Hello, I am Roach the Coach and I will be your guide through the Coaching Chronicles. There are 4,500 species of us cockroaches so we are well placed, across the globe, and across time, to tell you about coaching…
This time it’s the Egyptians. When you think of ancient Egypt, what does your mind picture? A pyramid? Tutankhamun? The Sphinx? A camel? Cleopatra? Well, all of these were created in honour of the contribution coaching made to its civilisation.
The pyramids are proof of how people learn. Egyptian society was highly stratified and social status was expressly displayed. The highest was nobility and just below that were the experts – priests, physicians and engineers. Then there were the scribes and officials, closely followed by artists and craftsmen. The lowest were farmers, who made up the bulk of the population. And slaves? Well, they were just slaves.
When a pharaoh demanded that the first pyramid be built, everyone went into apoplexy. The enormity of the task seemed insurmountable – how could they ensure they got the job done and that they learned from it? There were two bright Egyptian Engineers called Kohl Coach and Libby (or Lib for short) Mentor who had worked on hundreds of building projects over the years. They had very different styles in how theory managed people – Kohl Coach liked to help people find their own answers, Lib Mentor liked to share her experience and impart pearls of wisdom.
Through their collective experience, they developed a process they thought might help accelerate the learning of pyramid building. So this is what they did: the slaves would push and pull the blocks into place (doing or concrete experience), the artists would draw them working so they could see how they worked, and the scribes would record the techniques they used (reflective observation).
The priests and engineers would often offer advice and suggestions on what the slaves could do to improve their efficiency (abstract conceptualisation) and the slaves would make the necessary tweaks and changes when laying the next level of blocks (active experimentation). From this was born Kohl and Lib’s Learning Cycle.
The engineers received great acclaim and their different yet complementary styles were captured in hieroglyphics across Egypt so people would remember their approach.
When Tutankhamun, the ‘boy King’, ascended the throne, his supporters had a problem – how do you develop a boy to be a great leader? The answer was CAMEL…
Was this young lad to learn and perfect camel whispering techniques to develop empathic ways of gaining followership?
No, high priests were aware of Kohl and Lib’s work. One, Colin Mittee (Co to his friends), wanted to create something that would live beyond his lifetime. His colleagues had of course wanted him to design something like a HORSE (Hero Orientated Result for Success Every time) but instead, he developed the CAMEL:
Coaching
And
Mentoring
Enlightens
Leaders
Tutankhamun’s learning needs were quickly identified and a team of top-notch coaches and mentors worked with him and developed his leadership capability to such an extent that he became one of history’s best known leaders. So remember, a CAMEL is in fact a HORSE designed by a Co Mittee!
The Sphinx was built to remind people of the importance of perspective when coaching. One young pharaoh was being groomed for great things and started to lose perspective. His coaches and mentors continued to fluff him up and before you knew it, his ego has grown to such a size that he demanded a sculpture of his head be built. The Egyptian people got fed up with his continuing demands so they rebelled.
After this terrible anarchic episode, coaches and mentors had to go into hiding for they were seen as the root of the problem. They begged the people to allow them to learn from their ways and the people demanded that their payback was big. So the coaches and mentors agreed that they would make a symbol of the importance of perspective so that no coach or mentor would ever repeat this mistake – nor any for that matter.
For years coaches and mentors laboured to complete the Sphinx. What has this statue got to do with humility? If you look at the front of it you can see a very, very large head. The coaches and mentors agreed to add a very large rump to the statue to remind people that if you have a big head you become a big ar*e!
The coaches and mentors also begged that there be another message implanted in the heads of all Egyptians and so they lobbied for the King Ptolemy XII Auletes to give his daughter a name that would remind all of this terrible incident. And so he called his daughter: CLEOPATRA.
I know you thought this was just a pretty name but it does in fact have an important meaning: Cocky Leaders Enrage Ordinary People As This Reminds Always.
Who said there is nothing in a name.
They were very clever those Egyptians.
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 3