Normalizing a Professionalism that Cares

The Master Coach Collection podcast’s summer travels boast a fabulous itinerary: Conversations with MCC coaches in Dubai, Istanbul, Chennai, Bucharest, Edinburgh, and Chicago; oh, and the spectacular origin story of the first Farsi-language coach skills training program serving people deft at matching each ICF core competency to an evocative Sufi poem. It all makes for pretty indulgent listening.

But there’s a subplot only I’ve seen that bears sharing. Listed above are the conversations I’ve recorded and published. For every week I haven’t published anything, there was a conversation on the calendar—sometimes several—that got canceled. Usually day-of. Is this a drag? Obviously. But what's more interesting is the toll I recognized these cancelations taking on the guests who were canceling.

One day, after dropping my son off at camp, I was walking home to record a conversation with an MCC coach on the other side of the world. To say I’d been looking forward to this particular conversation is an understatement. I glanced at my phone and saw the email cancelation: The coach’s mother was suffering a medical emergency. Sadness welled up in my chest. Most painful to me though was the coach’s apologetic tone, as though this last-minute cancelation might cause me to think less of them.

I didn’t make it all the way home. I had to sit down, pull my phone out of my pocket again, and pound out a response from the nearest available bench. I offered sympathy and said in no uncertain terms: "It is my earnest hope for you, and for me, that we can lead lives free of people whose impressions of us are diminished when we postpone commitments to take care of those who matter most to us. I can’t picture a reality where keeping an appointment with a guy halfway around the globe whom you’ve spoken to once is as important as taking care of mom." Whew.

The following week, another cancelation. Another MCC coach attending to their mother suffering a life-threatening emergency. Another email struggling to salvage a reputation that the sender incorrectly imagined was imperiled. Ouch! Was it time to straight-up draft an email template, pointedly articulating the level of compassion and absolution that I was beginning to feel compelled to offer en masse? I pondered the emerging pattern and recalled several other MCC coaches who had already postponed even making plans this month because of the family emergencies they were navigating. Not to mention colleagues. And clients. Hmm.

Over the past weekend I mentioned to my wife what I’ve just shared here. I told her that this phenomenon was weighing me down. “Well, what about you?” she asked. Oh, yeah. Duh. I had let my practice crater a year and a half ago to meet the moment, fathering two young kids during a pandemic. So far every plan to rev back up to a practice that feels nice and full has buckled due to the unpredictable, contingent nature of childcare. Try as I do to ignore this and, yep, even act numb to it, it’s a constant and it hurts. Also, I reliably neglect to mention how painful juggling this reality is.

Most of the people you’ve just read about, myself included, are MCC coaches. Finding professionals more adept at seeing and hearing other people in order to help them navigate the complex terrain of their lives is a tall order. Even so, none of us is exempt from the vulnerabilities of the caring relationships we are a part of. Frankly, it's these relationships that make up the ecosystem that nourishes us. They're the reason we can be there for you so fully when we're on top of our game.

Most of us have taken for granted compartmentalizing our work and our caring roles. It's a norm mostly because it has been. When have we bothered to push back against it? From my lockdown experience, the total permeability of boundaries between work and family is pure hell. But I don't see impermeable boundaries serving us any better. They rot away our insides. As we answer the call from every corner for a 'return to normal,' what can we do to normalize a view of professionalism that is fully compatible with providing care?