There is a common myth that when we solve our problems, we will grow. But the truth is the inverse.

The standard narrative about progress is that we identify a situational challenge, maybe a conflict, a stalled strategy, a financial plateau, and we try to fix it. The problem bothers us, and by resolving this problem, we also hope to emerge stronger and wiser on the other side.

We see this kind of growth happening in linear skill development, and we assume this happens with personal growth as well. So we treat personal growth as a happy byproduct of situational success.

But I propose that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanics of transformative change.

We do not grow as a result of solving the situational challenge. We solve the situational challenge as a result of growing.

Therefore, the mechanics of Transformative Coaching are not: “Let’s fix this situation, and hopefully, you’ll learn something about yourself along the way.”

Rather it goes, “Let’s investigate who you are as a Being, and shift how you are being, so that the solution to the situation will naturally emerge as a byproduct of that shift.”

The Level of Consciousness

This echoes the insight often attributed to Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Most “situational” approaches try to do exactly that. They attempt to rearrange the furniture within the same room. They look for a better strategy using the same thinking that created the deadlock.

But a persistent problem is rarely a strategy issue. It is an Ontological and Epistemological issue.

We can talk about “accessing a higher level of consciousness” as if it were a mystical state or a stroke of luck.

But it is also the skill of disentangling yourself from the “thinking that created the problem.” And this skill creates itself naturally when you are able to see two specific mechanisms clearly.

As I’ve observed over thousands of hours of coaching and being coached, they give us the highest leverage for transformative change:

1. Ontology is about Identity. It is Who you understand yourself to be. This identity falls into two categories: Being as a Noun vs. Being as a Verb.

• One is the simple, unchanging fact of your existence or “is-ness” beneath all roles.
• The other is the dynamic, active process of existing – of how you are showing up in the moment (e.g., “being a leader,” “being confident”).

2. Epistemology is about Perception. It is the process through which you are making sense of reality. We usually look through our perceptions to see the world. The skill here is to not just look through them but to start looking at them.

If you approach a problem with the same Identity and the same Perception that you held yesterday, the problem will remain unsolved. Or, you might force a temporary fix, but the same pattern will inevitably repeat next week, just wearing a different face, or in a different context.

Solving by Dissolving

There is no sustainable impact at the circumstance level which does not first address the state of being of the person.

Most coaching tries to churn new thinking out of the same old thinking, hoping it will generate some awareness leading to change. But this approach misunderstands awareness. It confuses becoming aware of a specific object of mind (a thought, a fear, a pattern) with becoming aware of the nature of mind itself. Seeing a ‘limiting belief’ is helpful; seeing the mechanism that creates beliefs is transformative.

This is why, in my practice, I invite the leaders I coach to stop trying to manage the problem and start examining the consciousness that perceives it as a problem.

I have found that when you shift the internal landscape (the Who), the external landscape (the What) rearranges itself.

Options that were invisible to your old identity suddenly become obvious to your new identity. Friction that seemed insurmountable to your old perception dissolves under a new way of perceiving.

Transformative coaching does not look to simply clear the hurdle in front of you.

It looks to facilitate an evolution where you become the kind of person for whom that hurdle is no longer that significant.

A new way of being and a new way of seeing result in a new way of doing things, which will result in a change in circumstances.

And so you solve problems by growing, rather than grow by solving problems. While on the surface it looks the same, understanding the causality in it gives us the leverage for exponential growth rather than linear growth.