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The coaching engagement has finished, and the client says: “This isn’t what I expected … it’s made a huge difference in my life.”  When my clients realize that their greatest learnings – the biggest takeaways – from our time together have nothing to do with why we started coaching in the first place, I get…

I was blown away this week by the example set by Elizabeth Bonker. At 15 months, she was diagnosed with nonverbal autism. Last Sunday, she gave the valedictorian speech at Rollins College. Her speech and her journey are inspirational. Encouraging her classmates to use their voices, she said: “God gave you a voice. Use it.…

Many of the conversations I’ve heard lately are about people’s frustrations…with their employer’s return-to-work decisions, with other people, with rising prices, and so on. When coaching executives, I often ask “How’s it supposed to be?” I use this question when I hear a complaint to uncover a person’s vision for what they wish were the…

Thanks for the Feedback, by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, reminded me that feedback surrounds us 24/7 when we pay attention. Thinking about this took me back to when I hired my first coach. It was the year after my sister died and I decided to make a major career change, moving almost 5,000 miles…

I feared failure for much of my childhood and did my best to avoid it by aiming for perfection. It wasn’t until my early adulthood that I started noticing something wasn’t working. The more perfect I tried to be, the more upset I became with the outcomes. I realized that I needed to cut myself…

If you were to pick up one of the books in my library, you would find them filled with highlights and notes written in the margins. Over this past month, I’ve been revisiting them, curious about what I was thinking when I originally read them.   Five stars were next to a passage from Think…

We’ve just passed the two-year mark of the start of the pandemic and we’re still processing the aftereffects:   We’ve become more attached to technology to connect and work — we find news at our fingertips, continuously streaming the crisis in the Ukraine, the political divisions within the US, hate crimes and more. Many of…

Over the last dozen days, we’ve seen brilliant leadership gloriously exemplified by Ukrainian President Zelensky.  At LAITHOS, we describe this part of the leadership journey as moving from clarity and confidence towards vision. And from that, building a community helps propel movement towards aligned action. After you are very clear and confident in the core…

Integrity is important to me. I constantly check myself to ensure congruence between my thoughts and actions … in other words, my being and doing. I ask myself questions like: “Is what I practice what I preach?” “Do I evaluate others in a similar way to how I assess myself?” “Does what I say depict…

Today marks the first day of Winter – the Winter solstice. Winter is a time when trees and plants go dormant and both animals and insects go into hibernation. Nature supports a complex system for sustainability and renewal. Seeds dropped in the Fall germinate underground waiting for Spring to sprout, and animals that might not…