Week 18 of 36
The Faculty Identity
ICF competency anchor: Embodies a Coaching Mindset — Markers 2.1-2.6 at MCC depth · Demonstrates Ethical Practice — Marker 1.1 at MCC depth
90 min
This week
Movement III begins with a categorical shift: from being a student of the lineage to being a steward of it. Some Level 3 graduates will become faculty for future cohorts. Others will teach the program's frameworks in their own contexts. All Level 3 graduates inherit responsibility for what is being passed. This week names the faculty identity — what it is, what it asks, who it is for, who it is not for — and begins the work of forming or declining it.
Contemplative practice of the week
The Teacher's Threshold
Twenty minutes daily. Sit. Bring to mind one piece of the lineage's teaching that you have come to embody — perhaps the witness, perhaps the bestowal, perhaps the Mandala work. Sit with it. Then ask: what would it cost me to teach this? What would it require? Do I have what is being asked? The practice is not aspirational. It is honest. Master coaches who become faculty have sat with this practice many times across years. The discernment is gradual. The practice is the discernment.
Learning objectives
- Articulate what the faculty identity asks and what it does not ask.
- Discern your own readiness for the faculty identity (some are; some are not yet; some never will be).
- Recognize the difference between teaching frameworks (which all Level 3 graduates can do) and holding cohorts (which is the specific faculty role).
- Begin the apprenticeship pathway if faculty is your direction.
- Honor the path of those who choose not to become faculty as equally valid.
Session architecture
- Hour 1 — The faculty identity. Lead Instructor teaches what the faculty role is — what it asks of the practitioner, what center-of-gravity shift it requires, what additional capacities are involved.
- Hour 2 — The discernment circle. Each student names their current orientation — drawn to faculty, considering it, not for me, undecided. Cohort holds the discernment. Faculty offers reflective input only when invited.
- Hour 3 — For those drawn to faculty: a teaching on the apprenticeship pathway. The specific protocols for becoming a Level 1, Level 2, or Level 3 faculty member. Mentor-faculty relationships. The first co-teaching engagements.
- Hour 4 — For those not drawn: a teaching on lineage stewardship without faculty role — teaching frameworks within your own work, mentoring informally, contributing to research, holding the field through your client work alone. All paths are valid.
Reading
- The Transpersonal Leader — chapters on lineage stewardship and the faculty identity
- Selected reading on the dharma teacher tradition in Buddhism — Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart, selected chapters
- Selected reading on the rabbi tradition in Judaism — Abraham Joshua Heschel
- Selected reading on the master-disciple lineage in Sufism — Inayat Khan
Lineages at work
Transpersonal (anchor) — the faculty identity as lineage stewardship · Contemplative — the dharma teacher, the rabbi, the Sufi sheikh · ROUSER — the Awakened Archetype of the Sage at master integration · ICEF — measurement of the faculty's own ongoing development
Milestone
Faculty identity discernment made or initiated. One faculty conversation completed and written up. The Teacher's Threshold daily practice integrated. Personal lineage stewardship pathway articulated, whether faculty-bound or not.
Reflection prompt
Am I drawn to the faculty identity? What is the signature of my answer? What would becoming faculty ask of me that I am not ready for? What would it gift me? If I am not drawn to faculty, what is my form of lineage stewardship? Both paths are valid; what is mine?
20 of 39