Individual Coaching

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.Alice Walker

Why Coaching?

Every one of us is in the midst of a grand experiment called our lives. And much as we may resist, life offers unending, and often unsolicited, invitations to learn and change. While we can’t usually refuse the invitation altogether, we can strongly shape the WAY we respond.

No matter how smart or strong or clear or kind we are, we can benefit from the support and challenge of a powerful coaching relationship at key moments in our development – both professionally and personally. 

As a trained Integral Coach, I am committed to helping you integrate your head, heart, body and spirit in service to your effectiveness at work and home, your happiness, and the health of our communities.

What does coaching involve?

Coaching is a highly personalized process that needs to adapt to the unique personal and cultural style of each client. We work together to clarify your what you want coaching to do for you – looking for common threads among several different dilemmas you may be facing. Coaching is especially helpful for individuals who:

  • Are in personal or professional transition.
  • Have goals they are having difficulty achieving.
  • Want to communicate better with others.
  • Are looking for ways to integrate head, heart, body and spirit in their work and home life want to “find their voice” more effectively to address injustices they are tackling.

Being exposed to Yarrow Durbin’s work and approach drastically shifted my worldview, freeing me forever from feeling locked.  Yarrow transmits joyous freedom by exposing the truth of the wider window.

Dr. Leticia Nieto

Scholar, poet, psychotherapist, trainer in anti-oppression & expressive techniques

After establishing your goals, we identify underlying patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that are holding you back, as well as strengths or talents you can build on. We can look at how your personal story – including your various racial, gender, class, religions, or other identities – are influencing you now, for better and worse. We then design a plan for observation, learning, and practice that addresses immediate “problems” as well as expands your capacity to keep growing and learning in the future.

Through a series of fiercely honest yet completely supportive conversations (with related “homework”) we:

  • Explore dilemmas.
  • Expose limiting assumptions.
  • Open up new awareness – expanding your perspective on yourself and your world.
  • Uncover habits that may be getting in your way.
  • Identify and build on known and hidden strengths.
  • Clarify interests and needs.
  • Develop new skills.
  • Learn powerful new ideas.
  • Design practices to sustain positive changes.

As a certified Integral Coach, I draw from an ever-expanding variety of approaches including Polarity Management, Immunity to Change, Non-Violent Communication, Enneagram, Integral Coaching, Mindfulness Meditation, Conscious Embodiment, and more.

Coaching Logistics

Coaching programs vary and are custom-designed. A typical pattern is to meet 1-2 hours every 2 – 4  weeks (on-line or when possible and safe, in person).

Coaching programs can be short (1-3 sessions), medium (2-6 months) or longer, depending on your goals as well as time, energy and financial resources available. Some clients continue working for many years as the challenges of their lives unfold.

I offer, as desired or appropriate,  any of these three assessments to deepen your understanding of yourself.

Leadership Circle Profile - 360° Manager Edition

You can invite from 10 – 100 people to give anonymous on-line feedback and receive a detailed report comparing how you see yourself and how others see you in multiple dimensions of leadership. The report simultaneously provides focused competency feedback while revealing the underlying assumptions that are causing a leader’s pattern of strengths and limitations. The Leadership Circle Profile helps leaders understand the relationship between how they habitually think, how they behave, and, more importantly, how all this impacts their current level of leadership effectiveness. Your results are completely confidential – only you and your coach will see them. Other than your boss, all responders are anonymous to you.

Conflict Dynamics Profile – 360° Version

An assessment instrument dealing with conflict behaviors in the workplace, provides a powerful way to improve self-awareness of what triggers conflict as well as how you respond to conflict. We will be using the CDP-360, where you will solicit feedback from 8-15 colleagues. Based on these triggers and responses, the Conflict Dynamics Profile then provides practical approaches for improving behaviors that promote more effective workplace conflict resolution.

EQ in Action (Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace)

This is NOT a 360° – done individually on-line

Includes a toolkit of strategies to build each capacity.

You watch 8 short videos that simulate typical workplace conflicts and record your responses.  This tool analyses your in-the-moment reactions (far more accurate than self-report) and provides uncannily insightful feedback on emotional intelligence capacities that are key to leadership success:

  • The capacity to be aware of what’s going on inside yourself and access a wide range of emotions.
  • Accurately read what’s going on with others
  • Have compassion for others, balance attention between self and other.
  • Positive (solutions orientation) and negative (problem orientation), reliance on thoughts, feelings and wants (head, heart and gut).
  • Four important relationship management strategies: win/win; taking the lead (independence) ; healthy followership (dependence), and knowing when to disengage.

Let's Chat!

I look forward to talking in person about how the support and challenge of my coaching or group facilitation can help you and your organization thrive in new and surprising ways.