YOU CAN FENCE THE FLOOR, BUT NOT THE CEILING

Have you noticed the average middle that is present in most organizations?

The average middle is the space in which people are doing what is required, but not really stepping up into excellence.

The average middle is the fat part of the bell curve. It’s “fine” or sometimes even “good” (though more often “good enough”), but rarely, if ever, “excellent”.

This middle exists in every profession I’ve worked in, and shows up in every organization and field I’ve coached and supported.

It exists in the coaching profession, just like it exists in all the others. In the coaching profession, many coaches feel that the International Coach Federation (the “ICF”) should create stronger restrictions , so as to ensure that more of the profession raises itself up.

This will not work.

When we draw a fence around a profession like this, we, at best, establish a barrier to entry. That is to say, we can create a fence around the floor of the profession.

However, you can’t really establish a fence around the ceiling of a profession, and this is where excellence exists.

Raising the level of excellence at our organization, profession or industry requires a different approach.

Excellence cannot be imposed via rules.

(To see an example of how this tends to go, watch this short clip from Office Space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7SNEdjftno).

In order to have people play in the field of excellence, we must support them to see what is possible, in their lives and those they work with, if they were to play out beyond the realm of “good enough”.

This is the same reason that DEIB, ethics and other similar initiatives tend not to have the impact we’re hoping for. We can create a floor for people to play on, but the behaviour ends up changing only to the extent that it has to — there’s no genuine enrolment.

When leaders get frustrated that their teams don’t seem to be showing up in a way that creates excellence, they attempt to create new rules in the hopes that this will close the gap.

This approach is satisfying in the short term, because it’s immediate and feels like we’re causing change. But at best, it will create a change in the behaviour at the floor of our standards, not the ceiling.

When we get people enrolled in what’s possible for them, you don’t need rules and regulations to ensure they create excellence the right way — instead, they seek it out.

When you do the hard work to support people to see what is possible for themselves, you create more leaders — people who are self-driven and lean into what’s next — rather than more followers.

We need to transform ourselves into the kind of leaders that are willing to have our own lack of enrolment pointed out to us, and to re-engage with a conversation in the realm of possibility.

We need to let go of our attachment to logistics, what currently works, and the world that we know, and instead seek out the support that calls us forward to look beyond what we can already see.

This kind of practice requires a special kind of courage from us — the courage to engage in the conversation about what’s next, before we know how to get there.

It’s easier to operate from rules, because it’s easier to follow.

Be courageous. Lean into your leadership.