Daring to let people live their potential

A couple of days ago, the CEO of a business association in Sweden, talked in an op-ed about how he thinks that people shouldn't think they could get their dream-job and how all unemployed should be forced to work with what and where, the businesses like them to. I countered that with a reply, that the evening news paper refused, so I share it here in English instead.

When I did research for my edited thesis for my Master's degree in Working life science this spring, I found that Sweden has the second highest unemployment rate in the EU, and almost twice as high as the United States. I think that this is due to our culture, where the Jante-law (a sociological phenomena and belief that nobody should assert themselves and think of themselves as capable of great things) still rules, especially when it comes to looking down on others and not allowing someone else assert him or herself.

This can all be curbed with professional life coaching based on the Co-Active coaching model, which aims to empower each client to make more educated decisions and deliberate choices that enables them to fulfill their goals, including getting their dream-job or work to fulfil their dreams pastime. Getting one's dream-job, means to be able to self-actualize, and a self-actualized person becomes more motivated and more happy, as well as performing better (ie less depressed and burned out when also learning to use compassion rather than empathy). All based on a positive outlook on humans. Why would this be bad for Sweden?

Here, authorities govern citizens with a negative outlook on humans, where any initiative on one's own is seen as suspicious and undesired, since said authorities (especially social workers) seek to control and dominate the citizens' choices. I have of course, experienced this myself.

In 2003, I came up with a plan to incorporate career coaching for university students at the Student center where I was studying in Malmö, to make competence inventories and increase employability. This was turned down and I was told that only academic advisors should be doing that (who doesn't know how to coach, but just instruct and guide someone towards a profession, usually when students begin their studies), but nonetheless the Swedish state job agency Arbetsförmedlingen, adopted the plan and sought contractors to deliver a job coaching program for unemployed that they get paid for by the Swedish state. It's a lucrative business that as many as 650 private contractors make money on, now about 250, including some without any education for this purpose it seems.

Malmö University created a special course as a continue of Interview technique for coaching and mentoring, that I attended and passed in 2003-04, whereupon I started working in my own business with coaching. But only for a couple of weeks (!!!) before someone put me in a foreclosure, still on studentloan. And since then, I haven't been able to land any paying employment or assignment in any field in Sweden (apart from a couple of dance gigs and a column 2005-07), less as a professional coach, even though it was my idea from the beginning. And thus the Swedish state can't get their student loan of more than a million SEK paid back from me either, so why don't they want that?

8 of 10, got a new job or began studying, when I coached them. What does that result say about my ability to coach?

I believe, when everyone is allowed to work with their dream-job, the whole society thrives.