When I was 18, I accidentally joined a cult.
Not the Netflix-documentary kind, this cult was largely benevolent – idealistic, meditation-teaching, purple-velvet-wearing, vegetarian, tantric yoga devotees.
This was a largely positive experience, but it also left me with one indelible lesson that has shaped my entire career as a business coach: people are astonishingly quick to give away their power.
I was 18 years old, teaching meditation at Sydney University on behalf of said cult and students would hang back after class to ask me life advice.
“I’m thinking about leaving my husband. What do you think I should do?”
“I’m thinking about quitting my job.”
“I’m thinking about travelling the world.”
To reiterate: I was 18 years old, with limited life experience.
As I contemplated these people, who were often three times my age, I’d think, ‘Why on earth are you asking me?’
But that moment revealed something important about human psychology – we have a tendency to project authority onto people. To assume they possess wisdom, certainty, or special insight simply because they appear confident, knowledgeable, or perhaps, spiritually evolved.
And nowhere is this more visible today than in the coaching and online business world.
AI is making personality far more valuable
For a long time, gurus thrived on information asymmetry.
They knew something you didn’t. They had access to strategies, frameworks, or insider knowledge that felt mysterious or hard to obtain. Their power came from owning the playbook.
But that world is disappearing.
AI can generate business frameworks, marketing plans, and strategic insights in seconds. The “secret blueprint” economy is rapidly losing its value because information is no longer the commodity. Instead, it’s everywhere, in greater volumes every day.
What differentiates leaders now isn’t what they know; it’s how they think. It’s their life experience that informs their judgment, opinion, approach, values, and, as a coach, their ability to provoke insight in others.
Strong points of view matter more than ever, but don’t misunderstand me – more than ever, we still need substance, credentials, hard-won expertise.
Personality-driven businesses can easily slide into personality worship – this is not new. In the online business space, the big players have mostly been high on hype, thin on methodology. Their expertise in marketing has shielded them from the realities of running group programs touted as ‘high end’ and ‘high proximity’ that, in reality, have been paint-by-numbers affairs with little, if any, nuance.
Why we put people on pedestals
Pedestal-building isn’t about admiring someone, it’s about absconding your responsibility. Because when you elevate someone to extraordinary status, you create a loophole for yourself.
You have effectively ‘othered’ the person, believing their success is the result of something special — talent, intuition, timing, luck, privilege, genius – things you don’t have.
And yes, absolutely, we are all different, none of us start with an equal playing field, and privilege absolutely gives an advantage, when you ‘other’ somebody through elevating them, you give yourself a ‘get out of gaol free’ card.
If they are extraordinary, then your lack of progress becomes understandable, even inevitable, which means that coaching becomes quite useless.
We are not the same. We don’t want the same things. We all have different opportunities and different hindrances. The whole point of coaching is to customise your response to the individual in front of you.
You don’t have to take the same risks or pursue the same goals as your coach.
But pedestal-building also has a darker side, because when you elevate someone too high, you stop thinking critically. You start accepting advice as gospel, rather than a perspective or opinion. You relinquish your own judgment in an unequal, infantalising relationship.
And the relationship shifts from mutual respect to hierarchical dependency.
The difference between a guru and a leader
Gurus and leaders often look similar from a distance.
Both speak confidently. Both may share strong opinions. Both attract loyal audiences.
But the similarities end there.
A guru positions themselves as infallible. Their authority depends on certainty. They hate being contradicted. Disagreement is treated as ignorance, disloyalty, or negativity.
Leaders operate differently.
Leaders understand that expertise is contextual. They acknowledge complexity and nuance. They evolve their thinking as new information emerges.
In fact, good leaders expect to contradict themselves over time, because this is what growth is all about. I like being a bit embarrassed by myself when I come across old articles I’ve written, and it also makes me proud to see the progress I’ve made in my thinking and approach.
The internet, particularly social media algorithms, often rewards guru behaviour. Certainty travels faster than nuance and bold declarations outperform thoughtful questions, drawing eyeballs into a fight where there wasn’t one.
But thoughtful leaders build influence by encouraging people to think more deeply for themselves, including refusing to put them on a pedestal.
There’s a fine line between accountability and dependency, between coaching and preaching. There’s a hell of a lot of responsibility that the coach can hold, and too many people have been burnt in the past to hopefully jump into a new coaching relationship without first doing their due diligence.
The hidden risks of guru culture
Many coaching horror stories begin the same way: small boundary violations that slowly escalate.
A coach who insists their method is the only way, who discourages questioning, or shames dissent. Over time, the environment becomes less about growth and more about control.
This isn’t unique to coaching; it’s a pattern visible in cults, corporations, religious movements, and political systems, where power concentrates around personalities rather than principles.
As a coach, the higher the pedestal rises by her followers, the more devastating the fall becomes when the followers realise their guru is human. Nobody is cancelled quite as brutally as someone once viewed as flawless.
A new vision of power
Many women in business have a complicated relationship with power, having witnessed or been subject to its abuse. Oftentimes, we’ve started our own business so as to escape workplace bullying or invisible power structures that keep us locked out of the modern workplace.
We need a new approach to power – which doesn’t only exist in hierarchies.
Each of us has innate power. We have power between each other, in an equal, mutually respectful, mature relationship.
Bad leaders seek to dominate and demonstrate their superiority. Mature leaders inspire leadership in others. Mature coaches create mutually flourishing relationships where both people retain agency, curiosity, and responsibility.
This is the kind of dynamic I want with my clients – a mutual admiration society.
Clients who respect my expertise but question my advice, or seek to understand the thinking behind what I teach or train. Clients who use our conversations to strengthen their own discernment and wisdom, rather than seek to outsource it.
Clients who leave our work together with greater self-trust, not less.
The age of gurus is ending because information is no longer scarce and character is worth more than ever.
What people need now isn’t someone to worship or emulate, but someone who challenges them to think more deeply, develop their innate talents, and lead themselves.
And that begins with stepping down from the pedestal — on both sides.
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