Thomas Leonard in 2009: “What You See On This Table Represents An Entire Year’s Worth of Work”

Thomas Leonard, known to so many as the ‘father of modern professional coaching’ is also completely unknown to a multitude, as I found out in a rather rude awakening at the International Coach Federation (ICF) Annual Conference in December 2009. (Photos shown are from the exhibit hall there.)

Thomas was the first man to talk about this thing called ‘life coaching’ in a major magazine, Newsweek to be exact. And the first to be on a talk show about it, Donahue, in that case.

He formed the first coach training school, which is still now one of the largest and most well known. Indeed, he founded the first coaching association, the ICF itself. (Yet people attending the ICF conference had no idea.) He sold the first training school and opened another, which collided with the onset of the internet and grew like shrimp chips in hot oil. He personally led live training events in over 20 cities in less than a year. He even developed a coaching certification process through a second coaching association.

But what was the real secret behind all of these game-changing moves, in black and white? It only takes two words to tell you:

World-class content.

People who were part of Thomas Leonard’s world will recall that he often pushed aside compliments by saying ‘I’m just a fast typist.’

In other words, he was a writer.

He wrote incredibly, and if you haven’t yet experienced the impact of his writing, take a moment and go to www.BestofThomas.com and read just one thing for yourself.

For Thomas, really, the laptop was mightier than the sword.

I had the amazing good fortune to work with him. That experience left an indelible mark on me, and you could say that a little of his DNA rubbed off and stayed stuck.

So when I was given the opportunity to take the job of sifting through all his writing, all of his programs (all of his thoughts, really) and BECOME RESPONSIBLE for making THAT accessible to future generations (not just of coaches, but everyone) you would think it was an easy decision.

It wasn’t. Sometimes stepping forward to take a stand for something isn’t easy. It can be downright paralyzing in fact. I know this, first hand and in the marrow of my bones.

Sometimes, thought leadership means nothing more than doing the right thing, as it was, in this case, for me to do the work you see in these photos. What you see there, in fact, is all the materials that got packaged – with many hands on deck – using many hundreds of hours – over the course of an entire year.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. And that, dear reader, is real grit in the oyster of MY life.

Thought leadership often means asking yourself ‘what can only I do?’ and without hubris or false humility, doing it, hopefully without too much whining.

What ‘right thing’ is sitting in your life, waiting for you to do?

What ‘thing that only you can do’ is evident in your business, waiting for you to wake up?

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