I am not referring to the movie with Ashton Kutcher but rather to the Butterfly Effect that relates to the notion of a butterfly flapping its wings in one area of the world causing a tornado or some larger event to happen in another area of the world.

How does this relate to coaching?

The Butterfly Effect relates to Benoit Mandelbrot’s discovery, in the early ’60s, that simple inputs can produce significant outputs.  In 1961, Edward Lorenz was researching weather systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He was one of the first scientists to have his own computer, and he used it to create and test a simple weather model. One day he wanted to rerun the test model and found starling results:

The new run should have duplicated the old.  Lorenz had copied the numbers into the machine itself though, as he stared at the new printout, Lorenz saw his weather diverging so rapidly from the pattern of the last run that, within just months, all resemblance had disappeared. (Gleick, 1987)

Lorenz checked his numbers to discover what had created such a different result.  He realized that the computer stored six decimal places, but the printout showed only three.  There was a difference of only 1 part in 1,000.  But such a small difference in input made a big difference in the eventual output.  

Lorenz had discovered that the principle of non-linearity, as shown by Mandelbrot, also applied to natural phenomenon.  

In dynamic, or ever-developing systems, small changes in inputs, magnified by system feedback, can result in hugh changes in outputs over time.  This is the non-linearity principle.

Lorenz asked himself, "Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"  He called this the Butterfly Effect. So, Lorenz determined that any long term prediction of a dynamic nonlinear system was impossible because of the magnified effects of small changes in input.

So, one individual, or subtle influence, can make a big difference. 

Coaches who listen for and help their clients discover those seemingly small acts that will make disproportionately large, positive changes – will be exercising the Butterfly Effect.  A nice visual for me, as a coach, to think of clients as butterflies where by simply flapping their wings they can make a big difference for themselves and the systems in which they live.