Organizational coaching, management consulting, leadership development
James C. "Jim" Selman (February 7, 1942 – December 29, 2024) was an American management consultant, coach, and author whose work focused on organizational transformation, leadership, and management coaching. He was a co-founder of Transformational Technologies, a consulting and training organization associated with Werner Erhard, and subsequently headed Paracomm Partners International. With management scholar Roger D. Evered, he coauthored the 1989 article "Coaching and the Art of Management", which advocated coaching as an alternative model for organizational management. Selman later addressed leadership in conditions of rapid technological and social change, as well as the possibilities for personal development in later life. His books included Retiring Right (2007), The Elder (2011), Living in a Real-Time World (2018), and Serene Ambition in a Real-Time World (2020).
Selman is described as being "in the forefront in helping major companies embrace the concept" of "contextual management". He formed Selman & Associates in 1976, and "began research into the nature of culture and large-scale systems change". In 1984, he partnered with Werner Erhard to form Transformational Technologies, a consulting and training franchise operation, which served as the corporate division of Werner Erhard & Associates, with Selman as its first president. In his capacity there, he was noted to have said of his philosophy of management, "when we talk management technology, what we are talking about is a rigorously tested and challenged body of distinction for having access to whatever the phenomenon of management really is".
In October 1987, Selman moderated a televised broadcast that featured Werner Erhard in discussion with top sports coaches John Wooden, Red Auerbach, Timothy Gallwey, and George Allen discussing principles of coaching across all disciplines. They sought to identify distinctions found in coaching, regardless of the subject being coached. In 1989, with the late Professor Roger Evered (U.S. Naval Graduate School at Monterrey), Selman documented the outcome in the first article on organizational coaching, titled "Coaching and the Art of Management". In another article, "Leadership and Innovation: Relating to Circumstances and Change", Selman identifies six ways of responding to change.
Selman was described as "an enormously powerful man with a deep voice and a way of speaking that held people's attention and inspired confidence". Selman & Associates became Paracomm Partners International in 1988. Selman was the host and co-producer with Phyllis Haynes of the podcast and web program Possible Futures, conversations and commentary to explore ideas and decision making and their relationship to possible futures.
Selman's later interests extended to the experience of aging and the possibilities for continued personal development after retirement. He was a former member of the California Commission on Aging, a founder of the nonprofit organization Growing Older, a founding member of the Legacy XXI Institute, and a former director of the Breakthrough Foundation. In 2021, Selman published The Elder, coauthored with Marc B. Cooper, using a fictional narrative to explore the transition from conventional retirement to an active conception of elderhood. Reviewing the book for Itineraries, Barbara Kammerlohr criticized the initially negative portrayal of the protagonist's circumstances, which she suggested might discourage readers from continuing, but praised the book's subsequent treatment of personal growth and purposeful aging, describing it as "a short and stimulating book".
↑Perry Pascarella, "Can Management Break Out of Its Box?", Industry Week Magazine (June 13, 1983).
↑Brock, Vikki (2008). Grounded Theory of the Roots and Emergence of Coaching. Doctoral Dissertation.
↑James R. Lewis, J. Gordon Melton, Perspectives on the New Age (1992), p. 130, ISBN079141213X. Quote: Erhard's friend Jim Selman, who actually runs TTI, said that "when we talk management technology, what we are talking about is a rigorously tested and challenged body of distinction for having access to whatever the phenomenon of management really is".
12Sourcebook of Coaching History, Vikki G Brock PhD., 2012.
↑Roger Evered and Jim Selman, "Coaching and the Art of Management", Organizational Dynamics (1989), Vol. 18 (2); pp. 16-32.
