The Virtual Meeting Coach

Everything Sir Ken says in this TED Talk, from February 2010, is just as true about adult learning as it is about our children’s education. And my commitment to this perspective about “informal” learning is central to the program design for the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching programs.

If we are to resurrect our local, national and global economies, we’re going to have to resurrect our spirits first. Starting with the spirits of adults! And the resurrection of spirits depends on organic processes, not pre-packaged “scalable solutions.”

Early in the talk, Sir Ken says, “Changing education is about challenging what we take for granted, challenging the tyranny of common sense…. And it’s very hard to know what you take for granted – because you take it for granted…”

Then, delightful, dry Britt that he is, Robinson quotes Lincoln:

‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with it. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we will save our country.’ – Abraham Lincoln

Robinson went on to say so many funny and profound things. I captured just a few in text as I listened:

” The idea we are enthralled to in education – the idea that life or learning is or should be linear – is simply false. Every TED speaker has, either implicitly or explicitly, told us this for the last five years!

“Life is organic. We create our lives organically in response to things that happen to us. This is what is true. Yet, we have built our educational systems on a fast-food model where everything is standardized. And that model – as Jamie Olivers’ Food Revolution has been telling us – is depleting our spirits as badly as it is impoverishing our bodies.

“We have to change metaphors – from a manufacturing model based on linearity, and conformity, and batching people – to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We simply have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it is an organic process.

“We cannot predict learning outcomes. All we can do – like a farmer does – is create the conditions under which human beings can begin to flourish.

“So when we look at transforming education, it’s a process of customizing and personalizing services for people you are actually teaching. Doing this is the key to the future.

“The reformation of education isn’t about ‘scaling a new solution.’ It’s about creating a new movement in education where people create their own solutions with external support based on a personalized curriculum.”

Amen, Sir Ken Robinson!! Amen!! Bravo, bravo, bravo!!

And bravo to the Spring, 2010, cohort of Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers! Your willingness to use virtual meeting rooms, video conferencing, Web 2.0 tools and innovative teleconferencing tools to learn together – online, organically, and grounded in your precious and personal passions and dreams – makes my life worth living. As a coach, as a trainer, as a consultant.

As a “teacher.”

I would like nothing better than to be able to use that word, “teacher,” again without thinking of a hapless supervisor on some horrid assembly line like the one Chaplain depicted so masterfully in “Modern Times” – now close to 80 years ago… Can’t we please wake up from the industrial /mechanical trance? The alarm’s ringing loud in the Gulf of Mexico!

On a dark winter evening back in January, a group of Rogue Valley women business owners gathered in the living room of a “Prosperity Web” member’s home to hear “The Virtual Meeting Coach” talk about virtual meetings.

As I finished my presentation, gathered up my notes, and returned to my seat, I glanced around the room, taking in the looks on people’s faces. They were at once excited and wistful. My presentation had told and shown them things about virtual meetings that these women had never considered. At least not in relation to their small businesses and business processes.

I could see one here, one there, reflecting on the possibilities – and the realities – of time and financial commitments they would need to make to take advantage of my coaching services. And I could see that despite their considerable interest, most of them thought the time and money involved were going to be too big a stretch this year. Or longer.

Like so many small business people across the nation still hanging on by our fingernails during this economic downturn, these women had been nixing every “non-essential” expenditure for at least the last 18 months. And transitioning even one service product from face-to-face delivery to a virtual meeting format wasn’t on their list of “things-I-have-to-do-now.”

My eyes fell on Carolyn Shaffer, an experienced hypnotherapist, coach, and author of a terrific book on community building I had read a decade before when I was living in Austin, Texas. I could see that Carolyn was really pondering the possibilities of expanding her reach beyond our local market. But I could also see her wistfully beginning to dismiss any thoughts that she could do more than just buy a copy of “The Coach’s Short List.” She didn’t think she could afford the time or money for my high-end coaching program.

As I took in the look on Carolyn’s face, a voice in my head said, quite clearly, “Meri, come on! There’s got to be a faster, less expensive way to help Carolyn – and other women like her – take advantage of virtual meetings. They can’t afford what you’re offering and they need help now – not two or three years from now.”

So, I went home that evening, continued ruminating on what I’d heard in the privacy of my mind, and fell asleep wishing I could be of better service to Carolyn and other women business owners. When I woke the next morning, I bolted upright in the bed, grabbed paper and pen, and started scribbling down what I’d seen in a dream. In my sleep, I had completely redesigned my high-end coaching program! As I began writing and drawing little diagrams before I forgot them, I heard the same voice from the night before say, “Now, that’s more like it! Get this down on paper. And make it so – now!”

It’s important to say that I don’t often hear voices ;^). I’m just a regular middle-aged woman who’s always been a little wacky, but I’m not someone who hears a lot of voices. So, the voice was a little distracting. But not enough to keep me from continuing to capture the plan… and…

Long story short, the next thing you know, The Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching Programs took shape and 5 Madhatters signed up and brought their friends, fans, and followers into the Virtual Meeting Camp and… Today’s post here in The Virtual Meeting Coach Blog features a debriefing conversation after last Monday’s Virtual Tea Party. Participants are Tom Carroll, of Evolutionary Learning, me, and Carolyn Shaffer, hypnotherapist, author, coach, teleseminar leader and blogger at The WhyWorryGuide.

It’s close to the end of May, the first cohort is 9 weeks into the Madhatters Group Coaching Programs, and Carolyn is deep into the process of transitioning some of her coaching services from telephone and teleseminar work into fully interactive multimedia virtual meetings!

Please take a listen as we discuss some of the challenges and successes Carolyn encountered this week as she hosted her Virtual Tea Party.

I’m so proud of Carolyn I can hardly stand it! I’m also really pleased with the way the Madhatters Group Coaching Programs are working for the Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers. In my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have imagined the speed of the multi-level learning taking place in the parties or the kinds of synergies and synchronicities that are showing up throughout the sister programs.

Except wait a minute! That’s not true! It’s all part of a wild dream… that’s actually coming true…