The Coaching Commons Unleashing Untapped Capacity

I confess to having only just now really focused on the extraordinary development, in just under twelve months, of the Coaching Commons site. The Coaching Commons describes itself as “a non-partisan ‘big tent’ under which coaches can freely create the future together in a non-commercial setting on the world-wide-web”.

Writing on the site, philanthropist Ruth Ann Harnisch says the cornerstone of her philosophy of philanthropy – and by extension her aim in her amazingly generous work of supporting coaching and specifically the Coaching Commons – is “unleashing untapped capacity”.

Reading the various contributions on the site you cannot avoid seeing that there are big dreams at work here, dreams about the potential of coaching to make a substantial positive difference to our world.

It would have been very helpful to me, back when I was first encouraged by a friend to consider coaching as a profession, to have a site like this. There is plenty of information about coaching. More important, in my opinion, there is plenty of activity: people contributing, news items about coaching, an events calendar, blog posts encouraging and attracting questions and discussion.

And for those who, like me, like to know the antecedents, the history of things, there is a virtual museum of coaching and a coaching hall of fame.

I found touring the site a very informative and stimulating experience, although I could not figure out whether there was a formal online “Coaching Commons” community I could join, or whether the idea is just for the site to be a place for people to visit and hang out.

I’ve signed up for the newsletter, so I am assuming more will be revealed as time goes by.

In the meantime, for anyone involved, interested in or just curious about coaching, this is a site to visit and bookmark.

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.