Spring 2021

by Marina Illich

Integral coaching is a powerful method to expedite executive and leadership development in the business world. Why? Because it works at the level of ‘root cause’.

Many coaches focus on providing executives and leaders with frameworks, distinctions and tools to ‘improve’ their leadership. Trained to think this way, clients often come to me asking for ‘tips and techniques’ to strengthen one or more aspects of their leadership. The challenge with this approach is that it addresses the What of leadership: building competencies such as strengthening strategic thinking, executive presence or leading in ambiguity. And it addresses the How of leadership: tools to build those competencies, often packaged in easy-to-access, generic drop-down menus listing practices, resources and action steps by competence.

While this approach can lead to horizontal, surface-level change, it tends to miss the most fundamental part of executive development: attending to the Who.

Integral Coaching, by contrast, works vertically, orienting executive development around questions like: Who does this leader take themself to be? How does their self-concept shape their leadership style, communication and behaviors? What ‘way of being’ does it enable? And how does this ‘way of being’ support or diminish the client’s ability to source their unique genius, essential capacity and full leadership potential?

In this sense, Integral Coaching is transformative because it engages the What and the How from the level of Who: Who is this person being such that they have difficulty generating trust and followership; making quick, informed decisions; or seeing around corners to innovate effectively under pressure? Integral coaching orients clients away from the ‘tips and techniques’ approach of performance coaching that can inadvertently turn up the dial on a leader’s habitual style, with all its distortions. Instead, Integral Coaching points clients vertically to their depths and supports them to source more of their essential strengths. How?

I recently worked with a senior executive in a Fortune 100 company. This client received feedback that she lacked executive presence and communicated in a way that was verbose, meandering, and even acerbic under stress. Senior stakeholders felt that she needed to strengthen her capacity to ‘net it out’ more succinctly and demonstrate greater polish in high-stakes conversations. They valued her honed business expertise, but questioned her capacity to successfully navigate a highly matrixed organization where leaders are expected to influence with acuity—and speed—at every turn. My client, in turn, reported feeling frustrated, anxious and overwhelmed by the pressure to meet the ambitious demands of executive team members while battling the uneven performance of key direct reports.

Taking a horizontal approach, we might have focused on strengthening her emotional control, developing a better poker face and honing her communication skills to more aptly ‘headline’ her message. Instead, we stepped back to ask what quality she had lost contact with to feel so trapped by the expectations of others, of herself, and most importantly of her unrelenting inner critic? We landed on fearlessness. Building on this, I asked her what it would be like to lead with more of the lithe, graceful and muscular self-possession of a jaguar. Jaguar? We both exploded into laughter, but only because it resonated so clearly.

Over the next few months, we explored practical ways this client could embody fearless self-possession (and a healthy capacity for mischief-making). We designed practices for her to notice when she was influencing as ‘jaguar’ – and when she was retreating to habitual patterns of self-judgment, questioning her good instincts, and feeling trapped. To this vertical orientation, we added specific communication practices to help her shape a clear, compelling narrative and communicate with the kind of grounded presence that engenders honest, healthy debate.

By orienting the coaching to her vertical development (Who) with the support of clear coaching objectives (What) and specific, customized practices (How), the coaching enabled this client to experience important foundational shifts. She shed some of the fierce judgment of her inner critic and loosened some of the emotional grip of habitual frustration, anxiety and overwhelm. As a result, she could lead with more authentic poise and communicate with solid, self-knowing presence. More importantly, she recognized her reflexive tendency to want to meet any bar of excellence, no matter how high. Instead, she started asking: What is my bar of excellence? And, what cherished vision or aspiration of my own does it serve?

As you read this anecdote, take a moment to reflect on your own work with clients: In what ways are you coaching vertically or horizontally? In what ways are you integrating the two, weaving horizontal skill development into deeper, vertical transformation?

Below is an exercise that will support you in exploring and practicing this.

Love,

Marina

Working vertically with clients and others

If you are a coach and working vertically sometimes feels like a challenge—or if you simply want to experiment with this way of coaching—you might consider the following exercise.

• Solicit a volunteer  ‘client’ – a family member, friend, or co-worker.
• Ask them: “What are three or four issues you are struggling with in your life right now?
• After listening to their response, take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions:
• What do all of these issues have in common?
• What is the missing skill that this person could develop to more effectively address all of these issues?
• What quality could this person more deeply connect with to help them embody that skill?
• Finally, review the presenting issues, the skill and the quality you identified, and ask yourself: how clear is the ‘red thread’ between these? How well would a client centered in this quality and using this skill be able to address each of the issues they came with?

Do Good at Work: How Simple Acts of Social Purpose Drive Success and Wellbeing
by Bea Boccalandro

You can’t get what’s here anywhere else. The author, a PCC graduate and world expert on her topic, creates a deeply affecting work of art combined with thoroughly researched findings, personal narrative and her own portrait sketches.

A lot more makes it unique. Ms. Boccalandro fully shows the central importance of bringing social purpose to work, brings dozens of examples shown with a novelist’s eye, deals with resistance and objections and the reality of work pressures and, after all that, invites the reader to be in contact with her if they can’t find a way to implement what she’s writing about.

I don’t know any other author who’s done that. And it’s fully consistent with the tenor and feel of the book. She holds nothing back. She writes about uncomfortable details from her familial history. She includes mistakes she’s made herself. All for one purpose: that we the readers take what she says seriously and begin to implement it.

Her premise is straightforward and, for some of us perhaps, self-evident. Doing acts of social purpose [defined as activities that improve the welfare of others, beyond our own self-interest] brings us meaning, improves our health, strengthens our relationships, stimulates our creativity, jump starts our careers, and improves the atmosphere and success of our businesses.

The author also addresses the essential point that the actions we take turn us into the kind of person we are. Every day, by the actions we take or resist taking, we become someone closer to our authentic self—or someone more distant.

She makes a powerful case, a stupendous invitation: participate in transforming the world through everyday small activities and become who you really are by doing so.

Almost everyone can take up this book and be informed, supported and inspired. Read it yourself and recommend it to your clients.

Remember seeing or reading The Color Purple or hearing Aretha Franklin for the first time? This book is like that

—James Flaherty

We have been so moved by the sensitivity and honesty that many of you brought to your responses to the Graduate Diversity Questionnaire. It served to remind us of what we learn at the start of every PCC: that each human being comes with a vast and complex story that includes pain, beauty, and resilience—and just how much wisdom  emerges from a conscious journey.

In this case, your wisdom is showing up in how you’ve named patterns that have repeated throughout your life, both before and during your engagement with NVW; your awareness of capacity and needs; and what kinds of programs we might offer to support your work and development. Much of what you brought is in line with what we are cooking up, and lots else provided food for thought. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you at our  upcoming community gatherings (dates below). In the meantime you can share your experiences and ideas on the questionnaire or simply reaching out to us  at [email protected].

We hear you, we see you, and we are working tirelessly to have this community feel ever more safe, inclusive, and encouraging for you to expand into your fullness, living out your story as a whole and vibrant human being.

Thank you for your open hearts and your trust in us.

Love,
Sahar & Adam

Jane Black, Mill Valley, CA

Kerry Blume, Flagstaff, AZ

Andrea Brougher, San Leandro, CA

Shaun Cawley, Ottawa, ON

Jen Dill, Moss Beach, CA

John Dunham, Berkeley, CA

Alan Eustace, Pleasanton, CA

Jenn Hooten, Los Alamos, CA

Pema Lin, San Francisco, CA

Tom Matty, San Francisco, CA

<strong>Cherisse</strong> <strong>Morish</strong>, Burlingame, CA

Joe Pambianco , San Jose, CA

Frida Reddy, Napa, CA

Jacquie Reid, Seattle, WA

Craig Sneltjes, Shoreview, MN

Ryan Walton, Sacramento, CA

Mabel Wilson, San Bruno, CA

Angela Zaragoza, San Francisco, CA