Category Archives: Uncategorized

How do we build thriving communities? Anke Wessels, the executive director for the Center for Transformation at Cornell University, actively supports transformation in her local community. After years of debate, community opposition, protests and legal wrangling, Wal-Mart opened a store in Ithaca. Members of the Religious Task Force for a Living Wage were outraged by unreturned phone calls and wanted to write an op-ed piece condemning the low wages paid by Wal-Mart. When Anke asked the group to look at what they wanted – to ensure a living wage for workers – they determined that an op-ed piece might not be the best way to achieve their goal.… Read more

Acknowledging – helping people see things they may take for granted or are unable to see about their values, contributions, or impact on the group.

Example: “This group cares deeply about team spirit and making a meaningful contribution.”

Articulating – succinctly describing what is happening in the moment by sharing observations, naming group dynamics, or group process.

Example: “The group seems both afraid and excited about confronting the director. I sense fear, excitement, and a desire to be understood. How can you use the group energy to request what you want?”

Asking Empowering Questions – using open-ended questions to evoke clarity, insight, and action.… Read more

When we label our emotions as good, bad, or terrible, we color our experience which changes it. Too often we put a positive valence on some feelings such as happiness or excitement, assign a negative valence to feelings like fear, sadness, or hurt, and completely avoid anything that implies shame, guilt, depression, or anger.

If we remove the ball and chain and sit patiently with our internal reactions, we find at the core of every emotion a pure wave of energy that is free of moralistic judgment. When we see how our body holds our emotions, we develop self-compassion and find that no emotion is more positive than another.… Read more

Managers and their employees are in a partnership to accomplish the goals of the organization. Managers often feel their value in this partnership comes from having the answers to employees’ problems. When issues come up, they are often quick to offer solutions to the problem before fully understanding it’s complexity, what the employee has already tried to overcome, and the obstacles beyond the employee’s ability to control blocking its resolution. As a result, the manager may wind up offering the most obvious ideas which are usually not all that valuable. Whether or not the employee has thought of this on his/her own solution, I’d suggest it’s a lose – lose deal.… Read more

1. Choosing a venue that is too small, poorly lit, has uncomfortable seating or low energy
2. Launching right in without providing a road map of where you are headed
3. Sticking to the planned program rather than meeting needs of participants right now
4. Allowing uneven participation or giving more air time to extroverts or people from the dominant culture
5. Getting participants to talk to the facilitators rather than to each other
6. Not allowing enough time for debriefing – where the real learning takes place
7. Making yourself the center of attention
8. Asking questions you already know the answers to – to reach the predetermined outcome
9. Shutting down “difficult” participants instead of honoring their positive intention
10. Scolding people for isms or micro-aggressions, rather than exploring the impact
11. Intervening too often rather than trusting the group process
12. Failing to focus on learning objectives or results
13. Pretending you didn’t mess up, instead of leveraging the learning for the group
14. Speaking before you have the full attention of the group
15. Whispering to your co-facilitator so that participants are left wondering what’s happening
16. Giving long confusing instructions or changing instructions when asked to repeat them
17. Avoiding real conversations by hiding behind power point or flip charts
18. Defending yourself when a participant expresses anger – rather than taking it in
19. Offering inauthentic praise instead of owning your experience (sharing the actual impact the person is having on you or the group)
20. Failing to elicit the specific learning or application during the debrief
21. Hearing from several people near each other, rather than moving the focus around the room
22. Avoiding exploring withholds with your co-facilitator
23. Stepping over discomfort rather than exploring it
24. Squeezing too much in without time for integration
25. Lacking awareness of power dynamics
26. Choosing who gets to speak based on who raised their hand first, rather than who has not spoken
27. Moving on without affirming participants’ contributions
28. Pretending you have it all together when you don’t
29. Not allowing your co-facilitator enough space to contribute
30. Putting group process ahead of learning or learning ahead of group process.

… Read more

As the profession of life coaching evolves, it becomes more uniquely defined and described. Over the past decade, many coaches and psychologists have clarified its definition and role (Ellis, 2005; Williams and Davis, 2000; Stober and Grant, 2006; Williams and Menendez, 2007), and these distinctions continue to emerge. Increasingly, life coaching seems to be revealing itself as an evolutionary step beyond traditional therapy. Traditional therapy will not become extinct, but rather it will increasingly serve only those clients who need clinical services.

As the helping professions continue to evolve, more clarity will emerge regarding which helping professional is the best fit for a client’s current concern.… Read more

This work is like digging for hidden treasure, buried emotions. You are seeking out hidden rivers. Water is certainly a metaphor for emotions, so by creating the space for old feelings being plumbed and released, you are literally priming the pump. The work is dry at first, but one creates the space for feelings to come, (sad music, a relaxing back rub) and finally the pressure of the tapped artesian well which lies underneath will spout up and all that insanity will be right in your face: the rage, the wound, the unmet expectations, the scar tissue. –Anita Sands Hernandez ¹ 

I grew up in a household where only three feelings were acceptable: happy, thrilled, or excited, so I tend to freeze when I’m confronted with intense anger.… Read more

The most difficult part of any change initiative is getting people on board. Too often, I find leaders know what to do in hindsight, after the change has failed to take root. To prevent that from happening, take some steps

1. Assess Readiness for Change

Take the long view and explore the relevant history of change for the group, culture, or organization. Find out what made past changes successful and look for evidence that the organization can handle more change.

If necessary, develop additional capacity for change.

2. Build a Case for Change

Discover the urgent crises and opportunities that get people’s attention.… Read more

The air was thick with the energy that my client radiated as she described her most recent interaction with her supervisor. Suddenly her voice trailed off and I noticed she was teleported into a meeting that occurred 10 years prior. As I listened intensely, I acknowledged the pain invoked by the traumatic flashback and supported her to move forward, inviting the examination of her own growth from that distant memory. The scene that I am describing is one that is familiar to many coaches who work with clients that have elevated levels of trauma.

WHAT IS TRAUMA?

“Psychological trauma involves experiences (witnessed or confronted) with extreme human suffering, severe bodily harm or injury, coercive exploitation or harassment, sexual violation, ethno violence, politically-based violence or immediate threat of death.”… Read more

As the value of coaching for nonprofit leaders became more apparent, Leadership that Works and other coaching organizations began providing coaching skills training to nonprofit staff to create coaching cultures within organizations. Coaching is most effective in organizations where executives and senior managers support coaching and have been through training. Combined with peer coaching programs, this approach builds a coaching culture and creates a more productive, engaged, results-oriented workforce. When organizations and their partners participate in coaching training together, the culture spreads like a social epidemic, and can make action-oriented, individual empowerment, and effective collaboration the norm in organizations and communities.… Read more