How illuminating?

Simon A Harling
2 min readMay 30, 2024

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In 1992, the EU issued a directive that common household goods must carry an energy label — the thinking was simple enough. If the consumer was better informed, then perhaps the choice would be made in favor of an energy-efficient make and model. The clever part was leaving the “A” rating empty, prompting manufacturers to fill that space, thereby driving further innovation in the field.

Just how illuminating is the course, event, or talk you are giving, and with the “A” slot open, what would we need to create to fill that gap? These are the questions I asked myself recently, after creating Coach Camp.

How does Coach Camp fare?

Here it is through the lens of Situation, Evaluation, Decision, and Action (SEDA):

Situation: The unconference format of Coach Camp allows participants to identify situational problems or topics they want to discuss.

Evaluation: Through open discussion sessions, participants can evaluate the situation, and share information and perspectives.

Decision: Participants can then decide on potential solutions, strategies, or action plans.
Action: The hands-on nature of Coach Camp allows for implementing and practicing what was discussed.

And through the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy:

The open discussions and knowledge sharing in Coach Camp can facilitate lower-order cognitive skills like remembering and understanding concepts. As participants examine problems/topics from multiple perspectives, they engage in analysis skills. Evaluating different solutions and best practices utilises the evaluation level of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Where does that leave us?

The critics will tell us that there is no place in Coach Education for “water cooler” conversations, and maybe they are right. The coaches on their way to being “expert coaches” will have no time to waste, they could be right too. But, there will be others who will see a learning environment as a shared endeavour, it’s about the cohort.

Coach Camp is an unconference, social learning format — a way of bringing people together to understand where they are, share what they are working on, and create new ideas. To practice the very skills, like cooperation, communication, and critical thinking that are required to shift from talking to doing.

I’m sure you are ahead of me, but here it is anyway — the intent behind the EU energy label was simple — we can do better than this.

What are you doing with the knowledge you have? Are you playing with it? I hope so.

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Simon A Harling
Simon A Harling

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