ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how coaches might move from the strong man model of leadership to leadership that is shared, empowering, honest and responsive. It outlines a model of leadership that brings together coaches inherent need for self-assertion and self-determination with their equally strong drive for collaboration and consideration of the wellbeing of the whole. In 18th-century Europe nostalgia for the physical and moral strength that was seen to belong to natural, primitive man arose in earnest as industrialisation began to wreak its environmental and social damage. Strength is synonymous with vitality, with being itself, and thereby came to be elided with authenticity: that somehow to be strong, in a simple physical sense, with straightforward feelings in the raw and heat of the moment, was more real, more authentic than to be an intellectual, a philosopher or a parliamentarian. The Transpersonal Coaching model, in contrast, views strength as a combination of love and will.
