One of my favorite classes in college was historical geology, which culminated in a three-day hiking trip in the Grand Canyon, our laboratory to study the Earth’s composition and structures, and the processes that shaped it. The canyon is one of the most complete histories of cut-away rock in the world, and as students at Northern Arizona University, it was practically in our backyard—the body sliced open like a cadaver.
On our first day of the trip, we dropped in at the canyon’s south rim. We were a gaggle of hung-over college students with backpacks, camping gear, and our newly-acquired, excessively performative, tools of the geology trade: Rite in the Rain field notebooks, rock hammers, tiny plastic bottles of hydrochloric acid (to identify carbonate minerals), and small hand lenses hanging around our necks like lifeguard whistles. I remember feeling so cool that I wasn’t just a tourist hiking a mile down from Mary Colter’s Lookout Studio in sandals and a sun hat. I belonged to this place, and we had jobs to do—we’d each been assigned a canyon rock layer to report on during our descent. As we wound our way down Bright Angel Trail’s switchbacks, through millions of years of geologic time, we’d break at the seam of each strata for a student to give their lecture. Meanwhile, the rest of us practically performed the role of field geologist: We’d stretch, take swigs of water, throw back handfuls of gorp, and draw diagrams in our notebooks. By the time we’d reached the Redwall Limestone—my layer, and my signature limestone ever since—a ragtag assortment of other hikers had glommed on, taking advantage of the chance to learn. Our group had practically doubled in size. I might have even fielded questions from German tourists.
I wound up studying geology by accident, or you could say fate. After suffering through weather and atmospheric science with every communications major who wanted a job in television, I dreaded yet another general education science course. Little did I know how intriguing geology would turn out to be! And I was good at it too—like good. I was among the handful of students professors encouraged to continue on as a geology major. (I didn’t even know that was a thing that happened?!) But by this time, I was already halfway through a degree in English literature and unmotivated to start over. I did keep taking classes though, including mineralogy, tectonics, and volcanology.
Geology is a creative thinker’s science. I excelled at the fine, focused work of identifying minerals and rocks, memorizing their colors and textures, documenting their diagnostic physical properties. I also could think conceptually, big-picture, imagining what might have happened hundreds of millions of years ago to shape a basin or canyon or river bed. Plus the dense, poetic language charmed me—words like vishnu schist, mica, montmorillonite. It was as if geologists, as polymaths and detectives, culled the best words from every other domain for their own. They also seemed to embody the sensibility and soul of chefs or artists or writers. Consider this sentence from the Wikipedia page on the Grand Canyon’s geology: “The exposed surface of Redwall gets its characteristic color from rainwater dripping from the iron-rich redbeds of the Supai and Hermit shale that lie above.” Gah. That’s a muscular sentence: one that could whip a vote. Or tell me it doesn’t read like a fashion critic’s write-up of Hermés autumn-winter 2023 runway show. It was really a very silly field, and I fell in love. Only in more advanced classes did I find myself outpaced by those with a greater aptitude for chemistry and physics, so I convinced myself that I’d made the right choice not to pursue geology as a career.
Sometimes in life, themes come back around. During the pandemic—when we were all trapped at home and our opportunities for novel human contact were mostly online—I studied organizational and relationship systems coaching, or ORSC, through CRR Global. I’d noticed, as a coach to individuals, that I missed thinking about systems and the larger network of the whole. Metaphorically speaking, if coaching individuals was like the intimate work of mineralogy, small and granular, then team and systems coaching was like geomorphology, or the study of landforms and processes that have shaped the earth’s surface—vast and sweeping. A mineralogist relies on tools like microscopes, magnets, and hardness testing kits. A geomorphologist uses topographic maps, drones, and weather stations. A mineralogist sharpens their focus; a geomorphologist softens their gaze.
One of the ORSC tools, I’d come to discover, draws on the idea that the less visible parts of a system can be mapped like the Grand Canyon’s strata. Whereas a consultant might consider financials, market research, organizational charts, customer data, and the like to begin their analysis, a systems coach will direct attention to what’s underneath the surface for the rest of the story. For example, a systems coach might point the team toward, and provide structure to investigate, the chemistry of an entity’s people and their relationships, or the lingering impact of those who once occupied roles, or forces of erosion that might be relational, cultural, or situational, or tectonic shifts that cause large-scale disruption, reordering everything. This information is often subjective and filled with gaps and uncertainties. Thus, a systems coach helps map a story that may be more insightful, truthful, or useful to move forward. The process is not dissimilar to the way my geology professor led 23 undergraduates into the Grand Canyon, each to report on a layer of rock, each to learn from the other, all of us piecing together a narrative of the whole.
Somehow, I’ve managed to hang onto my geology lab books after all this time. It’s incredible to see that I once could distinguish, say, basalt from diorite from rhyolite based on texture (phaneritic or aphanitic) and composition (mafic, intermediate, or felsic.) It goes on and on, my technical expertise, the worksheets and practicals, handwritten notes and calculations—knowledge I’ve since forgotten. It’s as if there once was an ancient sea that receded from my mind, leaving only a fossil record as evidence of living relatives.
What I like about historical geology as a mental model for systems coaching is that both fields are striving to be objective. No one harbors a superimposed narrative of the way the Earth should have evolved 200 million years ago. Faults are breaks or ruptures in rock, but we don’t judge them. Metamorphosis is a process of transformation in conditions of high heat, or high pressure, but it’s not happening for a sediment’s own good. An unconformity, a gap in the geologic record, is a curiosity—not incompetence or failure.
Drawing parallels between coaching and geology led me to wonder, what makes someone a great geologist? My search query returned articles from LinkedIn, posts on Reddit, and insight from career websites that listed everything from personality traits—investigative, realistic, ability to imagine and synthesize—to characteristics like physical stamina and math skills. Beer and whiskey preferences factored in too, and so did having strong opinions on hiking boots, Subarus, and water sandals.
But historical geology also draws on the sensibilities of historians, so what are they like? You’ll be disappointed to learn I found nothing on their footwear. However, eleven years ago, a poster to Reddit, who was considering studying history as an undergraduate, received so much wisdom and sound advice from fellow historians: Never assume what evidence is going to tell you. Be aware of your biases. Respect disciplines outside of your own. For every page that you could fill with what you know, remember that volumes could be filled with what you don’t.