The Pick Me Girls of Coaching.
I’ve been thinking about this for about, well, 4 years before I felt ready to write about it. I’ve been watching and studying and working through my own feelings about the whole thing and I have something to bring here, finally.
Something Amanda Seales said one day on her instagram stuck with me. I don’t know exactly how long ago it was or what exact post it was, but it was about how she was setting a boundary with what she called the ‘Pick Me’s’ showing up in her instagram comments by calling them out ahead of time and publicly.
I didn’t even know the term, haha. But I knew what she meant. Honestly I feel like I live under a rock most of the time when it comes to popular culture so I’m a little slower on the uptake. I’ve gotten better and faster and am paying more attention, which I think is good for me.
In her context she was referring to women who had been coming out against Megan Thee Stallion during her terrible ordeal of being shot and then not believed. Women were coming out by the droves to criticize Megan to look good to the men who were also criticizing Megan. And Amanda wasn’t having it.
Anyway, this post isn’t about that situation in specific.
But it IS about women who throw other women under the bus to look more desirable. And in this case, in this post, it’s about the Pick Me’s of The Coaching Industry but I can also easily talk about them in the context of the Women’s Small Business Community, too. It’s going to be present in most communities that aren’t looking for it or don’t have values that call that shit out.
In the coaching world the desirable ones are the clients. And keeping them comfortable is a goal. Letting them know you’re not like most coaches is a goal, too. It’s not even that that stuff is a problem, it’s HOW it’s achieved–
by devaluing other women
by telling people what they WANT to hear versus what will help them (or even the truth)
by asserting that there is something WRONG with that coach and not wrong with ME
so that THEY can be PICKED. It perpetuates Patriarchy and Misogyny, among other things.
And this post is not meant to make anyone feel bad about their behavior. Hey, I have done this sort of stuff until I realized that I was centering the comfort of clients and a community that could rally around me. I wasn’t choosing my own thoughts as most important and I wasn’t risking much and I was trying to take short cuts to make a living.
Here’s how I see it happening:
showing up to another coach’s public social page to disagree with her publicly in her own space
writing emails that are based on tearing down someone else’s business or ideas as some kind of validation of their own
picking at a coach’s appearance and connecting that somehow to the value a client would get from working with that person
getting on the bandwagon of social trends for marketing purposes but not practicing it in their own life / business
finding other people who will be wiling to join them in this and forming an unofficial coalition that feeds our need for belonging
None of this is new, really.
This happens in all parts of our society, whether that’s in mom’s groups or business groups or school communities, etc.
And that’s a big part of why it continues in women’s business communities–
because business is hard and getting some community dopamine here and there feels great
showing up to someone else’s social to disagree with them publicly and be applauded can feel fucking amazing, for a moment
your sales goals are there and sometimes becoming a pick-me makes you money, in the sort term anyway
In its essence, it’s just staying within proximity to power as the main objective– in the business world you want to look to clients like you are the most popular and you also want to say what they want to hear versus what they probably NEED to hear in order to get real change.
It’s often just performative and I personally have an opinion that it devalues the coaching industry’s impact on the world. So, I personally want to call it out……….but don’t look for me to show up on anyone’s instagram page and debate them ;)
xoxo
s