The 5 Wells
Professio’s approach to growing courageous influencers
The 5 Wells Coaching Framework
Two sentences capture the cause that gave birth to Professio and our 5 Wells Coaching Framework:
1. Growing Courageous Influencers
2. Re-humanising Life and Leadership
The World We Live In
Life and leadership are increasingly complex. The speed and depth of change are such that many of the cultural norms and social conventions that were once believed solid ground are proving to be a swamp, even quicksand.
Our world is being reshaped. Technology, globalisation, the exponential increase in knowledge, the secularisation of society, increasing intergenerational conflict, and the rise of multi-culturalism and religious pluralism are significant forces impacting leadership.
Those we lead carry these and other tensions in their everyday lives and are increasingly unwilling to leave these tensions outside their workplace.
Growing Courageous Influencers
We influencers carry these same tensions but for us it’s complicated further in that we have to lead others, and ourselves, in the midst of this reshaping.
Courageous leaders enter an ongoing, unfolding, dynamic conversation that’s grounded in the question of what it mean to be human. The result is that everything is challenged, reframed, re-meaned and reworked.
Courageous influencers take on a life long journey of active co-learning. They know the leading well is not achieved in isolation but in journeying with others who walk a similar path
Re-humanising Life and Leadership
A new re-humanising of leadership is required. A courageous leadership is prepared to think very differently and live outside the current box. It is prepared to go deep and wide in exploring what leadership means in its truest sense.
Professio sees beyond the shrunken vision of people as mere ‘resources’ & ‘producers’, of leadership as ultimately about the ‘achievement of goals,’ and of business success defined solely as ‘profit maximisation’. It provides a framework designed to tap humanity’s hardwiring toward flourishing, including meaning-making, community belonging, and engagement in meaningful as well as profitable work.
Professio’s 5 Wells
Professio’s 5 Wells coaching framework is not a linear but a mosaic process. It lives in the tension between knowing and unknowing, between listening and speaking, and between communication and conversation. A word must come for something to change, but a word told is less powerful than a word discovered.
Professio’s 5 Wells helps influencers live from a knowing that is deeper than intellect, a gut, instinctive knowing that yields conviction, motivation and courage.
1. Naming Well
‘Living and Working Towards Who and Why You Are’
Naming Well is about identity and language. Identity because that is the heart of who we are. Language because our words either hold us back or help us move forward. What we think about ourselves and life has a way of becoming our reality. Naming Well is about maturity in that we identify weak and poor Namings, avoid playing comparison-itis, and move forward into truer and stronger Namings. Naming Well is about you and your organisation living and working true to who and why you are.
2. Living Well
‘Holding To What’s Important, Not Falling Victim To Cultural Ideals and Social Conventions’
Living Well, in all its diversity, remains the primary aim of humankind, whether that is as individuals, organisations or societies as a whole. Living well is achieved together. We can’t don’t live well on our own.
Living Well speaks of our ensuring that our goals and methods remain true to both the needs of the now and the goals of the not yet. It speaks of holding true to the big picture of what’s important, not naively falling victim to the trappings of cultural ideals and social conventions.
3. Leading Well
“On behalf of another – for the benefit of another.”
To lead well is to serve well, first people and then the organizations that, at their source, exist to serve people.
To Lead Well is to hold out a cause worthy of our best, not yielding to the temptation of positional power. Leading Well enables us and the organization to live true to that cause while becoming ever more comfortable with the ambiguity and complexity of life in a world too real for ideals.
Leading Well requires character, resilience, conviction, and courage. It recognises and employs the pursuit of truth as the disrupter of convention and mediocrity, and does so while treating people with dignity, compassion, and grace.
4. Achieving Well
‘Getting Done What Needs To Be Done’
Achieving Well reflects the inherent human need for our lives, including our work, to be meaningful. When our lives are lived in service to a cause beyond ourselves, we come alive from the inside out.
It’s no coincidence that our work shapes the world. It’s also a reality that we, too, are shaped by our work.
Achieving Well involves our knowing the ‘What’ we need to achieve and ‘Why’ it’s important. It also knows the ‘Who’, the ‘When’ and the ‘How’.
Achieving Well is about getting done what needs to be done.
5. Finishing Well
‘Living True To The Future Realities So As to Arrive With Gratefulness, Not Crippling Regret’
Finishing Well is acknowledging that life is about starts and finishes. Some appear somewhat mundane; many hold significance and offer direction. A wise person is attentive to this and acts accordingly.
Further there is one ultimate finish line common to us all. It’s one that our society seeks to snub. It’s one we would be wise to remember: Death.
Finishing Well is about living honestly to all future realities so as to meet them with gratefulness and without significant regret.