I am coaching a fair number of coaches in my work today and one of the themes that keeps surfacing is a loss of personal passion. After years of coaching, interest wanes. Aliveness and creativity seem to fade. While a narrative of “I enjoy coaching” continues to circulate, for my clients the living experiences of joy, love and heartbreaking fulfillment are things of the past. Boredom feels right around the corner. For some coaches even a professional malaise or depression is on the rise.

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On a hot summer day in Brooklyn, I sat around a lunch table with my colleagues talking about Wholeness. In particular, our emotional wholeness in the context of work.

Recently, I’ve found myself really struggling when working with teams that are striving to invite in the “whole self” into the workplace. I was asking my colleagues what their experiences were in this dimension, and one of them shared a poignant example that helped me understand where I was getting stuck.

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I began my self-care coaching business as way to teach others about the self-care habits that sustained me through the toughest moments of my life. My first few sessions went peacefully, but as I gained more facilitation skills through Ten Directions’ Integral Facilitation certification, I noticed a few small interpersonal conflicts arising within the members of my community. Perhaps they hadn’t been there before, or maybe I could only bring myself to pay attention when I was actually capable of dealing with them. As I worked with the discomfort that arose from each one, I saw we were all growing – the clients I worked with, me as a leader, and our community as a whole. (more…)

For the past 10 years, I’ve been immersed helping leaders and leadership teams develop more robust skills to help guide and shape their organizations, the markets they compete in, and the communities they operate in. I often see short-termism crippling boards, executive teams, and seasoned managers. (more…)

I recently had a powerful dream. A bigger-than-life yellow snake was striking at me, baring its ominous teeth, snapping its jaws. Just when I thought my life was over, an enormous black snake appeared and attacked the yellow snake until it slithered away. This dream felt so real, so frightening that I kept reliving it, reflecting and unpacking it. I believe the yellow snake represents my Insecurity, and the black snake is my Audacity—my willingness to take bold risks.

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I was in my mid-twenties when I made the conscious choice to find the answers to some very important questions. An unexpected pregnancy had thrown me into an existential crisis and forced me to come to terms with my life choices. It became clear that I needed to begin to make decisions from my own moral compass and intuition rather than following others’ ideas and beliefs about what was right or wrong. Locating that inner compass took time. It also took practice to cultivate its sustainability. (more…)

One morning in 9th grade I showed up to school and none of my five closest girlfriends would speak to me — they wouldn’t for the rest of the year. The following year, one of them finally broke the stand off. The first thing I asked her was, “Why? Why did you drop me so coldly?” Hers were simple teenager’s words: “You always took the best boys and left us the worst.” (more…)

“I didn´t like what you did – it felt wrong.”

“We are disappointed about the result of the group process – this wasn´t what we expected.”

These are actual quotes from my clients. This was not the dream feedback for me as a proud, skilled facilitator! The fire alarm in my brain went on with a loud noise, my body froze, and my ego-mind automatically started creating explanations that would make me look better and make the pain and shame go away. Without any effort I had created lots of defensive and aggressive arguments about the logic of my actions and why everybody and everything else also were to blame (even my family and the food I ate the night before). (more…)

A few years ago, after working with a business coach, I decided that self-care would be the central focus of my work. I chose a group coaching model where I bought 20 women at a time through a 10-week self-care reconditioning.  This process included web content, group phone calls, and culminated in a three-day in-person retreat. (more…)

I was in a meeting recently discussing the take down of Harvey Weinstein and others accused of sexual harassment, and the rise of the #metoo campaign. We were freely exchanging opinions about these trends in culture, except for several men who declined to add to the conversation. When I asked them about their thoughts on the matter, and they replied that there wasn’t anything they were willing to add; because, they said, the truth was that they were only allowed to agree with the perspectives already in the room. As much I as prodded to elicit other points of view, they remained firm. They weren’t angry, resentful, or upset about it. They were just unwilling to risk a damn word.

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Emergence.  A word filled with openness, possibilities, and novelty.  I often witness it with teams I work with, and it is truly beautiful to see a group of people unlocking new ideas that will carry them a little further.  The resulting burst of positive energy and motivation creates momentum and amazing outcomes.  As a facilitator, it’s a real treat to be part of the process. (more…)

While I’m not aware of my fears all the time, when facilitating groups, my “big fear” becomes very alive.

Will I be able to serve this group well?  Will I be able to intervene when necessary?  Or, will I fall into my habitual pattern and avoid getting messy?  And so it goes, on and on, the inner voice of anxiety. (more…)

“I hate this exercise,” she announced in moment of quiet as the group sat working diligently on their own.   

“I am sick of having to use my own oppression to teach white people about their privilege,” one of the only women of colour in the group angrily proclaimed, sitting back, arms crossed, challenging my authority, attempting to bring the group onside. (more…)

I have been trying to find purpose and meaning in my life for a long time. Looking back, I would say at least since high school. What is it that we, and in particular I, am here for? What is it that will bring me passion and fill my heart? I searched for it in my Mechanical engineering studies and found bits and pieces. I also looked for it in during my MBA, but didn’t find too much there. (more…)

As aspiring individuals and coaches alike, we are often inherently biased towards short term outcomes. Maybe as a coach, you’re looking ahead at six sessions where you are committed to quickly impacting your client’s life. Or, perhaps you’ve committed to six months to making some more substantive changes in your professional context and are eager to see the results. Or maybe the challenges you’re grappling with are changes that will inherently take you the next two years of concerted efforts to generate. (more…)

As a psychologist and political scientist, I always felt drawn to two “acupuncture points”;  engaging systemic structures and causes that give rise to deeply challenging societal conditions, and serving individuals in their own evolution into “being for life.”  In my work right now I’m addressing both of these expressions through several new and exciting projects in societal development, conflict and negotiation? (more…)

I first encountered Diane Musho Hamilton in 2006 at an Integral Weekend Experiential Training (iWET), where we explored Integral Theory, experienced Big Mind, and worked with shadow. (more…)

It’s 2001 and I’m standing on an elevated ridge in the White Mountains of Maine in the United States. My map is laid out in front of me on a flat rock, and with compass in hand I’m triangulating our group’s location. We are about to immerse our team into a thick deciduous forest for about 15 miles. The orienting calculations we make now have everything to do with our success of getting to our extraction point before we run out of food and fuel. It’s these fine measurements here on this ridge that will allow us to be successful later on. And with the right understanding of our location right now, we can calibrate each bearing, shoot from tree to tree, and plot an accurate course through the forest. (more…)

A few years ago, I was asked to work with the board of a housing co-op who were having issues around workload equity. Resentments were brewing because a few members had become burdened with the lion’s share of the work. Before our first meeting, I was warned about the board’s ‘problem child’: a longtime member who often derailed meeting agendas with her combative style and strong opinions. (more…)

“Let’s have a working lunch so we can make sure to get through all the content.”  

When a client says something like that to me, I experience contraction and agitation. Why? Because this frame places a premium on the “content” (or the “it”). I am now simply a “content” dispenser and the groups I’m working with are passive consumers.  I momentarily imagine myself sitting in front of the group reading aloud from a large book. (more…)

In a recent conversation with a participant from the Integral Facilitator Certificate Program, we talked about taking a facilitation risk at the front of the room. The voice of the inner critic came forward. At least we thought it was the inner critic.

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Geologists have identified five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. Yet as the vast majority of life has been wiped out, our planet has continued to adapt and generate conditions for life to flourish once again. Unfortunately, many experts consider us to be living in a sixth mass extinction right now. And although we can situate this in a historic pattern, our current predicament is also a novel situation. Never before has a single species been almost entirely responsible for a mass extinction. Yet this is precisely the reality we are faced with today.

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Recently I was hired to work with an intact team whose presenting issue was poor communication, with associated breakdowns in collaboration and decision-making. They knew they “needed to communicate better,” and by all accounts, they were absolutely right. (more…)

In this short video clip below, Diane Musho Hamilton shares her wisdom about how emotional maturity increases alongside our willingness to feel our own difficult emotions such as fear, confusion or anger. Moreover, the degree to which we can be present with others’ emotions depends on how comfortable we are with our own.

A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a spoon,
Then raise it
To nourish
Your beautiful parched, holy mouth.

~Hafiz

Over time, I’ve encountered many gifts that the study of poetry can offer to my capacities in leadership; of these, three stand out: concentration, inspiration, and play. (more…)

In this 1-minute video clip below, Diane Musho Hamilton shares her insights about the fluid and dynamic quality of emotions. She describes our human tendency to either repress our feelings or wallow in them, and how we can instead learn to receive their energy and wisdom as they flow in and out of our lives and relationships.

This video offers a glimpse into what you can look forward to in our new live online training, Willing to Feel:  Essential Skills for Emotional Maturity.  This inspiring course will support you to learn to ride your emotional swells in service of more meaningful and empowered relating, leading and collaborating.  You can find out more or register here.

Great poetry and great leadership both have the capacity to open our hearts to the wild immediacy of this very moment. Both have the capacity to arrest our attention into startling contact with the aesthetic beauty and living truth of our shared being. Both have the capacity to create bridges that communicate information and meaning, and – beyond that – to transmit an ineffable aliveness that can touch our deepest longing.

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For those of us interested in adult development, too often we tend to focus on stages.  In particular, we zoom in on those higher, more complex and seductive forms of maturity that presumably are waiting for us to discover their beauty, added power and desired relief. They reside “up there” in the heights of our preferred hierarchies.
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For many of us, the experience of adulthood involves what I call  “completion projects” in The Elegant Self.  Completion projects are our unexamined drives to become (or appear) more whole and complete. Because they are unexamined, they are the unseen agendas that appear to have most of us. (more…)

Twenty years ago, I made my debut as an organizational psychologist.  Perhaps influenced by academics and my former life as an accountant, my envisioned ideal was a neutral, even stoic, helping professional.   But I failed spectacularly; I have always had preferences and get very passionate around values, ethics and methods in organizations and leadership. I’m also sensitive to dynamics and emotions in the room, find myself contracting when conflict and stress arise, and become deeply touched by the lives of my clients. (more…)

Some of us tend to orient towards listening and reflecting others, while some of us are more comfortable with expression.  In this video clip, Diane Musho Hamilton talks about how the ability to express ourselves with penetrative clarity hinges on how well we receive and listen to others–and vice versa.  Skilled communicators are not confined to wherever their habits or strengths orient them. Instead, they are able to fluidly move between both poles of penetrative expression, and receptive listening, in service to what is needed in the moment.   

A big ah-ha from the field: Successful self-management depends on this.

Many teams and organizations, especially in the last few years since the rise of Holacracy and the popularity of Reinventing Organizations, are transitioning to self-management—or at least sniffing around the possibility. (more…)

I needed a breakthrough. Two important group facilitation events loomed in my near future. While I felt excited about them, I also felt terrified. As a lifelong writer who is more comfortable in the writing cave and in one-to-one mentoring situations, the very thought of guiding a group of writers gave me a chill. This was something I had veered away from religiously. But now, doors were opening and I felt called to step across the threshold. I could no longer say no. (more…)