Caroline Adams Miller, perhaps the most striking member of the first MAPP class – six feet tall, muscular, and not easily intimidated – agreed with me. “I’m a professional coach, Marty, and I’m proud of being a coach. One thing I hate, however, is that we get no respect. We are practically laughed out of some professional meetings. I am on a hunt to bring more respectability to coaching, and you have given me just the ammunition I need.”
Caroline lived up to her aim. In the years since her MAPP degree she added a major missing piece to the world of coaching. MAPP introduced her to goal setting theory, which had never been part of any coach-training program that she had heard of. In her capstone project, she linked goal setting theory to happiness research and to techniques of coaching. She then published Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide, the first book in the self-help section of any bookstore that discusses research-based goal setting for coaches as well as for the general public. She now speaks to standing-room-only audiences, and her book is used in study groups around the world.
Of her professional transformation, Caroline says, “MAPP turned my job into a calling, and gave me the ability to help others pursue meaningful goals and understand their roles in their own daily happiness. I feel like I’m making a large difference in ways I’d never felt before, and I wake up thinking I’m the luckiest professional on the face of the earth.”
(Pages 70-71)