Reevaluating Vulnerability: Is it Weakness? 

A successful senior leader, struggling in a new reporting relationship, turned to a peer for help. She voiced a desire to work with an external coach. The peer’s response was, “You don’t want to do that now. It will be seen as a sign of weakness.” I could hear disappointment in the senior leader’s voice as …read more.
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Procrastination: How a Coach Can Help

“I’ll do it later. No. Really. I will.” “Why do it today when I can do it tomorrow.”  “Oh, things came up.”  “I got so much done today! But no, I didn’t get to that….” Just do it already!  Well, if it were that easy, then we wouldn’t see so many clients seeking coaching services for help …read more.
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Coach with the Playing to Win Framework

Let me start with an honest confession: straddling the domains of strategy consulting and leadership coaching offers me an excellent opportunity to migrate frameworks from one domain to the other. Effectively, both strategy consulting and coaching work on change, one at an organizational level and the other at an individual level. Hence, the possibility of adapting frameworks from one to the …read more.
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Shhh, listen!

Four metaphors and several deliberate practices leading to listening mastery  Not more than a few months ago, it was still hard for me to keep quiet. A quality of any master coach is the “evocative” silence – the kind of pause that creates a vacuum in the conversation with the client, a void that the client fills with new understandings. I was not able to do that.  In my path towards mastery, I knew I had to master the listening competency. With the help of my mentor coach, a particular practice program, and a lot of peer coaching, I was able to shift from being a speaker to being a microphone, from a microphone to a paper, from a sheet of paper to a tree, and from that to Waze.  First, I learned to shut up. Then to hear.  Then to listen.  Then to listen to help my clients.  The following is a list of practices that I created to help me in the process.  1. Learn to …read more.
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Assertiveness & Empathy: Underutilized and Misunderstood 

Emotional intelligence is a framework we both actively use in our coaching, and we’ve noticed a pattern over time that many clients appear to overuse or underuse empathy or assertiveness and rarely have a balanced use of both. In one recent example, a female executive at a successful startup engaged with Kelley after her supervisor, another female …read more.
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Navigating Life Transitions

We have all experienced a disruption in the flow of our lives that has shifted us into a season of uncertainty. We find ourselves in a space where we must reorient, learn, rise and transform. This is liminal space. In liminal space, we must summon the courage and create the opportunity to convert knowledge into understanding. In this space, we have the feeling of being just on the …read more.
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The 2022 Business Development Workshop Series (BDWS)

Are you looking for tools and insights to help you grow your coaching business? Join brand expert William Arruda and other subject matter experts for the ICF Business Development Workshop Series (BDWS). BDWS is a virtual series designed specifically to help you build, sustain and expand a successful coaching practice. BDWS will begin in February …read more.
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