Tag Archives: coaching

Coaching As Learning; Testing The Waters Again

by on August 20, 2005 in Business, Work

Imaginactive_logoLisa Haneberg is asking for input on coaching for an upcoming book and while I was completing the survey, it got me thinking that I haven’t really written too much lately on the status of my own coaching practice. I mean, my practice was the main reason I started this blog almost a year ago.

You’ll notice that the ImaginActive logo that used to hang out on the left hand side is no longer there. The practice website has been taken down and I’ve disconnected the business phone line. It all is simply too expensive to maintain right now.

Yet, I’m not sure if ImaginActive Coaching Resources is truly dead; perhaps this is the time to get it kickstarted again. As I was answering some of Lisa’s questions, I remembered why I started the practice in the first place. I love coaching because it is a powerful tool for learning. For me, the personal sense of fulfillment and honor in being a participant in another individual’s transformative growth is, in itself, a huge reward.

Maybe there is a place for ImaginActive in my life right now. In addition to the internal workplace coaching I do in my current organization, I’m also thinking about how I can apply coaching principles in helping companies build better customer experiences. If you’re thinking that sounds like I’m working on another consulting angle, you could be right. Seems that once you get bit by the entrepreneurial bug, it kind of sticks with you.

I’ll just test the waters…if you are interested in:
1. coaching on livelihood integration (fully bringing together work, life, and all the other stuff).
2. building more dynamic customer experiences
send me an email or skype me. No obligations at this point, we can just see if there are potential relationships we can develop.

The Reflective Commute Part One: Disruptive Questions

by on February 26, 2005 in Career, Work

It’s been way too long since my last entry. Reason is I’ve landed a short-term gig with the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, DC. The work is nothing too glamorous, but I get to contribute to a good organization and use some of the expertise I’ve built up over the years.

Getting to work means a fairly lengthy commute (pretty common for us DC Metro residents) and I tend to take public transportation so I have a chance to read. If I’m not reading one of the books you see in the left column, I’ll pull out a magazine. Right now, its the March 2005 issue of Fast Company. I know its a good issue by how many pages I have dog-eared and this one’s been well marked up.

Here’s the March issue link: http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/92/index.html
It’s too soon for this issue to be free and open to the public, but log-in if you’re a subscriber.

Here’s one of the highlights for me:
Marshall Goldsmith’s article called Do You Love What You Do? Besides the fact that the article talks about loving your work (not much of a surprise that I’d be interested in something like that), I was drawn to something else. He begins the article with a story about Warren Bennis when he was President at the University of Cincinnati. Goldsmith writes that Bennis was addressing a university audience when a friend asked him, in front of everyone, "Do you love what you do?" After a long, uncomfortable pause Bennis answered that he didn’t know.

What Bennis’s friend did was ask him a disruptive question because it prodded Bennis to deeply question his assumed career path. Goldsmith writes:

That revelation plunged Bennis into deep reflection. It dramatically altered his path through life. He had always thought that he wanted to be the president of a university. It had not dawned on him that after he got there he might not actually enjoy the life of a university president.

This is one of the most effective tools in the coach’s toolbox. As a career coach, my goal is to ask one disruptive question each session. Sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. I’m also  conscious of the inherent risk when asking clients a disruptive question because it’s ALWAYS uncomfortable to have assumptions challenged. But, that’s the type of question that a client ultimately comes to coaching to be asked. It’s highly difficult to ask yourself a good disruptive question; it lingers in your blind spot – close by, but outside of your immediate awareness.

So, if your career is not what you want it to be and deep down there’s something gnawing at you, it’s time to find someone who can ask you some disruptive questions. Whether that coach is me or someone else, you owe it to yourself to love what you do.

Patience, Faith, and My Professional Journey

by on November 24, 2004 in Career, Work

I am not, by nature, a patient person. However, I am finding this to be an essential quality as an entrepreneur building a coaching practice.

It takes patience to develop solid networking business relationships. It takes patience to allow folks to find their way to your blog and website. It takes patience to gather enough people to create a tele-class. It takes patience to build a strong foundation. All of this goes against an assumption I held when I first started my practice – the work you put into business development will be met with some kind of correlating result in the near future. Kind of like: if you do this, you’ll get that. Yes, it was kind of naive, but I came from a non-profit world where I could measure project results in real-time and make conclusions as to whether the project was successful or not.

Now, I realize that developing my practice involves a kind of patience that emphasizes faithfulness. The actions that I am taking now to attract clients may only begin to yield results further in the future. It’s not the easiest lesson for me to learn, but it is proving to be one of the most valuable.

So, as you build your professional network, develop your own influence and reputation, or find your true career purpose, remember it all takes time. Regardless of how hard it is, letting go of the NOW mentality can make a huge difference in how you approach your career development. It can keep you from giving up or giving in to the notion that your work doesn’t have to be something you love.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A Time To Choose (In Honor Of The Return To Standard Time)

by on October 12, 2004 in Life

This past weekend, I had the tremendous honor of meeting and briefly being taught by Henry Kimsey-House, co-founder of The Coaches Training Institute (CTI) and one of the creators of the co-active coaching model. It was partly because of an interview in Utne Reader last year that I realized that I wanted to be a coach and train with CTI. The article focused on making intentional decisions in life: focusing on what’s important and then taking action. So, in the spirit of this encounter and the upcoming end of daylight savings time, I would like to offer some thoughts on choices and managing time.

If you tell yourself that you’ll start doing something when it slows down, when its a little less crazy…guess what? It will probably never slow down and be less crazy that it is now. As a matter of fact, there’s a good probability that it will be even more hectic in the future. Yet, instead of this being an absolute truth, consider this to be just one story or perspective that keeps you from stepping up to bigger and better things. What other perspectives can you generate that might help you start something that’s really important?

Along with considering other perspectives, take some time to make sure that everything that you’re doing right now is in line with your core values. Are you doing anything that is unimportant (or less important than the other activities), but seems to take up your time anyway? Consider making some intentional decisions about what fits into your life right now.

To borrow liberally from Billy Crystal, “When you finally realize what you want to do with the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to begin as soon as possible.” What do you want to do today?

By the way, visit http://www.utne.com/pub/2003_117/promo/10492-1.html for the interview with Henry.

How My Children Have Influenced Me As A Coach

by on September 26, 2004 in Life

During lunch a couple of days ago, a friend asked how I came to be a coach. As I recounted my winding career path since graduating from college, I realized there was one critical milestone in the journey: the birth of my first daughter. Her coming into this world wasn’t quite planned and it forced some replanning of my proposed future, as well as my wife’s future. Yet, in this period of reconsidering what I was all about as an individual and a professional, I asked myself one deeply soulful question that has continued to guide my life: What kind of father do I want to be?

The answers have provided a foundation not only for my personal life, but my professional life. I remember the first week of knowing that I was going to be a dad; I was terrified by all the changes that were going to need to take place…getting a solid job with health insurance (I was in graduate school at the time), finding a good place to live, etc. Then, this experience was further deepened when I started to consider all the changes that I would need to make as a person. At one point, the anxiety of it all was just too much and I started to run (physically) as hard as I could. I ran out of my basement apartment and kept running along street after street, through park after park, until I couldn’t go any farther and fell into the grass. From this exhausted state, I asked myself what kind of father do I want to be and then the answers started to appear.

I wanted my child to know love, to know integrity, to know playfulness, to know commitment, to know that this world is a good place filled with good people, to know that we can love our work. And the way for her to know these things are to see them modeled.

The process of asking myself this question did not end prior to her birth, but continues to guide me today. As my children grow, so do I as a father. Being a dad has provided another powerful layer of purpose to my life. To wrap up, I believe that my children are an incredible influence on me as a man and as a coach.