DIFFERENCE OR JUDGMENT?

As you well know, effective and professional Coaching is non-judgmental. Clients do not hire you, as they would a consultant, for your professional judgments and advice. That’s simply not what coaching is about. Accordingly, in Meta-Coaching we emphasize this on Day One of Coaching Mastery as we do the Releasing Judgment pattern, focus on Sacred Listening, and do the De-Contamination Chamber to get our ego-investments like “being right” out of the way. The design is to get into a state of pure listening–and–supporting without any of our own agenda for our clients.

In the rest of your life, however, judgment is not only important, it is crucial. You could not survive a day without your judgments! When you cross a street, drive a car, step from the platform onto a train, etc. you need to use good judgment. And I hope that you have good judgments in those areas of life.

But what about “difference?” What’s the difference between making a difference and making a judgment? Coming from Gregory Bateson’s work, NLP has emphasized finding differences and in fact, finding the difference that makes a difference. That’s because, as Bateson wrote, what gets mapped onto the map is difference.