The Black Box
The Black Box is a collaborative and versatile online space designed to...
activate your knowledge and experience (not to fill your head with even more stuff)...
develop your unique talents, expand your capacities, and ultimately...
provide your professional life with more meaning, greater enjoyment, and new-and-improved results.
Where is the name from?
During what was supposed to be my last semester in college, I took my first ever acting class in a windowless basement room called "The Black Box."
It quickly became my favorite place. The simplicity of the room allowed it to be anything we needed it to be. When it wasn't being used for classes, students might go there to work on individual projects or rehearse with scene partners. It also served as the venue of my directorial debut.
More important than the functions of a black box is the spirit. Many consider black box theaters spaces "where more "pure" theatre can be explored, with the most human elements in focus..."
How does this apply to us?
Part 1: Why "Group Coaching"
often misses the mark
So much of group coaching is about the coach and their content.
Even during "open coaching," most coaches will tell you to ask questions that they answer through the lens of how they run their own business. Often, they use your questions to sell you into different packaged content.
Group coaching also tends to attract people who are all pursuing the same goal. To be fair, that can be wonderful when the goal is clear and specific.
The thing is, that structure keeps the "coach" in a position of authority. It also keeps the conversation around the narrow topic, even when the topic isn't what will actually move the needle for many members of the group.
Part 2: How The Black Box is different
In The Black Box, we don't show up because we want to sit at the feet of an authority. We show up because we want to roll up our sleeves and work both with and for each other. We keep reinventing the space in a spirit of play, experimentation, and collaboration.
We put authority aside and we let ourselves be surprised.
If one person is working on a speech, another on sales, another on a piece of writing, someone else on strategy, and someone else on navigating office politics.
