The Hero Model

A young boy loses his parents in a tragic accident.?

He’s adopted by his aunt and uncle, and years later, becomes a child prodigy in science. One day, on a school trip to a lab, there’s an accident - he’s bitten by one of the lab animals. He wakes up to superhuman abilities and, like any adolescent suddenly adorned with power, he abuses it. He starts wrestling for money and wins, but the owner doesn't pay him. Angered, he allows a thief running out of the establishment to escape with the money. On his way home, he sees a crowd huddled around a body. On closer inspection he realises it’s his uncle, dying, after being stabbed by the thief he let escape from the wrestling venue earlier. His uncle’s dying words echo in him for the rest of his life.

With great power, comes great responsibility - Uncle Ben

This is, of course, an origin story any marvel fan would recognise. If I asked when Spiderman was born, many might say “when Peter Parker was bitten by the spider”.

I, however, would argue that Spiderman was born when Peter Parker decided to use his newfound powers for good, and not evil.

The Hero’s Journey

The older I get, the more I relate to the villains, because often, the only thing that separates them from the heroes, is?:

1. what decisions they make, and?
2. whose interests they put first

Another thing you might notice is that Spiderman's origin story is very similar to any other origin story. That is because many are based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, which has 12 stages, which could easily parallel the coaching journey:

1. The Ordinary World. We meet our hero, the client.
2. Call to Adventure. Will they meet the challenge?
3. Refusal of the Call. They resist the adventure.
4. Meeting the Guide. A teacher arrives.
5. Crossing the First Threshold. The hero leaves their comfort zone.
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies. Making friends and facing roadblocks.
7. Approach to the Inmost Cave. Getting closer to our goal.
8. Ordeal. The hero’s biggest test yet!
9. Reward (Seizing the Sword). Light at the end of the tunnel
10. The Road Back. We aren’t safe yet.
11. Resurrection. The final hurdle is reached.
12. Return with the Elixir. The hero, the client, heads home, triumphant.

In simpler terms…

Every story has a hero, goal, conflict, and resolution - Charlie Wessler

I’m developing a coaching practice that puts a client back in the seat as the main character in their story. This is how I answered the second question I had to respond to, to complete my coaching qualification with AoEC - The Academy of Executive Coaching , “How do you coach?” What I now call…

The Hero Model

My first step, as your guide (your Yoda, if you will), is understanding where you are in your own hero’s journey so I can ask the questions you need to answer to unlock the next stage of your path.

Have you received the call? What have you learned from previous guides? What ordeals have you been victorious over? What are the patterns you wish to break? What do you need to develop to face this new adventure? How will we know that you have been triumphant?

I operate through 5 core beliefs:

You are a human with super gifts

You may have heard a variation of the old proverb that if every animal was considered great based on how well they climb a tree, most would consider themselves failures. Well, I believe many of us just haven't been put in the conditions for our natural gifts to show and when we are, we can be overcome by fear - not just of failure, but of success. Courage is action in spite of, not in the absence of, fear. Challenges can be the heat and pressure that create diamonds. Without it, we may never develop beyond coal. My role is to help guide you through the metamorphosis

You are called to greatness

Sometimes, greatness can be boring. It can look like an aptitude for something you find so easy, you overlook it as normal, but it isn't. The Japanese have a concept called Ikigai which is the overlap between what you love, what you’re good at, what people will pay for, and what the world needs. Some would advise to work on your weaknesses, but as John C Maxwell states in his book, The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication, if you can only improve a skill by 3, raising something you’re a 2 at might only bring it up to a 5, which is average and noone is blown away by average. Rather, put the same energy in increasing a 6 to a 9, to be exceptional, which everyone would be blown away by.

You must accept guidance

Henry Ford said “If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got". Change requires change, and a lot of things can hold you back - fear of failure, fear of success, lack of clarity, commitments to others - but something happens when you’re faced with a choice. It’s often hard to hear, but I’ve found it important to point out that every day you don’t take a step towards our desire, is a choice to stay exactly where you are. It just gets to a point where the pain of that becomes too great. Coaching is guidance through that space, but there can be pain in accepting it. It often requires a mindset shift before anything else.

Believing that you have the ability to realise your dreams also means you have had the ability to achieve your dreams, and haven’t.?

The best time to start was then, and the second best is now, because tomorrow may never come.

You must prepare to face it, alone

This is the curse of building rapport quickly. You become invested in a client, who, when push comes to shove, will ultimately have to go it alone.

It’s also why coaching doesn’t give ‘advice’ which is a big misconception. As much as we can help work through the beliefs and performance with you, the coach will not be in the room, or personally live through the consequences. It means 100% of the responsibility is with you, the client. It sounded like deception when I first heard that, but there are 2 main benefits.?

1. If the results are not what you’d hoped for, you retain the power, which means you can do something about it.?

2. If the results are what you’d hoped for, it builds as evidence to what YOU can do.

The end of one adventure, is the start of another

You may have heard of game theory. There are certain rules and players, and we play to win. That’s when the game finishes.

Infinite games are played to keep the game running, and that, I’ve realised, is life.

Many that others would consider successful become unfulfilled when they realise they have this the wrong way round. What happens when we devote our entire lives to the pursuit of one thing, and then attain it? In Solve For Happy, Mo Gawdat talks about approaching life like a computer game.?

We’re playing a series of finite games, within one infinite game, that will continue even after we’ve long gone. Not only does the strength from one victory feed into the next, but our victories feed into the victories marked in history

The Hero Process

The Hero

I feel the west has a strange conflict between creating the desire to be successful, and demonising those who become it. Even at 5 years old, I was baffled when I came to the UK and found out (contrary to Sierra Leone culture at the time), that excellence was not popular. You were called a “boffin” for being smart, “up yourself” for identifying your strengths, and ostracised for pushing yourself to greatness.

Nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house - Matthew 5:15

What I’ve seen as a coach is years of this leading to a place where your light has been hidden for so long, you stop recognising it completely - your gifts are not allowed to give light to all who are in the house, and so we all sit in darkness.

Identifying you as the hero in your story means acknowledging your gifts, your talents, your natural aptitudes, and developing them as strengths honed for the challenge ahead.

It means understanding where you are in your story so far, what challenges you now face, and what powers in you already exist to see you through them

The Goal

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a model for understanding the motivations for human behaviour. It maps different motivations onto a pyramid, with each level representing a different human need. These include physiological needs at the bottom, safety, love and belonging, self esteem, and at the top, self-actualization.

When we explore and create long and short term goals, it’s important to get very detailed so we can develop an emotional connection with it which can help us drive though barriers we may come across on the roach to actualising them.

Often they may look like a certain lifestyle for ourselves or impact we want to have on others.

When we dig down, however, we may find that at the root of our goals, are a set of needs we want fulfilled.

Not only do we want to understand the goal, but why it’s important to you, the hero, and why now.

The Conflict

In his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey introduces the equation:?

Pe (Performance) = Po (Potential) - i (Interference)

This equation lies at the heart of coaching with interference being the outer game (battle against opponent) plus the inner game (battle against your self), so I would reword it as:

Pe (Performance) = Po (Potential) - [outer game (battle against opponent) + inner game (battle against your self)]

The outer game involves things such as skills and strategy, while the inner game may look like self doubt or judgement

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference - Reinhold Niebuhr

They say “when challenges arise, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your level of preparation”, so with each conflict come various levels I’m currently exploring in a book I will release next year called “The You Who Is”, that I go through with each client:

1. The you who Cant - what is out of your control?
2. The you who Wont - What inner games are holding you back?
3. The you who Might - What lacks clarity or certainty?
4. The you who Will - What actions discipline and habits will ensure success?
5. The you who Did - What access, and lessons learned have you gained?
6. The you who Is - What innate characteristics will always overcome this challenge?

The Resolution

This is “the you who will”.?

It always seems impossible until it's done - Nelson Mandela

If you had access to all resources, what would you do? What do you have control over that you’re committed to doing? Who in your network has access to the things you don't? What can we put in place to ensure that what needs to be done, is done? What will you have done by our next session?

Sometimes we can suffer procrastination and anxiety not because a task is too much for us but because we look at the bigger picture at once, see it as an amorphous entity that can’t be defeated and overthink on everything that could possibly go wrong instead of all the things that we want on the other end of it going right.

If you’re also a fan of the hit sitcom Friends, you may remember the scene in “The One with Monica and Chandler's Wedding” where Chandler is freaking out. Ross says to him “it's ok, right now, you’re not getting married. Right now, you’re just putting on pants. You can do that, can’t you?”

Sometimes, breaking it down into small steps can help it manage it through bitesize chunks

Brian Tracy’s framework in his book Eat That Frog is a great way to do that in 7 steps:

1. Decide exactly what you want.
2. Write it down.
3. Set a deadline on your goal; set sub-deadlines if necessary.
4. Make a list of everything you are going to have to do to achieve your goal.
5. Organize the list into a plan.
6. Take action on your plan immediately.
7. Do something every day that moves you towards your major goal.

One step I suggest is taking account of your wins as a bank of evidence for the next time a challenge arises - the you, who did.

The Hero In You

If you're a coach, what framework have you developed? If you're facing a challenge, what has been useful, and what would you add?

Contrary to my opening story, my favourite character is actually Superman. He is a Superhero who uses a disguise to hide his innate greatness, to be considered "normal". However, his abilities only come through on earth because of environmental conditions.

The questions I have for you are:

1. What needs do your dreams fulfil?
2. What conditions do you need for your innate abilities to appear?
3. What would it look like for your gifts to give light to all who are in the house?

As we start a new week, leave your responses in the comments as a commitment to yourself to remove your disguise?