Wave functions
Do you know what this is?
It's a wave. A wave is a construct used in physics to represent the flow of energy. If you were to look closely at a violin string, you would see it taking up this kind of shape when vibrating at a certain frequency - producing a tone that we can hear. So a wave is a physical position of a medium at a moment in time. The violin string appears in that position at a single instant in time, but a microsecond later it will be somewhere else. We know that the string's position is limited by it's flexibility, so at any moment in time we can't predict exactly where the string will be, we can only know the area that it will be in, and that area is a wave function.
For years, physicists talked about elementary particles like protons, neutrons and electrons. They behaved like particles. You could fire one electron at a phosphor screen and see a brief flash of light. But then, in other experiements, they behaved like waves. So are they particles or waves?
Advances in our ability to observe on a smaller scale show that the assertion that an electron is a particle is true, or false, and saying that it is a wave is also true and false. A bit like saying that an elephant is big or small. Both true, depending on whether you're an ant or a blue whale.
Quantum physics sees an electron as a probablity cloud, meaning that it's component parts are somewhere within a space defined by its physical properties, but we can't say where they are exactly at a given moment in time. So an electron has a wave function. If we look at its wave function, we could treat it like a particle. If we want to treat it like a wave, we could pick an arbitrary path through the space that it occupies.
Why am I telling you this? Because on leaving my meeting with Kevin yesterday I had a flash of inspiration. All the coach schools that tell you that you have to stick to their proven method, all the people that say you have to stick to the agenda, that you have to use GROW, or GONAD, or whatever their model is, are talking about wave functions.
I have always said that we can guarantee the end point or the route, not both. And in coaching, that means we can guarantee the outcome or the process, not both. I can guarantee to get the client the result they want, but I don't how I'll get there until I'm there. Or I can guarantee to use GROW, but I don't know what the result of that will be.
If you look back at the sine wave, the points where the line crosses the zero axis are the points that we can predict given the frequency of the wave. These are called nodes. But once we have left the node, we have no idea where the energy will be until it reaches the next node.
So all these people who rant on about GROW, FLANGE, co-active coaching and all that nonsense are claiming that they can predict the route the energy will take. Absolute rubbish. I always knew that - sensible people the world over always knew that - but it's only since yesterday that I could articulate why.
The funny thing is that these are the same people who jump on quantum physics as 'scientific proof' as to why sticking candles in your ears relieves your career anxiety.
So at the start of a coaching session, we are sitting at a node, a fixed reference point. The client sets the frequency and we're then off on a journey until we get to the next node and can say with certainty where we are. Coaching models, like all models, are just models - scaled down representations. Like the diagram at the top of the simple sine wave, a violin string will never actually look like that because it's a 3 dimensional physical medium, and the waves can flow any way they like. It will look like the wave function, and our brains interpolate a simple sine wave because that's what we always saw on Tomorrow's World.
We can create a probability cloud, a wave function for the coaching session, where it is more likely that we will do some things rather than others, but we can't predict exactly what will happen until it does.
So, sell people certificates based on them following a strictly dictated process, and still call that good coaching? Nonsense!
It's a wave. A wave is a construct used in physics to represent the flow of energy. If you were to look closely at a violin string, you would see it taking up this kind of shape when vibrating at a certain frequency - producing a tone that we can hear. So a wave is a physical position of a medium at a moment in time. The violin string appears in that position at a single instant in time, but a microsecond later it will be somewhere else. We know that the string's position is limited by it's flexibility, so at any moment in time we can't predict exactly where the string will be, we can only know the area that it will be in, and that area is a wave function.
For years, physicists talked about elementary particles like protons, neutrons and electrons. They behaved like particles. You could fire one electron at a phosphor screen and see a brief flash of light. But then, in other experiements, they behaved like waves. So are they particles or waves?
Advances in our ability to observe on a smaller scale show that the assertion that an electron is a particle is true, or false, and saying that it is a wave is also true and false. A bit like saying that an elephant is big or small. Both true, depending on whether you're an ant or a blue whale.
Quantum physics sees an electron as a probablity cloud, meaning that it's component parts are somewhere within a space defined by its physical properties, but we can't say where they are exactly at a given moment in time. So an electron has a wave function. If we look at its wave function, we could treat it like a particle. If we want to treat it like a wave, we could pick an arbitrary path through the space that it occupies.
Why am I telling you this? Because on leaving my meeting with Kevin yesterday I had a flash of inspiration. All the coach schools that tell you that you have to stick to their proven method, all the people that say you have to stick to the agenda, that you have to use GROW, or GONAD, or whatever their model is, are talking about wave functions.
I have always said that we can guarantee the end point or the route, not both. And in coaching, that means we can guarantee the outcome or the process, not both. I can guarantee to get the client the result they want, but I don't how I'll get there until I'm there. Or I can guarantee to use GROW, but I don't know what the result of that will be.
If you look back at the sine wave, the points where the line crosses the zero axis are the points that we can predict given the frequency of the wave. These are called nodes. But once we have left the node, we have no idea where the energy will be until it reaches the next node.
So all these people who rant on about GROW, FLANGE, co-active coaching and all that nonsense are claiming that they can predict the route the energy will take. Absolute rubbish. I always knew that - sensible people the world over always knew that - but it's only since yesterday that I could articulate why.
The funny thing is that these are the same people who jump on quantum physics as 'scientific proof' as to why sticking candles in your ears relieves your career anxiety.
So at the start of a coaching session, we are sitting at a node, a fixed reference point. The client sets the frequency and we're then off on a journey until we get to the next node and can say with certainty where we are. Coaching models, like all models, are just models - scaled down representations. Like the diagram at the top of the simple sine wave, a violin string will never actually look like that because it's a 3 dimensional physical medium, and the waves can flow any way they like. It will look like the wave function, and our brains interpolate a simple sine wave because that's what we always saw on Tomorrow's World.
We can create a probability cloud, a wave function for the coaching session, where it is more likely that we will do some things rather than others, but we can't predict exactly what will happen until it does.
So, sell people certificates based on them following a strictly dictated process, and still call that good coaching? Nonsense!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment