EX-coachable

That’s how I’m going to describe myself to any Landmark person who knows I’m familiar with the work and thinks I’m being squirrely.

If anyone asks me the classic Landmark question, “Are you willing to be coachable?” a “yes” answer practically guarantees that I’ll be exposed once again to the relentless enrollment and registration machine.

Or else it will give my companion free rein to tell me I’m a controlling, manipulative bitch (an old Landmark friend’s exact words to me on a coaching call).

Now, I understand that being coached involves hearing things you don’t want to hear. But it’s the yelling…

…the yelling…

…the yelling I couldn’t stand, and the pointed judgments, when I was taking courses.

If I were an NCAA football player, I could deal with a yelling, judgmental coach.

If I were being absolutely belligerent and didn’t give a fuck, I would need a little private face-to-face to sort things out.

And if I were still participating in Landmark, I could take a yelling, judgmental coach better now than I did twelve years ago.

But I’m no longer participating in Landmark, and I never will again. I’m out of that conversation. I’m ex-coachable.

I can happily work with you and further any transformation we do together if we have a common interest, or you know beyond a doubt what my commitment is to my life. If you care more about my commitment to my life than your own commitment to the Landmark machine, I may accept a form of coaching. 

I don’t say that to be manipulative; I say that so I can protect myself and the people I love from manipulation.

Because I’ve seen where it can go.

But if you can’t work with me unless I submit to Landmark rhetoric, or let myself be judged a petulant, resistant “criminal” (actual word a leader used to describe a whole room of people in an LE course), or go so far as to put that name tag on again, then you obviously haven’t learned a damned thing in your courses about transformation.

Because what the hell kind of transformation do you have if you can’t work with everyday people who don’t (or won’t) wear the name tag? How are you transforming life if you only stand for people who will say “yes” to the machine? 

It’s been said that a person who resists coaching in an LE program is resisting their own life. What this syllogism reduces to is, Landmark is life.

Sorry. No, it isn’t.

Your results are never good enough.

If you participate in Landmark, the number of people you register into the Landmark Forum correlates to how well your transformation lives in the world around you, and how successful you are in any LE course.

Landmark doesn’t advertise – they rely entirely on word-of-mouth from participants. As a marketing strategy, that actually has a lot of merit. If you truly have a great product or service, it should sell itself. People will naturally want to share about it and invite other people to check it out.

The thing is, in Landmark, if you participate in any of the courses, you are expected and required to be the sales force. You can get insights and learn valuable lessons, but then you are supposed to share them all with your family and friends such that they want to register. That’s how the machine works. Every conversation where you announce that you’re letting go of your ego or forgiving someone is considered an opportunity to register someone in the Forum. And woe be to anyone who doesn’t take it.

It’s never enough just to reconcile with someone. It does no good unless that person registers for the Landmark Forum. And you will be bullied and intimidated by LE leaders and assistants until that happens.

Can you imagine if the AA did that? If, whenever you shared with someone that you were an alcoholic and committed to living a sober life, you were required to bring that person to AA and have them join? And the number of people you convinced to join was a measure of your sobriety?

I spent countless hours groveling to my family, friends and coworkers, saying that I was getting a lot of great insights and committed to leading a more powerful life because I finally realized how inauthentic I was. No one cared, responded, or understood.

But it seemed that Landmark people were listening to me – every time I groveled to one of them, they “got it.”

Not so with non-participants.

Whenever I came up empty and shared about it in an LE course, I didn’t get advice or support. Instead, I got yelled at and berated. In the Introduction Leaders Program, the leader yelled at me to sit back down because I had only shared the Forum with eight people and no one was registering. And because of that I must not have been committed to the work. She yelled at me all the way to my seat like I was a misbehaving dog.

But I was listening to my coaches! None of the coaching was working! What am I doing wrong? No one would help me.

It’s not that Landmark’s work is without value. It’s just not worth the price, in money or sanity.

I would love to see a Landmark Forum without the bullying, where all conversations about participants registering people are eliminated. It would just be about sharing new possibilities and nothing more. Reconciliation with no strings attached. No Tuesday night “graduations” where you are required to invite your friends and family to a sales pitch. I would love a Landmark Forum that lets participants decide for themselves if the program is worth sharing, because if it is, they will share it and no one would have to be pressured into it. No one would be berated for not registering someone.

I would love to see Landmark Education work on the same playing field with other self-transformation programs and philosophies in terms of marketing. Do word-of-mouth advertising the way it’s supposed to be done – freely, and from the heart. Without force, intimidation, or pressure. Have it be the icing on the cake for the marketing program, not the substance of the cake itself.

I’m willing to bet that Landmark Education would experience a spike in registrations as a result of that. But I’m not getting my hopes up.