Coaching Stories
Metaphorical Tales, from Egypt

One can often find similarities between some of these countries on the growing edge of the coaching profession.  The first years educating potential clients at large and the slow training of the first local coach generations can be perceived as painfully slow, sometimes as hopelessly difficult.  These first generations of coaches have to struggle to find clients and the first clients often have no inkling as to what they can expect from engaging in a coaching dialogue.  In effect, the coaches are not really ready, and their clients are no better prepared. 

One of these countries is Romania where I have been heavily investing to develop coaching for a number of years.  But having participated in a number of other developing markets and accompanied numerous local coaches struggling to make a living, the process is familiar.  When I work in these environments, an Egyptian metaphor often comes to mind.  I would like to share this story that was told to me a long time ago. It concerns how one grows trees in the desert.

In Egypt today, when driving in places where there once existed only sand and rocks, one can often see endless rows of strong, tall evergreen trees, for hundreds of hectares.  If it were not for the sand under the pine needles, the scene could seem to be transplanted from much more hospitable regions, say from Mediterranean Europe.

Now, how did this miracle take place?  How were these trees grown in these unlikely drought-ridden areas where never falls a drop of rain?  Irrigation of bountiful water diverted from the Nile River of course, may be the standard answer offered by unknowing onlookers. But this answer is very far from the truth.

Any older local Bedouin can tell the real story.  Tens of years ago, in the middle of the desert, people patiently planted very small trees, painstakingly, one by one, for miles on end.  Then these small trees were individually barely watered, just enough to keep them alive.  Knowingly, they were kept at survival level.  For years, these future trees barely grew at all.  No apparent progress could support motivation to continue the patient development program.  For years, the potential trees seemed to be doomed to remain small, the size of small ornamental shrubs, burning under the hot sun.

But hidden from human eyes and for all these years, the evergreens grew deeper and deeper roots.  Their apparent growth was almost inexistent, but underground they reached farther, searching for an almost hypothetical water table.  In time, they finally achieved their goal. Then, their growth suddenly shifted directions, and they started reaching for the sky.

Today, years later, these trees are big, healthy and numerous.  In some areas, they have completely changed the landscape.  For the unsuspecting, their story is unknown, and travelers probably think the success is due to industrial means, applied on a very large scale.  If that had been the case, the result would be very different.  These trees would have much shorter roots, and would still be dependent on man for irrigation.  It is not the case for their success is durable, or sustainable.  It rests on their survival skills.

The success runs even deeper, however, if one is to consider a major collateral outcome.  Over the years, these trees have also participated in creating another miracle.  In the areas where they stand, their exceptionally deep roots have succeeded in raising the water table much closer to the surface. 

In the areas where they stand, it is now possible to plant other trees and shrubs that can access underground water much more rapidly.  Numerous varieties of smaller, less sturdy plants almost naturally settle in the transformed environment and make it their home.   These younger newcomers don’t realize how much they owe the first generation of local developers, and the oldet trees.  In time, the early struggle for survival, searching for that inaccessible water table may even be forgotten.

In countries like Romania too, an early generation of local coaches is growing roots.  Daily, it is struggling to go deeper to find the local coaching market that seems almost inaccessible.  Luckily, although each is barely aware of their individual contribution to a collective effort, numerous young professionals are undertaking this market development process. Each is almost too busy surviving to notice they are part of a community.

And the market is slowly appearing.  Managers and people in general are being educated, gradually understanding how they can work with coaches to achieve their life and work ambitions.  The next coaching generations will have it much easier of course, but will they remember and be thankful to the first developers and coaches? Will their roots run as strong and as deep?

In the Middle East, and generally speaking in most of the Muslim world, the mystical soufi tradition is both ever present and very difficult to locate.  For centuries, easily moving across all boundaries, Soufi masters and students have traveled and taught.  They have cared little for territorial boundaries, nationalities, politics, and institutions. In the midst of different cultures, they have developed their spirit and mind through activities that include art, music, song, dance, travel, storytelling, teaching and all types of craftsmanship.  Everywhere, soufis have mingled with common people and lived apparently normal lives.

To think that their knowledge and teachings lead to any form of social promotion or recognition would be an error.  The “twirling dervishes”, well known Turkish and Syrian soufis, have been regularly persecuted for their difference.  Thanks to their “dancing” skills, they have survived as entertaining tourist attractions which attract crowds and question occidentals. Today the artists are tolerated as such, although the folklore continues to hide their deep spirituality.

In Egypt, “hashash” stories about a village idiot named Goha have amused generations.  To take them as insignificant jokes would be also be a mistake.  These short humorous vignettes have perpetuated basic philosophical teachings in an extremely efficient and non-pretentious way. Through funny tales and laughter, ancient and often paradoxical knowledge is made accessible to the common people and has sometimes helped them locate the fleeting gates of paradise.

These indirect social and political strategies have only fooled those that can’t see for lack of heart and can’t hear for lack of soul.  The fundamental wealth of the soufi tradition, of its humor, of its “art of living” has motivated numbers to follow its universally reputed teachings and try to attend some of their schools.

That search turns out to be useless in as much as soufi schools don’t formally exist.  Soufis know well that teaching and learning happen outside institutions which claim to dispense them. Soufi schools don’t have defined locations nor precise times and schedules.  As a matter of fact, soufis have always preferred lighter, more creative, adaptable and evolving teaching systems, architectures and networks.  Their schools are literally anywhere and everywhere.  Their teachings are as practical and continuous as life itself.  That may have something to do with the teaching’s obvious coherence and effectiveness.

So today, it is hard to find formal sources of Soufi knowledge.  Students have little chance of finding a “master” that will serve as a guide.  To actually want to find a master is also a mistake.  Much like todays's coaches, Soufi masters generally claim that they know little and do nothing, and that as far as they know, soufi knowledge doesn’t formally exist as such.  As they would have it, this knowledge is everywhere, totally free and accessible to all, hidden both within our natural environment and deep down inside each one of us.

For some students, the task then becomes to search within.  To slow down, to query, to think and meditate.  Those of us who choose that path will rapidly realize that without a master, we can loose ourselves in a vast inner labyrinth whose smallest segments are way too complex for a solitary traveler. To avoid getting inextricably lost, it is obviously necessary to have a guide.  One that will provide direction, to whom one can ask questions and maybe from whom one can get some answers.

There too lies the possibility for another mistake.  Are not all directions good, so long as we are moving and growing.  If each has a personal destination, how can one ask another for direction?  Besides, good questions stand alone.  Questions that find answers are never the best.  Some even say that soufi masters never answer questions.  They only ask them.

In their overwhelming thirst to learn, some students have abandoned society, given up everything and retired.  They have left civilization, searching for silence, often in the solitude of magestic mountains or barren deserts.  That too can turn out to be a big mistake.  We can only give up and abandon what is ours to own, and that applies to nothing in this material world. 

What’s more, empty space, bare horizons, fathomless silence, inaction and the dry desert are often kin to negation and denial.  Knowledge is revealed in life, within partnerships and interactions, both positive and negative.  We find ourselves by facing others, we build ourselves through visible constructions.  It is impossible, without loss of self, to leave society and disconnect from reality.  “A solitary man is always in poor company” said a French philosopher, probably also a soufi.

So students search for their paths in the midst of society and its tough day to day reality, made of illusions.  They often choose to put themselves at the service of others who are less blessed by life, to help the poor, the sick and the elderly.  This noble task is most often as sad and heavy as it is endless.  For if we can temporarily help others carry their burden, only they can ultimately get rid of it.  And helping another at the expense of our own quests, at the expense of developing our own potentials cannot be a gift.  Too often, helping other people costs them all the more when it is free.  Everyone ends up by paying emotionally, the hard way.  Indeed, giving for money often costs much less.

So some students will take to searching differently, through personal accomplishments, individual success and social recognition.  This is where they discover that everyday life is illusion, that society is a mask, that one doesn’t own power and possessions for they end up owning you.  Social, political and economic success has been a desperately dead end for all too many achievers. 

It is again elsewhere that one needs to search for that inaccessible knowledge which apparently seems to offer no holds, no form, no structure, as if it didn’t even exist.  But that belief too is a mistake.  Knowledge has a timeless, universal and precise form.  It is simply impossible to grasp.  Indeed how can we understand something by which we are understood?  How can one hold that by which one is held?  Why obstinately want to get a handle on that which, since time immemorial, disposes of us?

So today as they always have, students rise to pursue their quest.  And much as before, they will continue to succeed so long as they stick to their questioning.

Copyright 2008.  www.metasysteme.eu  Alain Cardon