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In Service of Something Greater
9 Plays4 months ago
In this powerful and heartfelt episode of PRIME SPACE, host Elias Scultori, MCC, is joined by co-founder of PRIME Coaching Academy Amy Ruppert Donovan, MCC, for a deeply inspiring conversation that calls coaches to something greater.
💡 Episode Highlight:
Amy returns to the PRIME SPACE podcast to explore the transformational power of coaching—not just as a profession but as a global movement. Together, Elias and Amy reflect on the 30-year evolution of coaching since its earliest days and discuss the deeper meaning behind coaching competencies, presence, and service. Inspired by Amy's latest blog post, “In Service of Something Greater,” they invite coaches everywhere to reflect on their role not only in their clients' lives but in the world at large.
🌍 What You'll Hear In This Episode:
- Why the first 30 years of coaching was just the "dress rehearsal"
- How coaching is uniquely positioned to impact social change
- The importance of seeing coaching beyond the 1:1 session
- What it means to move from profession to movement
- A call to scale your vision and connect your inner purpose with outer impact
🗣 A Quote to Remember:
"We are not just practitioners—we are stewards of potential. We are not just business owners—we are agents of transformation. The first 30 years were practice. Now it’s opening night." — Amy Ruppert Donovan
👉 Whether you're a new coach or a seasoned MCC, this episode will challenge and uplift you. Be prepared to think bigger, go deeper, and rise to your full potential as a coach in service of something greater.
🔗 Read Amy's Blog Post: In Service of Something Greater
📢 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share with fellow coaches and changemakers. The world is watching—not to see our performance but to feel our presence.
#PRIMESPACE #CoachingPodcast #AmyRuppertDonovan #EliasScultori #ICF30Years #InServiceOfSomethingGreater #CoachingMovement #TransformationalCoaching #CoachForChange
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Amy and Her Coaching Blog
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Scultori.
00:00:13
Speaker
So coaches, I have a surprise for you today because a long time coming here, we have been waiting for my friend Amy to join me in these episodes of Prime Space.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, Amy.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm back.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hi, Elias.
00:00:33
Speaker
We missed you.
00:00:35
Speaker
I know.
00:00:35
Speaker
And I've missed doing this as well.
00:00:38
Speaker
But I'm back and I'm really excited about today.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yes, I'm excited too, because you wrote a stellar blog post.
00:00:50
Speaker
And I remember when a couple of weeks ago, when I was reading the blog post and I finished the blog post and I was like, wow, this is the Amy that I know.
00:00:59
Speaker
This is the heart that I know that you have, the commitment that you have to this profession.
00:01:08
Speaker
and the passion that you have for this profession.
00:01:10
Speaker
And it's all there in that blog
The Passion and Potential in Coaching
00:01:12
Speaker
post.
00:01:12
Speaker
For those of you who are listening, the blog post is in our Prime Edge blog post at our primecoachingacademy.com website.
00:01:22
Speaker
So please go and read the blog post.
00:01:24
Speaker
It's the latest one.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's called In Service of Something Greater.
00:01:30
Speaker
And Amy, wow.
00:01:33
Speaker
I just have to say wow.
00:01:35
Speaker
And thank you for writing that blog post.
00:01:39
Speaker
Well, I'd say you're welcome, Ilias.
00:01:43
Speaker
However, that just kind of came through me.
00:01:48
Speaker
And I'm going to say this at this point.
00:01:50
Speaker
I'm speaking on behalf of a lot of other coaches here.
00:01:53
Speaker
This is not just my voice.
00:01:55
Speaker
This is honestly what I see in the heart of just about every coach I've met.
00:02:01
Speaker
Excuse me, I'm choking here.
00:02:03
Speaker
Sorry.
00:02:06
Speaker
I'm getting choked up even just talking about it.
00:02:08
Speaker
So
00:02:09
Speaker
I know.
00:02:10
Speaker
And that shows, you know, your passion, our passion for this, for the concept, for the core, for the purpose, for the proposition of coaching.
00:02:20
Speaker
Coaching is not just skills, right?
00:02:23
Speaker
There is, we go beyond there and you are sharing exactly about this.
00:02:28
Speaker
So let's dive in.
00:02:30
Speaker
You know, you start the
00:02:32
Speaker
this blog post saying that the first 30 years is a dress rehearsal.
00:02:41
Speaker
So what do you mean by that?
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, in the 30 years that coaching has been considered, you know, has been formulating as a profession, I should say.
00:02:54
Speaker
I see it as a dress rehearsal now.
00:02:57
Speaker
I didn't 30 years ago, right?
00:02:59
Speaker
What I saw was, holy cow, this stuff's powerful.
00:03:03
Speaker
This could change the world, but oh, right?
00:03:08
Speaker
And at that time, we were just trying to explain what coaching was to people and just praying that they would get it on some level and not keep equating it to sports coaches.
00:03:18
Speaker
So we dared to think that in the very beginning.
00:03:23
Speaker
because we saw how powerful this could be.
00:03:26
Speaker
And it was barely formed.
00:03:28
Speaker
You know, there were no, there was no ICF.
00:03:31
Speaker
There were no core competencies.
00:03:32
Speaker
There was no understanding, a universal understanding of coaching or definition of coaching.
00:03:37
Speaker
There was no regulatory boards.
00:03:39
Speaker
There was no code of ethics there.
00:03:41
Speaker
There was nothing, just an idea.
00:03:43
Speaker
And a group of people who came together who said, we can do this differently.
00:03:48
Speaker
We can behave with one another in a different way to help lift one another up.
00:03:54
Speaker
and to live in that space.
00:03:57
Speaker
And here we
Growth of Coaching Industry and Its Global Influence
00:03:58
Speaker
are.
00:03:58
Speaker
And here we are now with all of these systems in place that bring together tens of thousands of coaches in over 140 countries all the way around the globe.
00:04:13
Speaker
And it's become something that is just amazing to me.
00:04:18
Speaker
And so I, you know, with International Coaching Week coming up and this being the 30th year anniversary of the ICF, and I stepped back and I said, well, what have we been doing for the past 30 years?
00:04:30
Speaker
And it dawned on me, in context of looking at where our world is today, this was just a dress rehearsal.
00:04:38
Speaker
The real work starts now.
00:04:41
Speaker
Wow, I so appreciate that.
00:04:44
Speaker
And look, it's a way for us to look back at these 30 years of International Coaching Federation.
00:04:50
Speaker
You know, the ICF is celebrating 30 years now and realizing the tremendous work that the ICF has done in the standardization, in putting the pieces together, in putting the pillars for our profession to be a solid profession.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I have to say, I'm always amazed.
00:05:10
Speaker
That from nothing, as you said, not even a code of ethics, nothing, not even a definition of what coaching is.
00:05:18
Speaker
And now having 60,000 people, members of the ICF coaching being what is estimated to be a $15 billion industry.
00:05:31
Speaker
How amazing has been this transformation and the growth of this profession.
00:05:36
Speaker
And I always say, like, if it happened this fast and this much, there must be something here.
00:05:42
Speaker
There must be something that people really capture there.
00:05:45
Speaker
The other thing that you talk about in this blog post is this idea of scaling or looking at coaching beyond the one-on-one sessions.
00:05:57
Speaker
What do you mean by that?
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:58
Speaker
So, you know, it's really easy for all of us to get mired down and servicing our clients, right?
00:06:07
Speaker
That's always first and foremost, we want to service our clients, right?
00:06:11
Speaker
But building our practices, marketing, all the things that keep us busy, busy, busy in what we do, but also keep us short-sighted in the power of what we do.
00:06:23
Speaker
And I think that we have to start looking at this in a collective way.
00:06:28
Speaker
What is our collective power?
00:06:31
Speaker
It goes well beyond one-to-one coaching sessions or even now team coaching.
00:06:36
Speaker
It even goes beyond teams, right?
00:06:38
Speaker
It goes to a much larger scale.
00:06:41
Speaker
Coaching is one of the few things, you know, we look at
00:06:45
Speaker
social injustice.
00:06:46
Speaker
We look at the volatility of our world now and our politics and that there's so many challenges on so many levels in our world today.
00:06:58
Speaker
And coaching is one of the few things that can span across all of those things and touch all of those things in a profound way if we just have the vision to think bigger about how coaching can be applied.
00:07:15
Speaker
And so it's kind of a call to think beyond the 60-minute session or 45-minute session one-to-one you have with your clients.
00:07:25
Speaker
or building your practice, or how am I gonna make money doing this?
00:07:29
Speaker
I've told coaches I've taught over the years, I would have figured out a way to support my coaching habit no matter what.
00:07:36
Speaker
Like I would have had, and I did, I rode two horses for several years doing my other business and building this business, but I would have done coaching no matter what.
00:07:47
Speaker
Because I just felt it in my bones that this was going to do something someday.
00:07:54
Speaker
And that day is here now.
00:07:57
Speaker
This is so fundamental
Coaching's Role in Global Challenges and Human Potential
00:07:59
Speaker
to me.
00:07:59
Speaker
And this is one of the reasons that I say that coaching is not just something that we do.
00:08:05
Speaker
Coaching is who we are.
00:08:08
Speaker
And oftentimes when we say this, there are other people that say, well, I can't be following the core competencies in every single conversation that I have.
00:08:19
Speaker
I can't be establishing a session agreement with my partner and my friends in every conversation.
00:08:26
Speaker
course not.
00:08:27
Speaker
That's not what we are talking about.
00:08:29
Speaker
The concept here is the premise of coaching, the proposition of coaching, the idea that coaching, you know, this concept of the person in front of us is resourceful, is capable, is whole.
00:08:43
Speaker
There is nothing to fix.
00:08:45
Speaker
These types of concepts are not something that we can just turn it on or off when we are in front of our clients.
00:08:52
Speaker
It's something that we live by.
00:08:54
Speaker
And if we are able to
00:08:57
Speaker
If we truly believe in this core proposition of coaching that every human being is equal and every human being is capable and every human being is resourceful, there is beauty in every single person, not because I have more degrees or experience, regardless of that, regardless of my position, every single person is equal.
00:09:20
Speaker
If we abide by that, this is of tremendous importance.
00:09:25
Speaker
power and of possibility of transformation to the world.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I truly believe coaching can heal the world.
00:09:34
Speaker
I truly believe that.
00:09:37
Speaker
When it will happen, I don't know.
00:09:39
Speaker
It depends how much vision each and every one of us have for this.
00:09:46
Speaker
And I'm just going to challenge everybody listening to this.
00:09:50
Speaker
Where does your vision end?
00:09:52
Speaker
Is it with a full practice?
00:09:55
Speaker
Or does it heal the world?
00:09:59
Speaker
You can think as big as you want with this because I truly believe that coaching can change things in a positive direction so that we can move forward as a human species.
00:10:13
Speaker
And it's one of the very few things that can touch so many things, so many people, communities, organizations, societal constructs.
00:10:23
Speaker
There's so many things that coaching can inform.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yes, there's other things out there too.
00:10:29
Speaker
And let's work with them too.
00:10:30
Speaker
Let's all join our hands together.
00:10:33
Speaker
There's a lot of wringing of hands that goes on and a lot of gloom and doom.
00:10:37
Speaker
I get a lot of emails and sharing Insta reels and things like that of some really negative stuff.
00:10:46
Speaker
And yeah, there's negative things going on in the world.
00:10:49
Speaker
But we as coaches hold a crown jewel in our hands to change those things.
00:10:56
Speaker
And the wringing of hands is usually, what can I do?
00:10:58
Speaker
What can I do to change things, to make things better?
00:11:01
Speaker
Stop wringing your hands and get the hell out there and do what you do, no matter where you are or no matter who you're with.
00:11:10
Speaker
And think big.
00:11:11
Speaker
Think big.
00:11:12
Speaker
You don't have to go out and do the things, but just join a collective thought that we're all in this together trying to make a better world through coaching.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:23
Speaker
And, you know, you mentioned this in the blog, you know, really thinking beyond profession, from profession to movement.
00:11:33
Speaker
And if we pay attention, that's the invitation.
00:11:37
Speaker
I was just talking with someone that is asking me to be his mentor coach.
00:11:42
Speaker
And we were talking about the checking of the boxes.
00:11:46
Speaker
And we were both agreeing that...
00:11:50
Speaker
We want to, in the mental coaching process, we want to look beyond the boxes.
00:11:56
Speaker
We want to look, you know, if the ICF came up with these markers and these concepts, there must be a reason behind them.
00:12:06
Speaker
What is that reason behind?
00:12:07
Speaker
When we ask ourselves to listen deeply, to give our presence to the other individual,
00:12:16
Speaker
To honor this individual for who they are.
00:12:19
Speaker
The power of these concepts is way beyond that moment of coaching.
00:12:24
Speaker
The power of that concept, if we bring this to our day-to-day lives and we treat every single person in front of us in that way, it's truly a movement to transform the world.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:40
Speaker
And we have the infrastructure in place.
00:12:42
Speaker
This is the beauty of this, right?
00:12:45
Speaker
We have the infrastructure in place.
00:12:46
Speaker
And let me add here, you know, when I said I speak for many other coaches, there are coaches who have put a good part of their lives and careers into volunteer hours to make this stuff happen.
00:13:01
Speaker
There's a fuel behind this of belief that can become seismic if we allow it to.
00:13:09
Speaker
But we have to all come together and begin thinking larger than ourselves.
00:13:14
Speaker
And I want to say also that this is not, you know, I don't see this as like, oh, my gosh.
00:13:19
Speaker
So now we are going to go outside and we are going to, you know, talk about this and the picket fences.
00:13:26
Speaker
And, you know, it to me is more like.
00:13:30
Speaker
If we live this, if we believe in this, it's almost inevitable because it will naturally show up in every way, in every person, in every moment that we show up for our clients, for our friends, for our communities.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's truly a way of being here.
Coaching as a Movement for Societal Transformation
00:13:53
Speaker
One thing that I would love for you to talk about here is you say connecting the dots between the inner change and the outer change.
00:14:07
Speaker
What do you mean by that?
00:14:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:10
Speaker
It's really to move from just being focused on your own little world and become more focused on this idea of a movement that we can do bigger work.
00:14:23
Speaker
Listen, this doesn't mean to stop marketing your practice, collecting fees, making a living.
00:14:29
Speaker
This doesn't mean that at all.
00:14:32
Speaker
But it's a call to connect the dots between that work to the greater work.
00:14:39
Speaker
to begin to connect the dots that, oh yes, I can take this to a much broader scale.
00:14:45
Speaker
And I can scale this with the help of all the other thousands of coaches around the world.
00:14:51
Speaker
We can scale this.
00:14:53
Speaker
And so it's to stop thinking about your own building and development and start thinking broader into the broader possibilities of this.
00:15:07
Speaker
And I would say the broader meaning of what we are talking about, the broader meaning of these skills.
00:15:14
Speaker
What does it mean to listen?
00:15:16
Speaker
What does it mean to be present?
00:15:19
Speaker
And how much do we believe in that, that I'm not just being present because the ICF told me so?
00:15:26
Speaker
but because I truly understand the power of presence towards this individual, of gifting the other individual to be present to them.
00:15:36
Speaker
And also for me to be present to them, I need to be present to myself.
00:15:40
Speaker
If we start doing this, it is a tremendous force here.
00:15:47
Speaker
You say that it is a bigger yes.
00:15:51
Speaker
What do you mean by that?
00:15:53
Speaker
So I have a T-shirt and it's a kind of a summation of a larger quote by Joseph Campbell.
00:16:00
Speaker
And now I can't remember the quote, but my T-shirt says, just say yes to the whole catastrophe.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I had that made because to me, that reminds me that I always want to be stepping into the bigger yes, the thing that's beyond me that impacts a broader field.
00:16:20
Speaker
Right.
00:16:20
Speaker
Just say yes.
00:16:21
Speaker
And yes, it's going to be messy and it's going to I'm going to have to struggle with my internal stuff and get over my stuff to be able to go out there with with just mission in mind.
00:16:35
Speaker
Right.
00:16:36
Speaker
The mission that we possess something tremendously powerful that we can go out in the world and touch people person by person, group by group, community by community.
00:16:50
Speaker
And to always look for those opportunities to bring that in.
00:16:56
Speaker
And it can just be a one-on-one conversation with somebody you have after a class or something, or in the grocery store, or it can be talking to a group of 5,000 people.
00:17:08
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's that we have this larger commitment to service
00:17:16
Speaker
in mind that is the catalyst that moves us out into the world in a bigger and bigger way.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, I hope that listeners, that you are coaches listening to this podcast, that you are noticing the invitation here.
00:17:29
Speaker
The invitation that Amy is giving through this blog, and I'm agreeing with her 100%, is for us to notice that
00:17:39
Speaker
Pay attention because the proposition of coaching, what is embedded in all of these skills that we keep talking about during coach training, mentoring, certification, all of this, the skills that are involved here, if we pay close attention to them,
00:17:59
Speaker
They are much more than just that moment of coaching one-on-one.
00:18:03
Speaker
There is a richness.
00:18:04
Speaker
There is a humanity.
00:18:06
Speaker
There is an energy in these concepts that can truly be transformative to us individually, can be transformative to our clients, and can truly be transformative to the world at large.
00:18:18
Speaker
I'm going to end with a question.
00:18:21
Speaker
Just reading the conclusion of your article, and I hope that everybody is going to go and read the full article.
Call to Action for Coaches' Greater Purpose
00:18:30
Speaker
Your words at the end are so powerful that I thought it would be important for me to put this here, register it in this episode of Prime Space.
00:18:39
Speaker
So here is what Amy says at the end of the blog post.
00:18:44
Speaker
So let's remember who we are.
00:18:48
Speaker
We are not just practitioners.
00:18:51
Speaker
We are stewards of potential.
00:18:54
Speaker
We are not just business owners.
00:18:57
Speaker
We are agents of transformation.
00:19:01
Speaker
We are not just listeners.
00:19:03
Speaker
We are builders of a more conscious world.
00:19:07
Speaker
The first 30 years were practice.
00:19:11
Speaker
Now it's opening night, my fellow coaches.
00:19:14
Speaker
The world is watching.
00:19:17
Speaker
Not to see our performance.
00:19:20
Speaker
but to feel our presence.
00:19:23
Speaker
Let's rise together in service of something greater.
00:19:28
Speaker
Well, Amy, thank you so much for this post and thank you so much for your passion and thank you so much for what you are all about as a coach and it is a joy to partner with you.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:19:42
Speaker
Thank you, Elias.
00:19:43
Speaker
And may I add, this is just the beginning of this conversation.
00:19:47
Speaker
We will be continuing it.
00:19:50
Speaker
100%.
00:19:50
Speaker
Everyone, thank you so much for listening.
00:19:53
Speaker
I hope that you are inspired to go out to the world and start working with your clients and start paying attention to these points.
00:20:01
Speaker
Please don't forget to subscribe and share these episodes with other coaches.
00:20:08
Speaker
And I will talk to you next time.