Dive deep into the meaning behind Play Shift Coaching
Contents
While growing up my grandparents had the 1970s version of the modern Game of Life (modern because it was a modification of the 1860s version of the Checkered Game of Life). If you are familiar with the game you probably remember the colorful one through 10 ‘spin-to-win’ wheel that was the game’s solution for having to roll a boring set of dice.
If you are not familiar with the game the board was comprised of a track that wound through mountains, buildings, and trees. It was a visually stunning game board that had three-dimensional aspects (mountains) and lots of vivid greens, yellows, blues, and reds. Essentially players had a car that had slots for pegs. Pegs were collected and inserted into the slot. Each peg represented a milestone in life like getting married, having children, or getting a degree.
The goal was to win by getting to the last space on the board where you were declared to be either a millionaire or destitute. The game had a bank and banker and lots of twists and turns. It was a rather linear view of life:
either end up rich or destitute. What a life eh!
I like the analogy of life as a ‘game’ because competition has been a driver of human civilization since the beginning. When I say competition I don’t only mean competition that we see as defined by capitalists. I also mean the kind of competition in the Medicine Game or Creators Game better known as Lacrosse which was entertainment, a form of conflict resolution, and a way for healing, it was a gift.
Our actual lives are not a game……or are they? Did Milton Bradley, in the 1800s, create the Checkered Game of Life because he could look down on Western civilization and see it for what it was, a process of colonization and oppression meant to continue the development of order that was needed in the continued effort to create order and freedom? Get a degree, get a job, get married, have kids, and retire.
Whatever the Game of Life is, or is not, is not the question. The question is how can we compete as individuals in our communities, with our communities, as a way to create a better world? Regardless of whether you are a techbro, alt-right supporter, woke lefty, colonizer, anti-racist, billionaire pre-colonizer, decolonizer, Muslim, Solarpunk, or Cyberpunk we are all on the same Planet trying to survive, trying to have our community survive……or maybe integrate with other communities or maybe be within the top five of best communities.
Like any game, there are rules and strategizes. For me, I use one set of specific rules to guide my path through the game which is life. And yes, these rules make me biased and I am aware that these are one set of rules that can be combined with other rules to develop larger systems.
For the purpose of this Wiki, I will focus on my bias, that coaching has evolved into a great metaphor for how we can all play the game of life through Play Shift Coaching.
After this paragraph and the next, we will get into the official history (as official as history can be) of the word coach. But first, for the purpose of this Wiki and the concept of Play Shift Coaching, coaching is about playing. It’s about understanding and supporting the human soul. As a coach, I create an environment of play with people and teams. It’s about creating a mutually beneficial environment that is meant for experimentation and learning. It’s about challenging the rules and constraints that we hold internally based on the stories we have been brought up on.
Play Shift Coaching is not about what I call un-human or abusive coaching which is meant to influence people to perform better as a way to optimize organizational processes based on what the market wants to lead to growth, profit, and innovative technologies that reduce human connection.