Our approach
Our services
Are you ready?
Authenticity | Clarity | Momentum
our minds can be our best friend or our worst enemy
Mental fitness is your capacity to respond to life's challenges with positive rather than negative mindset. Mental Fitness builds command of your own mind and Positive Intelligence, allowing you to access:
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Peak performance
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Peace and wellbeing
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Stronger relationships
One definition of happiness is the percentage of time you are in positive feelings and mindset. We call this ratio of positive to negative the Positive Intelligence Quotient or PQ.
Negative emotions come from your survival brain, which developed 180 million years ago. These emotions are useful as an alert to where you may need to pay attention, based in real, exaggerated or perceived worries, frustrations and fears.
Your survivor brain has you stay in heightened negative feelings and thoughts far, far beyond the alert message, and regardless of whether the situation is real or imagined.
This keeps you in a fight, flight or freeze stress response, producing far more adrenalin and cortisol than you need, affecting breathing, blood pressure and other health factors. This gives you tunnel vision focus, narrowing your thinking, usually resulting in fear and trigger-based reactions. Over time, this produces habits, like patterns of thoughts and behaviours, and impacts your performance, relationships, quality of life and health.
Your inner critics—or Saboteurs—can become your fiercest enemy. Saboteurs are directed by fear: old fears, current worries, and apprehensions for the future of failure or being hurt in some way. Using this part of your brain, you will more often find yourself ruminating on the past, distracted in the present, and worrying about the future.
Did you know there's a wiser, more powerful and underused part of your brain? We call this your Sage mind. It's where our aha's and insight come from and it's not something taught or developed in school or university (yet). So, it can have a much quieter voice overshadowed by your loud Saboteurs and your analytical mind. Your Sage mind generates positive emotions, accesses calm, openness, curiosity, passion and creative wisdom and can be your far fiercer friend.
With training and practice, you can build your mental fitness muscles to weaken the enemy (aka Saboteurs) and strengthen your friend (your Sage mind). Neuroscience refers to this as mind management, in Mental Fitness we call it self-command of your own mind.
The Positive Intelligence (PQ) Program provides mental fitness training and practice:
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Academically validated and scientifically designed to upgrade your internal operating systems to achieve measurable personal, client, team and organizational impact.
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Addresses at the root what is holding you back from being your authentic, focused, effective and more positive self. Designed to significantly reduce stress!
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Provides you a structured and fun way to learn and practice to ingrain new neural patterns and habits. This builds muscle for more sustainable and ongoing development.
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Will free you from self-limiting behaviour and allow you to progress and grow - to go for it more! To think and act bigger and to bring your best thinking and creating.
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Is designed to build lasting mental fitness habits that keep growing with your practice.
our coaching approach
Authenticity, Clarity and Momentum represent pillars in exploring and developing the whole human being: professionally and personally; emotionally, physically and spiritually; and at work and home, at play and at rest.
The pillars apply at micro and macro levels and to individuals, teams, departments and organizations. Articles and research cite these pillars as key elements contributing to our success as leaders and as human beings. For instance, knowing your own unique, clear and authentic purpose statement can help guide and fuel your momentum as a leader in your organization and in creating your ideal whole life by design.
Coaching helps you be more intentional, starting with the pause - those 60 minutes twice a month or so, where you stop everything to slow down. Here you leave any whirlwinds outside the door. We partner together to think, dream and reflect (there's a difference), and to design and step forward on your path with deeply authentic and clear intention. It's making space to do really important work that can be pivotal in evolving ourselves and our personal and professional lives.
Combined, Authenticity, Clarity and Momentum can be seen as effectively informing the progression of our coaching journey together. Here's how I define these words. You may have your own definition, and that is beautiful!
Authenticity
Showing up, evolving and living into our true self. Although we may stumble along the way, we strive to be clear on who we are and to keep learning and growing into our authentic best selves.
Clarity
Being crystal clear and keeping front of mind our unique authenticity and clarity on what we really, really want to achieve. Authenticity and Clarity can be so strongly foundational. It can take time to establish this. Go slow to go better.
Momentum
From a place of strong authenticity and clarity, we identify and deeply commit to the right goals. These give us traction as we enter a state of flow, generating momentum: a more easeful, effective and efficient state of forward progress.
our services
Individual Coaching
You and I work together to develop a bespoke coaching package. An exploration call confirms fit, form and function (what you want to accomplish). We typically engage for 6 to 12 months, meeting for 60 minutes twice a month. Ask your HR persons or your manager; coaching may be an approved expense through your work.
Organizational & Team Coaching
I partner with client organizations and teams in co-creating tailored programs, including cultural and employee engagement initiatives, leadership team facilitation (i.e., visioning, mission and values; strategic planning; management best practices), and in coaching to help evolve high-value-creation teams. On larger projects, I work with associate coaching professionals and organizations. Programs can incorporate benchmarking surveys, assessments and other tools.
Assessments & Tools
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Psychometrics: Lumina Learning certified practitioner, including Lumina Spark, Coach & Teams. Other tools available include SDI 2.0 Core Strengths, MBTI, EQi.
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Organizational, Culture & Leadership Development: Custom employee engagement and culture surveys; and SupportingLines High-Performance IndexTM and High-Performance FrameworkTM
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360 Feedback Programs: Custom Narrative 360 Reviews; Lumina Leader 360, SupportingLines 360 Leadership assessments
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Methodologies: International Coaching Federation (ICF) Credentials & Standards; Royal Roads University Certified Executive Coaching (graduate program); Essential Impact Excelerator CoachingTM System and Coach Approach to Facilitation; Coaching Out of the Box; Symbolon-Method® Symbolon Reflection-Expert (Art4Reflection); SupportingLines High-Performance IndexTM Assessment; Team Coaching Foundation Certification in building High-Value Teams (WBECS & Global Team Coaching Institute, GTCI)
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Lean Continuous Improvement: As a Black Belt coach, Lean principles and methodologies may come into play where they may serve clients' coaching topics. (I also coach, facilitate and train in Lean Belt programs and initiatives through my long-time association with Ultreia Consulting Group.)
Collaborations
I collaborate with Lumina Learning, SupportingLines Institute, and Symbolon AG. I also partner with high-calibre associate coaches and other coaching organizations, client internal coaches, and work within government public service coaching programs. I am proud to serve as a leadership coach in the TED Fellows program.
Pro Bono Coaching
A percentage of my work is pro-bono or "low-bono". Ask me about availability for people serving in non-profit and developing nations.
are you ready?
Coaching is a great expedition, not for the faint of heart or uncommitted.
Coaching takes self-compassion and commitment. It takes openness and a strong desire to learn, to grow. Are you willing transform who you are and how and what you do? The person that evolves with the help of coaching is not entirely the same person as when they started.
It takes patience and stick-with-it-ness: this is a journey. And, it takes holding yourself accountable to being fully present in the sessions and to the actions you design towards achieving your goals. Step by step.
It also helps to keep a sense of fun, humour, gratitude and wonder and to not take yourself too seriously.
And it takes knowing that it starts with you. You are the expert in you and your life and work. You are important and you have inner strengths and brilliance as yet untapped. And it takes self-awareness, valuing yourself and your development and knowing you deserve this.
Progress can be hard. It can be easier with a professional coach walking with you and disrupting your status quo (which can only be done from the outside). Your coach brings all that they are from experience and continuous learning. Your coach is open and non-judgemental, co-creating safe space and time for you to be challenged and stimulated to be authentic, gain clarity and generate momentum.
In a nutshell... How committed are you to your growth and success? How might you benefit from an objective partner to help you clarify and guide your own course? Are you open to exercising both your reflective and your analytic muscles? What value do you (and your company) place on the potential that can be realized through investing in your development?
This is not a conversation, meeting; nor is it therapy, counselling, mentoring, consulting or training.
It takes dedication and courage; it involves self-accountability. It is always the right time to carpe diem, to make that commitment for yourself and others.
I invite you to ask yourself: What are the possibilities? What seems impossible that might be possible? What might I regret not doing in a year?
Want to chat about what coaching could look like, see if there's a fit or are you ready to jump in? Simply connect and let's have an exploration call to take the first next step together.