USING THE CRUCIBLE AS A META-COACH W

ith the recent publication of The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2010), several people have written with questions. Douglas Cartwright in London sent the first ones. He asked: Questions: “How do you use the Crucible in a coaching practice? I’m unsure of how to fit it into my coaching practice? Do you recommend helping clients build a crucible at the start of a coaching series? If not, when is an appropriate time to build one with a client? Do you ever use it completely instead of The Axes of Change?”

Answer #1: The Crucible model is actually much more than just a process that you do with a client, more than that, it is a model for you as a coach— a model for how you can be a crucible for your client without ever saying a word about it. Yes the Crucible is a model and there’s a specific set of steps for creating it and yes, you could make that explicit with a client. Yet I would encourage you to think about it as how to be a Crucible for and to your client.