Articles

A library of reflections on leadership, consciousness, and the work of awakening to a more aligned way of being.

These essays are for leaders navigating the frontier between inner stillness and outer impact.

Coaching Beyond the Persona

In my experience, one of the factors that dictates the level of impact and ease involved in an executive coaching engagement is whether the client enters the coaching container only as a Leader, or as a Human Being who also happens to be a Leader.Most of the people I work with are senior executives in global organizations. Many spend their days maintaining an engineered persona for their stakeholders. This created identity can be a useful

Coaching Leadership

Stakeholder Management: Beneath the Surface

Clients come with varying desires for what they want out of our coaching - there is more variation than I can list. For example, the last three clients I worked with were navigating challenges with managing upwards and across, cross-cultural communication, and executive presence respectively. They are easy to solve at the surface level. But if we only optimize the surface mechanics, the leader will succeed outwardly while suffocating inwardly. And they will likely assume

Coaching

Vetting a Coach Beyond Credentials

I have invested hundreds of hours of my life into being a client to coaches at the pinnacle of their craft, and thousands of hours being a coach to successful leaders running global organizations. This is my opinion on what to pay attention to in deciding to work with a coach. It is immediate and obvious to me that transformation at the highest levels does not happen just through the coach holding credentials. Credentials represent

Coaching Philosophy

The Pothole Paradox

Earlier this week, one of my clients in our second session together realized that she was innocently lying to herself about her future. This brilliant woman, in the second stretch of her career after a break, was paralyzed by her fears of what could go wrong with her life. To her, all those fears seemed valid and real. Her holding those fears made sense, given that she really wanted to avoid that future. Except, a

Coaching

Unlearning Your Struggles

We all want good feelings. But for a lot of us, no matter what we try to do in order to get them, they seem just one more action or achievement away.So we get what we want. And we do feel good momentarily, fleetingly. And so we pursue the next thing and the next.This is the sure path to being seemingly successful on paper but feeling hollow on the inside. How do I know this?

Coaching Philosophy

Acting from Wholeness vs Acting from Lack

Our actions usually flow out of our desire for a better feeling-state. We imagine that we will feel better in the having of something, and hence we are moved forth into action.This is the level at which most of us operate, where actions are an expression of our desire to have something that will make us feel better. In other words, our actions are sourced from the lack of that which we desire.The premise in

Leadership Philosophy

Emotional Regulation through Enjoyment

This week, I am face to face with the violence in our world. There are times when I am overwhelmed by empathy for my fellow humans.When circumstances stir up strong emotions, being able to regulate and transmute them becomes a key asset. But the word ‘regulation’ comes across as ‘to control or manage’, to which I want to offer an alternative.When situations in life become too much to bear, many people numb themselves and continue

Philosophy

The Truth Before Thought

I know that you sometimes hurt yourself with your thinking. You think that this thinking is justified, given whatever you think is happening in your circumstances. And often, you are right. Except, you might be oblivious to the possibility that these circumstances are also a part of your thinking, rather than outside of them. Given this possibility, there are two directions we can take in transformative coaching. We can demonstrate to you how your thinking

Leadership Philosophy

Spiritual Detachment: A Double-Edged Sword

Most leaders I work with are astute enough to recognize the limitations of a purely material view of life. They are navigating what I call the frontier between inner stillness and outer impact. Leaders who are moving from a fixation on outer results towards inner stillness can experience a sense of detachment - of taking the focus away from the material results in their life and placing it on their identity and self. This can