Category: Article
Affordances
What’s your understanding of the source of your actions and other people’s actions? Mostly we’ve been taught to think that it’s something within that produces what we do. We talk about motivation, or goals, or drive, or inspiration. We think of ourselves as separate from the world and that our actions and relationship to everything comes…
The Power of Coming Back to Joy and How it Can Help You at Work
This article originally appeared on The Shriver Report. As an executive coach, I work with women across the professional spectrum from high tech and bio tech to finance, hospitality and start ups. Many of the women I coach report how joyless they feel. Their calendars brim with activities, juggling product launches, organizational audits and transatlantic…
Beneath the Sky
Beneath the blanket of warm gray sky moisture falls The parched land forced to rest it can only produce so much for so long Shoots and fruits have withered the herds passed all that remains are ghosts of life passed it can only produce so much for so long it pines for lush green, flourishing…
What are you steering your life by? (Part 2)
What makes a good day? Pretty much every moment we are asking some form of these questions: “how’s it going?”, “how am I doing?”, “am I getting what I want?”, “am I safe?”, “are people liking me?” … It doesn’t matter if we feel we are in a powerful position or an inferior position; these…
What are you steering your life by? (Part 1)
Having goals, having intentions, having plans and preferences are all well and good but, for the most part, they do not affect how we live moment to moment, day to day. In order to bring life to our intentions and aspirations we must discover what is shaping our actions, our thoughts, our speaking right now.…
Meeting the Shadow
In Ursula Le Guin‘s stunningly beautiful novel ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, the young wizard Ged unleashes a terrifying shadow into the world by mistake. Stunned by his power, he stands paralysed in shock while the shadow’s claws cut deep lines into his face before disappearing. From then on, he lives a haunted life, forever running from…
Bringing your voice to the world
Too many of us are waiting. Waiting until all our concerns and worries are resolved, we have financial security, our stock options vest, our children are settled, we have a strong relationship. Are you waiting for something? Meanwhile, life speeds by, gaining momentum as we grow older. Let’s get over our waiting and start now.…
Building Competence in the Integrating Stream of Development
One new concept with which we’re working now is how to build a client’s competence around integrating all aspects of her/his life as the primary way to catalyze development. Here is an example of how that might look with a client. Joan works for a high-tech company in a very competitive environment. She feels a…
A Manifesto – Beyond Coaching: What we Really Bring to the World
At our enormously exciting, inspiring and developmental UnConference last week in San Francisco, we came together as a worldwide community for the first time. Being in each other’s presence connected us to who we really are as a community and let us hear our true calling in a deep, resonant, unifying voice. I, for one,…
Who are you – beyond the one constructed to survive?
Recently, this summer, I spoke to someone very close to me and pointed out something that was difficult to say and difficult for the other person to hear. Sounds like an everyday kind of event, doesn’t it? What was important for me, though, was that I was not speaking from my usual self. To speak up…
Forever Jung
Just this week I read a quote from Carl Jung that shifted my way of understanding him—and brought fresh clarity to understanding people. First, a little context: Jung’s central commitment was to the development of people and not to their individual happiness. He thought each person was called to a particular destiny, and he did…
Allowing The Mystery Back In
I recently spent a week meditating with 90 other people without talking. We ate, slept, walked and sat next to each other, the whole time in silence and avoiding eye contact, like peaceful zombies. I had no information about my fellow zombies. But by the week’s end, they each had a persona in my head,…
Playing with time
Okay, this may sound a little out there, but here goes. I’ve been playing with time. It all started one day a couple of years ago. I was getting worried about my coaching practice. Where would I find my next clients? Would I have to go back into the corporate world? If I did, would I…
Inspiration
It is a wonderful experience when, as a coach, I can inspire a client or a student with an idea, a reframing of thought, or a practice that has them engage in the world more freely. This inspiration happens by way of some alchemy arising from the special relationship that exists between coach and client,…
Keeping New Year’s Resolutions by Allowing Time for Change
As we approach 2012, the tradition of New Year’s resolutions has sprung up on the horizon. The prospect of eating healthier, being kinder to ourselves, being a better this, a better that, a fully superior being: it’s all lying in wait for us. So why is it so hard to keep and follow resolutions? Isn’t it enough…
We can’t live like this anymore
During the 10-minute drive to work this week, I listened to a local NPR station’s daily call-in show. The topic was child abuse, and the story was based upon a recent BBC documentary and an article in The Guardian newspaper written by an American physician who works at a hospital in Houston. She has studied and thought…
The Agony of Conscious Incompetence
I was recently introduced to a learning model that’s opened up a lot of space around my own development and my work with clients. It’s known as the four stages of competence, the stages themselves being: (1) unconscious incompetence, (2) conscious incompetence, (3) conscious competence, and (4) unconscious competence. Unconscious incompetence is when our blind…
London Calling
Justin Wise, NVW faculty member and founder of thirdspace coaching, was instrumental in establishing the instruction of our coaching methodology in London in 2010. Upon the graduation of our most recent cohort of students, we asked Justin about his experience leading the course. Q: Having just completed this most recent class’s certification, what are your…
Movement of Integral Coaching in Asia
We recently asked senior faculty member Sarita Chawla about what moves her to help bring Integral Coaching to her native continent. Q: What about Asia calls to you as both a human being and a NVW faculty member? Sarita: At a personal level, hailing from Asia, I have always had a burning desire to bring…
Let’s end violence now
While listening recently to a recorded course called Philosophy, Religion and the Meaning of Life (yes, that’s a real title—you can check it out at The Teaching Company), I heard an amazing quote from Simone Weil: “To define force: it is that X that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.” I…