The role of the Change Master for Coaching
According to Angeles Arrien in her book “The Four Fold Way” medicine men and women, chiefs, shamans, teachers and seers are the “change masters” these are the magical people who can summon energy in a directed way to deliberately cause change. Arrien goes on the write that throughout the centuries in shamanic traditions indigenous people have used the wisdom of nature and ritual to support change and life transitions. Energy causes change in the world described by modern physics. But there has always been a role in traditional societies for a few people to cause directed change to help the tribe or community transition through change peacefully and without violence.
The term Change Masters was first used by Rosebeth Moss Kanter in her book “The Change Masters”. The profession of business and life coaching aims at helping clients create and overcome change in their lives and business. Since coaching in both organisations and for people in their own lives is often used to help bring about change, I would like to explore this concept of a Change Master. Can we become a master of change in own life and play that role for our clients?
In my experience as a trained coach I can attest to how a coach can support change by “holding the energy”. That is, by being a stable influence in which the coach is being present and is personally unmoved by whatever is going on the flux of emotional output of the client, so that the client can rise above his or her issues. In so doing the coach does not try to solve a problem, nor feels a need to do so. He listens and holds a space open for change. The coach can instead validate his or her clients’ feelings and emotions by listening and not trying to fix or make better. By just being present and by not forming any judgement my coaching client can come through the issue and find peace or resolution.
Arrien says that being present allows us to access the human resources of power, presence and communication, and by paying attention to what is present (what is being said) opens us to the human resources of love gratitude, acknowledgement and validation. Through my experience of coaching for change, I have discovered a new definition for a Change Master: “One who can create a step change to a situation towards a higher energy and greater light.”
Looking at this definition more closely, the role of a Change Master is to transform a situation so that whatever the problem or crisis, we can move into a new state characterised by higher energy so that new potential for fulfilment and accomplishment is born. In this way, a Change Master can help guide change in a community or people through a transition that is peaceful and not violent.
Barbara Marx Hubbard in her book “The Revelation” writes about our choice as a species to choose the gentle path in opposition to the violent path. When speaking of anticipated world changes, she writes “It can be graceful. It can be violent. That is up to us”. In this sense Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were change masters for the fundamental changes they brought about through the influence of their lives. Black Elk and Buckminster Fuller also were change masters for their visions of future change. Could, therefore, the Lord Buddha and Jesus Christ be the highest form of Change Master since they were catalysts in aligning humanity with universal laws and wisdom? When Moses brought down the knowledge and codes of living from the divine levels of creation, he too was a Change Master instrumental in helping mankind take a step towards joining the ways of the higher evolution.
In all these Change Masters we see vision, direction and evolution. Vision is the identification of new possibilities. Direction is the new energy state, and Evolution is the result of change.
As individuals we always have the choice to evolve towards greater happiness, but we are helped to see a way through our problems through the vision and direction of the Change Master.
We also see in the lives of these great Change Masters that the most profound change is accomplished by accessing the non-changing field of life deep within. Modern physicists would call this the Ground State of all the Laws of Nature, the Buddha called it nirvana.
If a coach is to take the role of a Change Master, he or she must therefore work in the vertical dimension which Michael Neill describes as a “deepening of the ground-being of the client and greater access to inspiration and spiritual wisdom”.
