Robert Hargrove

It took me a year to write Masterful Coaching in 1995. The intention was to be the Future of Coaching—Impossible Futures not mere behavior modification (perish the thought. I hate that term.)

At the time I wrote the book, Peter Senge had come out with the Fifth Discipline, a very successful book. In my mind, coaching would eventually surpass the idea of the learning organization, vehicle for building inspired, high -performing organizations, but I couldn’t get anyone else to share in that vision.

The plan in 1995 was to make some noise and maybe drum up some business. However for at least another year, well into 1996, I sat in my office alone. The phone didn’t ring even once. We were so poor at one point we had to sell the computer I wrote the book on to pay the rent.

Still I stuck to my vision, even though well-intended friends told me I should give up and get a job, words that pierced my heart. Then one day in 1996, I got a call from Dorothy Hutt of Bell Canada telling me it was a “brilliant book” and inviting me to Ottawa for a special engagement. This was the ice breaker.

So much has changed since them. The Masterful Coaching business began to catch on landing some Global 1000 type companies in my lap. This gave me the opportunity to gain tons of executive coaching experience and develop the Masterful Coaching methodology.

Today coaching seems to have become an idea whose time has come, with almost every company having an executive whose job it is to make sure their “people strategy” matches their “business strategy,” with coaching being one of the levers they pull most often.

At Masterful Coaching the phone is now ringing a lot more often, not just from executives at companies like Textron, Airbus, Nestle, Marriott, ABB, and Loews, but from people in various parts of the world interested in doing joint ventures.

One JV call (which I previously wrote about) came from Jae Chang Jeong, CEO of PSI Consulting (and M Coaching) in Korea. This JV is aimed primarily at big companies like Samsung.

Another call came from with Frank Marinko, a very successful executive and small business coach from Australia. We are working on a program called “Winning at Business” for small businesses.

Next I got a call from Muli Glezer, an Israeli entrepreneur and one of the best networkers I have ever met. Muli introduced me to Noga Kainan, President of the CFO Forum in Israel, whose call is to make Israel one of the fastest growing economies in the world (and who is also interested in a JV).

Still another came from Luis Alberto Zuleta from Columbia, South America, who has started several very successful consulting companies aimed at large corporations there. Luis is like a burst of positive energy.

This month Muli will be visiting me in Boston hopefully to further develop our relationship and perhaps put some ink on the pink (sign a deal) and I will be hosting Luis in February.

I am seeing that there are endless possibilities of combining the Masterful Coaching methodology with the talents, expertise,  and intentions of passionate individuals/ groups world-wide.