Category: Article
We Have to Find a Way to Love Our Brokenness
We have to find a way to love our brokenness No, not loving ourselves in spite of our failings But loving the brokenness itself We have to love all the ways we’re late And all the ways we missed the point We have to love that we were scared And that we were ashamed to say it We have to love that…
Do One Thing
In the days since the US presidential election, I’ve been overwhelmed by emotions and information. My social media feeds are filled with calls to action—invitations to meet, make phone calls, donate money, write postcards, march in the streets. Others’ words have comforted and challenged and saddened and filled me, yet I have had difficulty finding…
Bringing Emotional Intelligence into Balance
There is no denying that the world could use a booster shot of Emotional Intelligence (EQ): greater ability to read the emotional states of others, more awareness of our own inner states and how our behavior is viewed by and affects others, more emotional fluidity… Please, bring it on! Of course, the way things seem…
Bringing the Wisdom of the Heart into Coaching
James was interviewed recently by Joel Monk, co-founder of Coaches Rising. This interview one of a series leading up to the Coaches Rising Summit, a month-long online seminar featuring many lumiaries in the coaching field including Otto Scharmer, Jennifer Garvey Berger, Richard Strozzi-Heckler, James, and others. This half-hour interview covers: Why relating to our clients as…
The Joy of Direct Experience
I was taking advantage of the long summer days to catch up on some much-needed gardening when I found the book. The Cichlid Aquarium had been in our garage since my husband and I had moved in 13 years ago, weathering all the extremes Michigan could conjure, including two of the worst Midwestern winters on record. Yet,…
How Yoga Aids Coaching, Healing, and Growth
Yoga is my lifeline. It serves my body through asana, keeps me mentally sane and quiets my heart. If I want to hold others as a coach, supervisor and mentor—which is what I love doing—I must know how to hold myself, staying safe, centered and grounded, so I can be completely available to the one…
7 “Easy” Steps
There are so many books and programs out there that are based on “steps to success” for whatever you want to achieve: being a good parent, being happy, having a great relationship, being loved and admired. Just give me the steps to follow so that I can [fill in the blank]. What is it in…
The Light of Something Not Fully Born
Recently I have been noticing my hesitation towards joy. We all have this to some degree. It’s the belief that joy is something to be defended against because it can so easily be taken away. I often feel a false sense of power in assuming the worst or lowering my expectations until my hope is…
Touching worlds
I am most delighted, Your gracious presence In my garden just now, Filling this space with me, Drawing my beating heart to yours, Connecting our often fragile worlds, In this hallowed moment. As you touch my world, Effervescent with bird-song And bird-flutter, The world of connection, Between you and me, The world as it should…
Working with Our Trauma Stories
There is much trauma in the world, and I mean Trauma with a capital “T”. After our NVW Book Study Group visited with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, I felt grateful that he shared his story of working to…
Back to the Garden
The myth of the Garden of Eden is so brilliant and powerful because it expresses our sense of having profoundly lost something essential and elemental from our lives, something we need. We long to return to the peace and beauty of the garden. It’s a place we feel we once knew but from which we’ve been exiled, and we…
How and Why to Get Better at Failing
The ability to “fail well” is a skill we all need if we want to accomplish what we set out to do. Failing is really a cornerstone that all other skills are built on. Of course everyone has failed. Sometimes in highly visible ways. It is hard to get through this life without major setbacks.…
I Love You More Than You Can Know
My grandfather had chaired an English department for many years and had watched me attend his alma mater for my first graduate degree. When I came home, he would sit back in his recliner, tapping his fingers on the arm. He would quote a line or two from Shakespeare or talk about how mad he…
Adjusting to a New Corporate Culture—Case Study: Executive Coaching in a Complex Environment
by James Flaherty It seemed like a perfect fit: Dr. Chris (not her real name) had the exact and unusual talent and experience necessary to solve the very expensive and potentially disastrous dilemma. She’d been hired by an insurance company that was responding to competitive pressure by following an unusual strategy: they had recently purchased several hospital groups and…
Letting Our Differences Have Their Way With Us
In my experience, any time we engage in a conversation about our differences with an intention to prove the other side wrong, we’re heading for a dead end. When we take a right-wrong stance to any conversation about difference — whether it’s about race or gender, politics or religion — it reveals that we’re more…
Integrating Rigor, Compassion, and Creative Design
The Promise of Integral Coaching® and New Ventures West’s Professional Coaching Course by James Flaherty and Amiel Handelsman What becomes possible in coaching when we treat clients as marvelously complex beings who live in language and moods, inhabit bodies and physical environments, and possess both wisdom and blind spots? What opens up when we coach…
50,000 Life Coaches Could Be Wrong: The Importance of Development in Coaching
by James Flaherty Entering a six-month coach training program on the suspicion that life coaches are glorified confidantes who charge a lot of money and that coaching is “new-age nonsense,” the author of a recent Harper’s article finds lots of evidence to support her hypothesis. The irony of the piece’s title, “50,000 Life Coaches Can’t Be Wrong,” becomes…
Three Levels of Coaching
by Pam Weiss Introduction If you ask a dozen coaches what they do and how they do it, you will probably get a dozen different answers. These days you can hire a coach for just about anything—from finding a job to finding your voice; from balancing your checkbook to creating balance in your life; from losing weight or finding…
Learning Again How to Trust Ourselves
Rene Descartes’ method for discovering what’s true starts with a bold and radical move – distrust everything until it can be proven. It’s not hard to see how powerful a way this is to cut through superstition and confusion. By starting from first principles, and using step-by-step logic, he gives us a way to prove things for ourselves, doing away with…
Courage vs. Generosity
Life takes courage. Well, I’ve always thought so—but recently I’ve been wondering if we call on courage too hastily… How so? First, I’ve observed a very fine line between courage and stupidity. I realize that when I summon courage, there’s a good chance that stupidity might show up instead. Second, the mere mention of courage…