(Last Update 12/30/25)
The Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice is an approach grounded in dialogue. This section corresponds with the shared learning movement through collective knowledge. The discussion circles around (1) the discovery, value, and application of perspective thinking. (2) In reflective conversations with others, to broaden our knowledge of human consciousness. And (3) in concert help reveal what may otherwise remain unseen
The second movement within the Cycle of Conscious Performance is Shared Learning. We’ve seen Purpose, the motion that aims consciousness, clarifying what we are trying to see. Shared Learning is the motion that expands what can be seen. It is expressed through dialogue, community of practice, and the mutual exchange of perspectives. Its function is simple: put consciousness in conditions where its assumptions can be tested, and its range of perceptions broadened.
The shared learning movement produces Perspectival Understanding: the insight into life that only arises through relationship. Alone, a person sees mainly from a limited, surface level: their history, their temperament, their current stage of development. In shared learning, they encounter how their life appears from other vantage points. Any current issues may have remained unchanged, but the field around them has changed. The Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice is the place to work on transitioning a perspective from accidental mechanical to an intentional internal environment where understanding broadens, is constantly refreshed, and refined.
The concept of social learning is ancient. The term community of practice (CoP) was formally introduced and coined by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, which describes how people learn by sharing knowledge in groups. Wenger further developed it in his 1998 book, Communities of Practice, popularizing the idea in business and education for collaborative knowledge sharing.
The Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice leans on this idea but shifts its emphasis. The primary practice within the cycle of conscious performance is not a profession or a technique; it is conscious performance itself. The shared domain is the work of becoming more coherent human beings, people whose inner and outer lives align more closely over time. Coaching shows up not primarily as a role, but as a way of relating: asking better questions, listening more deeply, and using each interaction as an opportunity to refine perception and understanding.
In this context, the way coaching functions is contained within understanding the power of shared learning; it does not mean formal sessions with a clear client–coach boundary. The relationship that supports development travels along the lines of the misunderstood hybrid coach-play perspective. First, there is a lack of knowledge that a dichotomy even exists; it is being ignored. So, the best way I know to resolve this dichotomic discord is to discuss the functions from a deeper perspective. (1) For the meaning of hybrid, I have chosen the business-busyness dichotomy of operating from two separate perspectives: a profound way or a superficial way, from which one side (conscious) helps the other side (unconscious) see aspects of experience that cannot always be seen without taking responsibility for one’s life. (2) The point to make here is that separate thinking individuals all operate consciously and unconsciously, thus as a hybrid. For both the coach and the player, coaching becomes less about technique and more about the quality of attention one brings to their lifespan conscious performance: curious, respectful, precise, and free of pressure to perform from another’s expectations.
So, what more can be said of this collaborative coaching community of practice idea? One thing is for sure: this coaching stance in our World Wide Web world becomes a shared global culture. And we are all members. And we need to learn how to meet one another, not with judgment or quick fixes, or the show-me, don’t-tell-me stance, most people surfing the web beg for. But with questions that help each person work through the specific ways to understand their conscious performance and refine their self-research. Over time, this culture of mutual coaching creates an atmosphere where it is safe to look honestly at one’s patterns, because others are doing the same. The global collaborative coaching community of practice becomes a place where people are not trying to present a superficial, polished image. Instead, they want to study the reality of existence, which moves one to actuality, and to continue working from that perspective more consciously.
The Optima Bowling stance: I research and study this for my development. Here it is, offered as a resource for your developmental work. In the Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice, that stance becomes collective. Each person’s self-research feeds the shared pool of understanding. What one person discovers about, say, how they respond to conflict, fatigue, or pressure, can be helpful to others facing similar dynamics in a different circumstance.
This multiplies the value of research. Instead of each individual reinventing the wheel in isolation, the community gradually maps recurring structures of experience. Certain patterns show up again and then again: ways people avoid discomfort, ways they confuse habit with choice, ways they collapse under certain kinds of pressure. Seeing these patterns across many lives helps each person recognize them more quickly in their own. Research and study become a shared resource, not in the sense of truths to memorize, but as a growing library of lived examples that can inform one’s own conscious performance.
In my early years, I studied J. Krishnamurti, from whom I learned many profound ideas that I hold dear. One that fits in this section is his ever-held view of negativity or negation. I’ll quote: (1) Negation can only take place when the mind sees the false. (2) The very perception of the false is the negation of the false. (3) We are talking about the negation of what is false, not being aware of what is true. And (4) order comes out of the understanding of disorder. The negation of disorder is order, not the following of a blueprint.
Clarity often begins by understanding what something is not. The Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice is not a platform for marketing, self-promotion, or branding. It is not a hierarchy of experts and followers. It is not a place for argument over doctrine or belief. It is not driven by the need to reach conclusions quickly or to agree on a single view of reality. In other words, the type of clarity being broadcast here is not a podcast, not CNN or Fox News, surely not activists or influencers in any form.
Guardrails exist because of the superficial side of living. Certain pressures can quietly distort a community of practice: image, status, or persuasion creep in, and others become less honest about their actual experience. They start to perform understanding rather than pursue it. The stance here is deliberately different. The only status that matters is the sincerity of self-research and the care with which one engages the world.
Even the most sincere communities need structure. Without some rhythm and shared practices, good intentions scatter. The Cycle of Conscious Performance provides that backbone.
This simple rhythm keeps the community grounded. It prevents conversations from drifting into abstraction or staying stuck in storytelling. Purpose anchors the dialogue. Shared learning widens it. Experience grounds it in reality. Ownership points toward integration. Over time, as one learns to internalize this rhythm, they will begin to use it spontaneously in their self-research, reflections, and interactions.
Shared learning alone is not enough. If insights gained in the global community never touch daily life, they remain speculative. That is why the Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice requires a deeper connection, experiencial understanding. The community can highlight patterns, offer perspectives, and suggest experiments, but experience must test everything. Purpose (insight) becomes real only when it affects how a person meets actual situations of work, family, health, and creative efforts. The community, then, becomes a place both to prepare and to debrief.
The Collaborative Coaching Community of Practice is an invitation, not an obligation. Some people will do most of their developmental work alone for long stretches, returning only when they need a new perspective. Others will find that regular participation is essential to their progress. The Cycle of Conscious Performance honors both patterns. Shared learning is one of the four movements. It is powerful, but it does not replace the others. In this section, one works to cultivate perspectival understanding, the insight that arises only when consciousness is placed in relationship. It is the movement that corrects blind spots and broadens perception through the study of certain published works and/or from person-to-person exchanges (analogue and digital). The invitation is simple: if you sense that your own perspective has reached its current limits, or that you keep circling the same questions without new insight, shared learning may be the next movement you need to engage.
Sharing is caring only when it actually helps someone move their development forward.