Approach
Many perspectives,
like leader and coach,
blend together with play
to make my approach
Here are the key perspectives I bring to my work with you:
Coaching Leadership Improv Social Justice Play
FAQs
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This is a really important question, because seeking the appropriate form of support for your needs and situation is essential.
Therapy: Traditional psychoanalytic therapy works in an illness model and is focused on healing. It’s diagnostic and the process tends to spend more time in the client’s past. Coaching works in a wellness model and is not diagnostic. Coaching work tends to focus more on the present and future, and uses a process to help you achieve personal and professional goals. While coaching can often feel therapeutic, it is not therapy, nor an appropriate substitute for therapy.
Mentoring: A mentor is someone you can engage formally or informally who has “been there, done that.” They tend to provide advice and wisdom based on their experience, and are positioned as the expert within the relationship. In a coaching relationship, the coach and client are more like professional peers. The coach is expert in the process of coaching, and the client is an expert in themselves. The coaching process reveals the client’s own wisdom and expertise to identify meaningful next steps. -
Coaching is a creative collaboration between a coach and a client to support the client making progress, whatever that means to them.
A lot of coaching stays at the surface and asks “What do you want to do?” and “What actions do you need to take to make it happen?” It is deeply goal, action, and accountability oriented. The type of coaching I practice more frequently asks the question “Who do you want to be?”, and “How do you want to experience this situation?”. These deeper shifts get to the root of what’s getting in your way and have an impact on not just the one goal that’s top of mind, but the way you approach all goals and situations in your life.
The ICF-accredited coaching program I completed, iPEC, called this transformative coaching process Core Energy Coaching (Learn more). Using that framework as a foundation, I offer applied improvisation exercises where appropriate to help clients “try on” a new way of being in the moment that we can unpack and learn from in the moment.
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Applied improvisation takes skills that improvisers practice onstage, and brings them into offstage contexts, such as personal development, leadership development, and conflict meditation. What kinds of skills do improvisers have that benefit leadership?
Identify the possibilities in any situation
Productively build on the ideas of others
Reframe mistakes as opportunities
Embrace failure as part of the process
Self-awareness of emotions and behaviors
Notice dynamics around power and status
Release the need to be right
Be mindfully present in the moment
Take bold risks
Trust themselves and others
Weaving together coaching, leadership experience, and applied improvisation, I help individual leaders and teams strengthen these skills & mindsets.