If you read my last post, you may recall (well, you should recall – it was only yesterday!) that I was illustrating some possible principles for coaching through use of quotes from “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran.
The next few quotes describe to me aspects of the relationship between the coach and coachee:
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
The mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
And my final section is devoted to the coachee, or a learner in any situation. I think these are probably my favourites, and some of them I find very powerful:
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour? We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge. You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of ocean by the frailty of its foam.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
What do you think? Do you like them? Are there any that particularly stand out for you? Or do they do nothing for you? Do you have some alternative principles or inspirational quotes?
And looking at the two posts as a whole, and revisiting my question with regard to coaching models, what are your views?
Paul