Where coaching meets behavioral science and organizational change.
I’m taking two career-advancing courses right now: one to become a master coach, the other in designing behavioral science interventions.
It’s funny how these two schools of thought, both about changing human behavior, rarely speak the same language.
Behavioral science talks about context a lot: the pressures and environments shaping our choices. Yet it often forgets the human inside that system, the one who isn’t always rational but does have a lot of agency, will, and the power to choose the unlikely path, despite all the biases and the context.
Coaching, on the other hand, works deeply with that human agency — motivation, accountability, making progress despite the odds. It empowers the will to shape one’s path. But it can often overlook the other side of the equation: the powerful gravitational pull of environment, social pressures, and systemic design that often determines whether that effort can sustain itself.
And in both worlds, I find something missing often - gravity.
The weight of why.
What’s the point of all this striving, optimizing, changing? What’s the impact of the pursuit? The bigger picture, what do YOU, what does "the system" want?
Whether we’re designing an intervention or setting a personal goal, we rarely pause to ask:
What system is this goal a part of?
How does it serve the core of me, or something bigger?
What direction is it pulling my life, my team, my organization, the world? Is the why aligned with the goal and the method?
What does the system (the human with identity and values, the bigger system where societal impact lives) want to achieve in the first place?
Over the long run, what coaching and behavioral science try to achieve, makes no sense and will not make any difference unless they align themselves with a bigger WHY - whether that’s who you are and what you value (the individual agent), or where the organization or society is trying to go.
So, do the goals you set have gravity of a bigger why?
