Category: Article
None of Our Business
However life chooses us to be of service in it has absolutely nothing to do with us. Calling is not a choice. It’s not what we think we like or prefer or have aptitude for. Our egos have plenty of ideas about what we’re supposed to be good at: what we excelled at in grade…
A Conversation with Sarita Chawla
Sarita Chawla’s first career spanned over twenty years at Pacific Bell in management, where she gained experience in total quality, facilitation, dialogue, diversity and leading organizations. Since beginning her second career, she has edited a best-selling anthology about learning organizations, led a three-year race dialogue initiative in the Bay Area, initiated women’s dialogues in the…
The Neuroscience of Leadership
Breakthroughs in brain research explain how to make organizational transformation succeed. By David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz Re-posted from Strategy + Business, Summer 2006 / Issue 43. Mike is the CEO of a multinational pharmaceutical company, and he’s in trouble. With the patents on several key drugs due to expire soon, his business desperately needs…
How Tuning In Can Change Our Lives
I have been continually presented of late with the intermingled concepts of authentic and intuitive knowing. Most of us raised in western culture have been indoctrinated into a way of being that rewards abstract thinking and an orientation towards pure logic. We are trained to listen and process cognitively, in very limited ways, the experiences…
Cultivating Coaching Guidance
I don’t think anyone can learn how to deeply powerfully, lastingly coach someone solely by watching others do it. Here’s why: it’s like watching a skillful, experienced chess players or masterful jazz musicians and trying to determine why each is taking the action they are. In these examples, each observed person is freshly responding to…
The Importance of Props
I recently had an extended consulting project with a company in Silicon Valley. As I was frequently onsite, I developed a rapport with one of the receptionists, whom I’ll call Barbara Lara-Johnson (not her real name). She brightened my day every time I went there. She was fun to interact with, was a huge 49er’s…
A Calendar Like a City
Today I’m in the midst of a new design project to address the inhale-exhale question. I am experimenting with the structure of my 2016 calendar so that it can be an affordance for both exhaling and inhaling. Instead of my more familiar habit of fitting things into my schedule as they arise, I’m pre-designing deep grooves…
On Being Unstoppable
Last week, I visited the webpage of a coaching school someone I know is considering. On the school’s homepage, a graduate of the program boasted that the school’s methodology had enabled her to teach her clients to be “unstoppable.” And that stopped me, right in my tracks. The nature of being human is that we…
How is Coaching Distinct From Therapy?
by James Flaherty Someone asks me this question every time I do a public talk about coaching. To continue the dialogue, I’m writing this piece. As will quickly be grasped, I cannot resolve the question once and for all. That’s partly because there’s not common ground as to what would constitute a satisfactory response and…
An Autumn Walk
I’m on the way in to central London this morning, a short journey from home to meet someone. I’ve left in good time, and as I step out of the door the autumn sun, reflected from the windows on the other side of the street, catches me with its warmth. I’m already heading for the…
How Awe Affects Us
At the University of California, Berkeley, participants in a study were asked to stand and look at the tallest grove of hardwood trees in North America for one minute. Other participants were invited to gaze upon the facade of a science building for the same amount of time. At the end of the 60 seconds,…
Not So Sure
It can be incredibly helpful to learn to distinguish between what happens and your assessment of it. What happens: She didn’t return my call Your assessments: I must have done something wrong She’s angry with me She hates me She’ll never forgive me I’m such a loser This relationship is over What happens can be…
Newsletter Book Review: “The Best of the Best”
In the Spring 2015 issue of Distinctions, James Flaherty reviewed The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff by Jeanne De Salzmann. James says, “[De Salzmann] lays out our human condition—our being asleep and not knowing it, our self-indulgent self-importance, our ways of living that keep us confused with open eyed honesty—and yet never…
Happiness
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Distinctions newsletter. Old message, timeless wisdom. Happy reading! “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in…
Right-Sizing Yourself
You probably have no idea of the actual scale of your presence in the world. Under-sizing: I’m so small They’ll never take any notice I can’t do anything Who cares what I see and know? Better not to cause any ripples Nobody listens, why would they? Who, little me? Over-sizing: I’m so important It’s all…
Going For It — Really
Many people think, feel, or act as if “going for it” means putting lots of attention, time and energy into getting what they want. In this way of looking at things there are two options: getting what you want or putting up with what you get. Folks are encouraged to go for it, applauded when…
Find Your People
This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post in December 2014. Holiday time is family time. But what exactly do we mean by family? So many people live three time zones – or an ocean – away from their parents and siblings, turning travel “home” into a costly or time-sucking ordeal. Then there are the…
Is Change Really Difficult?
I suppose that the whole discipline of coaching wouldn’t exist if the assumption didn’t persist that change for us humans is quite difficult. The notion seems such common sense that many of us have never challenged it or even given it much thought. But I wonder if it’s the case? Or to be more exact,…
Transparency
I’m a little sad most of the time and I’m not up to much of anything. Great conversation starter, huh? But if I’m honest, that’s my in-the-moment answer to the question of how am I doing these days, and what am I up to. It’s winter, it’s dark, my body wants to hibernate, I’m tired…
Limitation and Infinite Possibility
As Integral Coaches, we don’t have to leave out any parts of ourselves … just as we don’t leave out any part of life in our client work. This is, of course, easier said than done since we live in culture that has strong public standards about what it is to be a “good person.”…