinking larger than ourselves.
Elias Scultori, MCC (13:04):
And I want to say also that this is not, I don't see this as like, oh my gosh, so now we are going to go outside and we are going to talk about this and the picket fences and to me is more like if we live this, if we believe in this it, it's almost inevitable because it will naturally show up in every way that in every person, in every moment that we show up for our clients, for our friends, for our communities. It's truly a way of being here. One thing that I would love for you to talk about here is you say connecting the dots between the inner change and the outer change. What do you mean by that?
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (13:58):
Yeah, it's really to move from just being focused on your own little world and become more focused on this idea of a movement and that we can do bigger work. Listen, this doesn't mean to stop marketing your practice collecting fees, making a living. This doesn't mean that at all, but it is a call to connect the dots between that work to the greater work to begin to connect the dots that, oh, yes, I can take this to a much broader scale and I can scale this with the help of all the other thousands of coaches around the world. We can scale this. And so it's to stop thinking about your own building and development and thinking broader into the broader possibilities of this.
Elias Scultori, MCC (14:57):
And I would say the broader meaning of what we are talking about, the broader meaning of these skills. What does it mean to listen? What does it mean to be present and how much do we believe in that, that I'm not just being present because the ICF told me so, but because I truly understand the power of presence towards this individual of gifting the other individual to be present to them and also for me to be present to them, I need to be present to myself. If we start doing this. It is tremendous force here. You say that it is a bigger Yes. What do you mean by that?
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (15:43):
I have a T-shirt and it's a kind of a summation of a larger quote by Joseph Campbell and now I can't remember the quote, but my t-shirt says, just say yes to the whole catastrophe. And I had that made because to me, that reminds me that I always want to be stepping into the bigger yes, the thing that's beyond me that impacts a broader field, right? Just say yes and yes, it's going to be messy and I'm going to have to struggle with my internal stuff and get over my stuff to be able to go out there with just mission in mind, right? The mission that we possess, something tremendously powerful that we can go out in the world and touch people, person by person, group by group, community by community, and to always look for those opportunities to bring that in. And it can just be a one-on-one conversation with somebody you have after a class or something or in the grocery store, or it can be talking to a group of 5,000 people. It doesn't matter. It's that we have this larger commitment to service in mind that is the catalyst that moves us out into the world in a bigger and bigger way.
Elias Scultori, MCC (17:12):
Yeah. I hope that listeners, that you are coaches listening to this podcast that you are noticing the invitation here, the invitation that Amy is giving through this blog, and I am agreeing with her a hundred percent, is for us to notice pay attention because the proposition of coaching, what is embedded in all of these skills that we keep talking about during coach, training, mentoring, certification, all of this, the skills they are involved here, if we pay close attention to them, they are much more than just that moment of coaching one-on-one. There is a richness, there is a humanity, there is an energy in these concepts that can truly be transformative to us, individually, can be transformative to our clients and can truly be transformative to the world at large. I'm going to end Amy with just reading the conclusion of your article, and I hope that everybody's going to go and read the full article, but your words at the end are so powerful that I thought it would be important for me to put this here, register it in this episode of prime Space.
(18:30):
So here is what Amy says at the end of the blog post. So let's remember who we are. We are not just practitioners, we are stewards of potential. We are not just business owners, we are agents of transformation. We are not just listeners, we are builders of a more conscious world. The first 30 years were practice, now it's opening night. My fellow coaches, the world is watching not to see our performance, but to feel our presence. Let's rise together in service of something greater. Well, Amy, thank you so much for this post and thank you so much for your passion and thank you so much for what you are all about as a coach, and it is a joy to partner with you.
Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC (19:32):
Thank you. And may I add, this is just the beginning of this conversation. We will be continuing it
Elias Scultori, MCC (19:39):
A hundred percent. Everyone, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you are inspired to go out to the world and start working with your clients and start paying attention to these points. Please don't forget to subscribe and share these episodes with other coaches, and I will talk to you next time.
