The Interview: J. Victor McGuire
Can coaching and coach training be made more accessible to BIPOC leaders? McGuire thinks so. That's his goal.
Victor McGuire is the founder and executive director of Coaching for Everyone, a nonprofit that provides coaching and access to coach training to leaders who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC). He’s also president of Velocity Leadership Consulting. Connect with Victor on his LinkedIn. — Steph
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a lifelong educator and my life has been built on experiences. I coach, write, and create initiatives. In my mid-20s I traveled internationally with Up With People, which is like The Peace Corps but with music, and later I was a part of an Up With People alumni cast out of Knoxville, Tenn. When I jumped back into the classroom, I created an after-school program for middle-school kids called Spice of Life, founded on a curriculum of introspection and service learning. As Spice of Life gained some notariety, I received a grant to train other educators on the curriculum. We wrote and produced a play called No Negatives, and I ran a summer camp called Spice Camp, too. I earned my doctorate from Colorado State University in curriculum design and instruction, then took my first professorship at Portland State University. I was a Fullbright Scholar in South Africa. I wrote a children’s book and spent a year reading to kids.
Eventually one of my colleagues said, “you should be a coach,” and after two coaching certifications, I began coaching through my consulting company. I also started asking, “What if black and brown people had access to coaching? What if they had the opportunity to become coaches themselves?” People who identify as BIPOC don’t often have the time or money to become certified coaches without help, so I founded Coaching for Everyone as a nonprofit.
What is your training and certification as a coach?
I’m certified through the Co-Active Training Institute and through The Marcus Buckingham Company. Buckingham worked for The Gallop Organization before founding his own company. He also co-authored First, Break All The Rules, and Oprah was a fan—she brought him on her show several times.
Tell us more about your previous career as an educator—what was it like to pivot to coaching?
If you look at education as creating opportunity and activating potential—well, that’s the essence of coaching, too. I taught social studies, speech, and theater to middle- and high-school students. If I was teaching on the War of 1812, I wanted students to ask, “Wait—what happened in 1811?” Or “What happened in the six months leading up to the Civil Rights Movement?” Yes, let’s talk about that. What do you think was going on? As a college professor, I was helping education majors see their potential as pre-service teachers, or what it took for them to become effective classroom teachers. And as a coach, I’m helping clients see their potential regardless of what they want for themselves. But I’m allowing them to discover the answers rather than telling them what to do.
Did you have to break yourself of the habit of “teaching” to be a coach?
That’s a great question, but no. I used to tell students at all levels, “You’re used to thinking, what does my professor want from me?” The typical model is that I give you material, you spend your time trying to figure out what I want you to learn, and then I test you on it. But within the first week of my classes, I would put the question on the table, “what do you want?” I would tell students that they were going to get really frustrated if they were simply waiting for me to give them the answers, but we could discover the answers together. We didn’t even use the word “test.” We called them “writing experiences.” So the transition into coaching? Smooth as silk.
Did you have an “a-ha” moment when you realized the power of the coaching model for yourself?
The “a-ha” moment was the discovery that coaching was very similar to what I’d been doing as an educator. I remember reading the CTI text book before I started my training and thinking, these are theater people. I remember telling my wife, “I think these are theater people!” They were speaking my language, and it was a confirmation of yeah, yeah. Like you meet a new friend and realize, oh, we can hang together.
What are you like as a coach?
I would like to think I’m empathetic. I want to be in the space of moving forward, and for my clients to be in the space of moving forward. (It’s not therapy, so if we’re looking back, we’re not moving forward.) I’ve got a little entrepreneurial bent to me, and that has proven to be useful for my clients, too. I’m the kind of coach that will activate the potential within, and that makes me feel strong in life.
Tell me more about the nonprofit you founded, Coaching for Everyone.
We’ve done a lot with a little in three years, and we have really wonderful volunteers. We’ve coached more than 150 individuals and trained 200 people who have transitioned into the coaching profession. Here’s where we are now: We are in search of organizational partners to help further CFE’s mission. They can support us in a variety of ways—from helping to publish our magazine, or produce a conference, or assist with additional certification programs, etc. Ideally, this would be five to seven organizations lending the people-power to run these initiatives in collaboration with us. They loan their capacity for three years, continue to build the framework, and then hand the initiative over to another organization. This will be called “Coaching for Everyone’s-Collaborative Coalition Project.”
What do you wish everyone knew about coaching?
I wish they knew the value and potential of what coaching can bring to their respective tables. The simplicity of why the coach-model has exploded—if you’re going to learn tennis, you’ve got a coach. If you’re going to cooking school, you’ve got a coach. If you’re going to play piano, you’ve got a coach. So why wouldn’t you have one if you were looking to move your life or business forward? Why wouldn’t you have that? It requires individuals do a little investigation into what coaching is and how it adds value: We’re not a highly-regulated industry, so you’re going to have to find the individual who has done their work, too—are they certified? How many certified hours of coaching do they have? But you do your research before buying a car, and you check the eggs in the carton before you put them in your cart. You’re already investigative.
What is your vision for the coaching industry?
One, that there is more diversity within the field. Two, that coaching and coach training are more accessible. As a nonprofit, I want to make a difference, so maybe it’s not $15,000 to get certified—maybe it’s $3,000 or $5,000. Is that possible? I think it’s possible.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.