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Women in Coaching & Leadership

Hi everybody. I’m about to share with you a recording I did for international coaching week. And I wanted to tell you about the three guests that I have with me on this recording.

First I have Darlene Chrissley. Darlene is a master certified coach with 20 years of experience working with a range of industries in Canada. She also is a founding faculty member of the Adler School of Professional coaching, and the International Coach Federation Toronto chapter. Darlene is a writer and inspirational speaker and a performer and her book conversations for power and possibility was published in 2012. And in 2016, her solo show and chaos I trust was featured at the Toronto solo Theatre Festival.

My next guest is Marita Fridjhon. She was born in South Africa and is based in the USA and she’s co founder of CRR Global. Marita has an academic background with degrees in medical and psychiatric social work, as well as family systems therapy. As CEO of CRR Global, Marita heads up a global distributed leadership team with partners in 14 different countries and a global training faculty. Reed is a highly sought after global speaker and as the co author of the book, creating intelligent teams and Cisco Systems inspired leadership.

My third guest is Libby Robinson. Libby is the managing partner of integral and award winning leadership and executive coaching company we’re working with Fortune 1000 companies globally. She’s a former Wall Street banker, Aerospace Engineer, and National Champion Equestrian. Libby has worked for 26 years with senior level leaders globally, helping to bring more mindfulness resilience and greater capacity to brilliant and ambitious leaders. Let me spend a master certified coach since 2009. And Libby is also the director of Coach Training for the advanced coaching practicum and accredited coach training program with five tracks from ICF initial certification to a gaining MCC and master coaches community. I hope that you will enjoy this recording and the celebration of International Coaching Week.

Hello, and welcome to the Experimental Leader Podcast. I’m Melanie Parish and I am so excited about today’s podcast. It is not often that one gets to invite one’s mentors to be with them on a podcast. And as I was looking at the ad international coaching day or coaching week coming up, I decided I would just invite some of the people that I admire most to come and have a chat with me on the experimental leader podcast today. And I want to welcome them today. And I wanted to welcome three people who have been powerful influences in my life. I want to start with Marita Fridjhon, who is the founder of CRR global, a co founder of CRR global and one of the mentors have a program and a coaching certification that I had and my friendship with Marita goes back to probably 2008-ish. I was actually a program before that. But that’s when I met Marita I remember the moment and and it’s been such a powerful relationship in my life. So it is one of the foundations of who I am as a coach. And so I’m so grateful that she came today. And Darlene lives in my city and has been a mentor coach to me. She signed one of my master certified coach letters of recommendation when I became a master certified coach in 2012. She is a master certified coach at the University where my husband works. And she’s been a dear friend and colleague and she’s someone I can get together with and talk about all things coaching and have for many years. And so I’m so excited that Darlene was able to be on this call. She’s also one of the founders of the Adler coaching school. And so it’s it’s spectacular to have you here Darlene and then Libby Robinson is a huge mentor to me now. And I currently faculty for her coaching program, the advanced coaching pro practicum. And I get to explore helping people gain their master coaching certification as an instructor in her programs. And she’s been an amazing mentor in helping me find a new part of myself as a mentor, coach. And so I feel so grateful to have the three of you here to talk about coaching, I think I’ve been I’ve been a coach for more for 23 years. And it’s not easy for me to find too many people that have been a coach longer than I have. But I think all of you have been so welcome to the experimental leader podcast. 

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It is so great to have you here.

Thanks. Nice to be here.

Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Well, I want to just open this conversation up. And I just wanted us to start by talking about how you have seen coaching change over the last 2020 plus years. And I’d love to start with Marita.

I think that one of the ways in which it has changed, and if I go back to the early beginnings, when I came, I was a burned out therapist, I’ve been a therapist for a while. And I came into coaching this, it was as if everything that I’ve done thus far came together in the coaching modality where we were literally looking ahead rather than in the rearview mirror the way we most often do in in therapeutic practice. So it came together for me in a wonderful way that everything I’ve done so far can be used repurposed in a slightly different way. That is evolutionary also. So I think that one of the things that was very prominent at that stage, and this was in the 2000s, was that, at that point, certainly in the US, there was a big challenge, where the therapeutic field felt that coaches now do a short training, or a cheaper training, and then, and then they end up doing therapy. So there was a little bit of a bump between the coaching world and the psychotherapeutic world or the mental health world. And it really was us who have been in that field, but feels like that was one of the first contributions that I could make as a therapist, to be able to sit, talking to other therapists and talking about how therapy actually has made me a better coach. But it’s a very different approach from what we used to do in, in therapeutic interventions. So I think that was a an eye opener for me in the beginning. And when I look at it now, where we see so many people from the mental health and therapeutic world, join the coaching industry, and then take that back into the therapeutic field in a very different creative way as well. So I think there’s a lot going on at the moment that we can talk about, but for me, that’s an arc that I’ve observed in the coaching industry, in the beginning as it came to be so curious to hear one who also feel about it more so.

Yeah, Libby do you want to weigh in?

Sure. And Darlene, is that okay, good. Sure. All right. I love what you said, Marina, I’m not a therapist, although I have had about two and a half decades of therapy. So maybe that counts for something. I think one of the things that I’ve seen, I feel like we’ve come full circle in in coaching. Back in the day, I think even the Harvard Business Review talked about the wild wild west of coaching, like everybody was just out there. So an FYI, I’ve been a coach before the ICF even was created. So like a dinosaur. But I think the first thing was we needed to get stickiness like we needed, like coaching, just getting out there when I lived in France for 26 years. And when I said I was a coach, they were like, No, are you a soccer coach? Are you a what, what are you talking about? was almost it was almost unheard of that, you know, coaching people, leaders, companies, you know, that just seemed out there and then then we got Tracking and Data and ROI and research that I think really solidified. The been a few days of coaching as a real Live tool modality, you know, way of being in, it wasn’t just something that anybody could hang up a shingle on. And I think kudos to the international coaching Federation, and to European mentoring and coaching council to really have held the reins well and brought the professional long. I think then what we’ve seen is this kind of, for better or worse, you know, the business people get a hold of it, and they what do they want to do they want to scale it. And while I think scaling and the democratization of coaching is great, I think then we start to get into the next piece, which is kind of it’s a big witness, like everybody’s a coach, right? And if everybody’s a coach, nobody’s a coach. Right? So what is our unique promise of value in the world? From that, and so, you know, then I think the risk for coaching is that the word goes out of favor, or it becomes mundane. And I think we’re at such a critical juncture in the world between climate and politics. And I don’t mean, internal domestic politics, but just, you know, authoritarianism and things like that, that what we need more of, is a kind of a coaching approach and empathetic listening, if everybody’s got a YouTube channel, no one is listening. So how can we bring this sort of intimate profession, um, into into the next place. So I think there’s been many stages, and it’s almost like we’re, we’re at a new cycle again.

I’m going to say, ditto, ditto to both things that, that were sent so far, because I’m in total agreement with everything that’s been said. When I first became a coach, I had been associate register at a university. And I had come to the point where that sort of annual cycle was getting on my nerves, because I’m an entrepreneurial kind of person. And so I went up to the took a leave of absence, because I knew I wanted to leave and picked up a magazine in family circle. And it talked about coaching. And it talked about coaching as a vehicle for helping people find more meaning and fulfillment in their life and work. And I said, I want to do that. And so that’s what brought me in, and like my colleagues here, I was there sort of for the first meeting of the International Coach Federation conference, and right from the beginning of the foundation, and it’s been exciting to be part of that. When I started coaching, I started as a personal coach, you know, because I wanted to help people find more fulfillment and meaning in their their life and work. And I think it’s kind of funny that now, I am a corporate and organizational development kind of coach, working primarily, while lots of places, but after a long, long circuit, and much in between working with the leadership of the university, where I originally was, when I went to coaching, and what I think that’s a personal story, but I think what’s different from then now, as I was leaving it for something that was brand new, and never been heard of, and how integrated coaching is now, so that in a faculty that I’m working with the leader of that faculty with really ambitious goals for raising the profile of that school, and everything saw coaching as a fundamental vehicle for developing the leadership to make that possible. And integrated that coaching as as really in the foundation, coaching and storytelling, as the foundation of the leadership program that they had me develop there. And then working with the leaders, how much they took off with it and how they grew and, and changed and even the, the I’m losing the word but how they came together, seeing something like the challenges that early career, women in STEM were finding, and the people of the coaching program for leadership, on their own, created a coaching team, and started studying coaching for the development of that. And so, you know, from being this fringe thing off on the side, it being really understood as something that can build a culture that can build leadership that can can really be infiltrated through through an organization or maybe not an organization but at least, you know, a faculty or a division. I think that’s huge in terms of just the scale and integration. And I think I would, I would balance that with what Libby was saying, right? Because the scale and the commercialization. And it being sort of a tool for getting more out of people, like all of that kind of thing and a tool of, you know, oppression or getting people always to be just doing the same thing mechanisation. That’s also weighing there, but I’ve been very excited to see the growth of how it can be seen and used.

I think it’s so interesting what all of you have said, and I echo much of it, I also, I think my big pet peeve is the people, it continues to be the same pet peeve for the last 20 years, it’s the people who wake up one day and decide they want to hang a shingle and call themselves a coach, without any skill or knowledge or training, as and because they’re good at selling. They become the voice of our industry. And so I’ll speak that voice here, too, that that’s, you know, but they seem to be getting more traction now. So I’ve had conversations with people as I’ve been trying to learn skills in E commerce, I’ve been offered coaching at much higher rates than most ICF certified coaches charge. For people who never bothered to get credentialed, who don’t actually offer coaching, they offer consulting. And I just continued to be sad, because those people could become coaches, and could offer the skill of coaching in those industries. But they are able to offer it faster, they’re more profitable if they don’t train. And so so that kind of makes that’s actually one of the changes I’ve seen, that I’m seeing right now in coaching that the best paid people are people who woke up and don’t actually learn the craft of coaching.

Facebook marketplace has ads have a lot to answer for how easy it is.

I think that’s right, I actually think yeah, and and they’re buying in, people are buying into a dream of fast money. And, and the people are selling a dream of Fast Money, which I’m not sure that that people that anyone’s pulling off. But that’s the dream that people are willing to invest in, and the product that people are able to market. So which I think coaching has a lot more to offer. So I think coaching gets tarnished a little in that process. I do see I have seen that people come to me later. Because they realize they actually want coaching. And they’ve hired a couple of those people that didn’t work out and then they come back to they realize they’ve actually like some skill behind the coach they hire. So that’s fun to see that may actually be i It gives me some hope that it will be a short term trend that people get sucked in to the dream without the substance, that they’ll that they’ll realize they like the substance also, and then look for the substance.

It’s so interesting. This conversation reminds me of the work of Arnold Mindell process work Institute in Portland, and was talking one day with IBM. He was he’s one of my mentors. And he was making a strange comment. He said when you think about a coaching session or a conversation with somebody, usually, in the first couple of minutes of that conversation, the thing will emerge that needs to be worked on. And that needs to get traction in the end. And it took me years to understand what he was talking about. But if we look at this conversation, where the conversation started, but we don’t know that that is the emerging pattern. The conversation started with me talking about the rift between therapy, coaching, where the therapeutic world was saying you do our stuff, but you’re not trained for it. And in the evolution of country, we can see that this is where what is beginning to happen now. That therapy was to the fact that coaching was an unregulated industry. And right now, the biggest thing we’re not talking about where we are now just yet, but we can see how that’s the piece that then eMERGE is now emerging in the coaching industry, where everything that the ICF emcc that we are talking about is pointing and moving the needle in the direction of becoming regulating by and regulating who can call themselves a coach. Because the piece that without finger pointing, but the piece that we are talking about at the moment is anybody can call themselves a coach at the moment. And the same thing that you talk about the VI was a serious tennis player and I had a tennis academy at some stage where I was a tennis coach. So the what is the coach is it so we could see all the but this new emergence now in the direction that you’re talking about. And it was present in the very first opening of our conversation, regulation of the industry. A pointer there. And now here we are, in that conversation, and in that work.

You’re really interesting. Yeah. So my next question for you all. And I’ll, I’ll point this to Libby first, um, what’s been one of the most challenging things about your career personally, either with coaching or you know, business, wherever you want to go with this.

Sure. So I’ll just say COVID was terrible for our business. I do know, some coaches and who thrived during COVID. Like they somehow that they were brought in, it was a real roller coaster. For us, we had a lot of stops and starts and that was very painful. You know, I was lucky to be able to keep all the staff. So you know, financially, I would just say that was a black swan event that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for not that anybody I think we could, could possibly do that. I think the hardest thing for me personally, is because I run a business with a lot of associate coaches and I also run a coach training school. I’m, I’m sort of the head chicken all the time. And so there’s, there’s a little bit of it’s lonely, and I don’t mean lonely at the top, because there’s not that anymore, pretty flat organization. But I bring people more into projects than, than people bring me into projects. So there’s a little bit of this kind of wistful, like puppy dog nose on the glass of thinking that, you know, other people are out there collaborating more. So I think that, that there’s just something about coaching, that’s very intimate. Again, from from what we just said, that when running in or, you know, running a business can get in the way of having those relationships with people, you know, mixed relationships with people. So yeah, I would say that, that’s, that’s probably the only other thing is I need to ride horse more horses. So this is my goal in I have two goals ride more, and only do things that bring me joy, which is C point one for that.

And I, I can weigh in here, I, I I refuse to stay in this conversation firmly in the role of facilitator. That seems a lonely place. So I think I think for me, the most challenging thing about my career has been being a solopreneur for most of my career, you know, the loneliness. I I think that after I wrote my book and 2020, I brought on, you know, a full time tech person. And that has been really fulfilling to have a collaborator in my business that it it, I’m not even sure I don’t think it’s even profitable. It’s just funner. And, and, and it brings me joy, to do work with others. And I, I you know, I think I make many of my business decisions now about does it involve others is there collaboration is there it’s funny because you think that talking to people all day long, wouldn’t be lonely. But for those who are are listening to the conversation, it’s not a two way conversation coaching. It’s so it’s a container for a conversation about one person’s life and so, it’s really nice to have, I have I have clients who are like, can we just get coffee sometime? And I’m like, Sure, we can get coffee but you’re gonna say to me, Hey, how are you? How are your children? What’s going on with you? It’s not watching.

I just want to I just want to interject here. I called a friend of mine in Paris this morning. I’ve known him for 30 years. And I proactively called and I’m going to Paris, I wanted to talk to him about, you know, he’s invited me to stay this place and everything, I had things to say. And when I, when he picked when I was on the phone, he spent the whole time talking about himself. And then when he was done, he was like, okay, you know, see you later. And I’m like, what is it about us that makes? That makes it okay, I wanted to, I wanted to wring his neck afterwards.

Because I think we’re good at it. Like we’re good at our jobs and edit it. And I know, in my coaching when I have a coach, it feels really good for someone to talk about me for an hour.

Maybe we need to be better at interrupting.

Skillful interruption as part of the competencies. Yeah, exactly.

Didn’t get it right, finding that little breath and go right for it.

Yeah, Darlene or Marita, do you want to weigh in on the challenging? Like what’s?

Yes, I will weigh in on a challenge you but I want to violently agree with what is being said about that lowly? Half. And it’s one of the things that we found, when we did the research on for our book, our system is part of leadership was that the feedback from leaders that we that done our training and did really from a more systemic view, we’re looking at things, we’re talking about how when they can lean into their Teads without having the answers, which is part of what we talked about the system’s inspired leadership, because leadership is a role that belongs to the system. And at any given moment in time, somebody has an answer different from mine, that rolls through. So that piece by I think the term that I want to take a little bit is, I think, the most challenging thing in yes to all of what has been talked about. But I think the most challenging part I’m sitting in right now, in the US, I was born and raised in South Africa during during the apartheid era. And the biggest challenge that I see in coaching at the moment, is around decolonizing, the coaching industry. And one of my biggest challenges is that I am a white female CEO. And it’s one of the things that I’m aware of as the four of us are talking that again, it’s it’s that diversity issue, and how do we how do we decolonize? How do we bring different systemic equity? I think it’s a huge challenge. There are different challenges in different countries, and in different cultures. I was talking to a partner in Turkey at the moment that we have begun to forget about what’s happening in Turkey after the earthquake. But the devastation continues. And I think one of the biggest industries a little bit. Also challenges is what you talked about living with COVID. And because we’re a global organization, the different challenges that shows up in different countries, and a call for coaching, but I think the overarching challenge for the industry is how do we decolonize? How do we do it differently? And bring in different diversity?

Yeah, I just want to say that for what it’s worth, I think all of us in coaching, we have diversity and merit scholarships, I would venture to say that we have one of the most diverse cohorts coming through our level one, level two and level three programs right now and and that’s a shout out to Pam reco, who’s on our Diversity Committee for helping us and basically putting our money where our mouth is. And we just had a dei J class as, as the as the ICF is saying now that this is a competency we need to be able to say those conversations are available and I can handle them or not. You know it we have to also own up to where no one I can’t.

Yes. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. And again, it’s one of the reasons why in our mission and vision we we took a little bit of a balcony view and started talking about systemic equity, this systemic equity has, it’s a broader view, since we sit with the worldview and the right different pockets, but the gender issues, also plays into into systemic equity, whichever one we are looking at. So I’m mostly sitting in the fire with a Black Lives Matter issues in the US. And I agree with you a little bit that we are working in the direction of bringing and doing whatever we can to get different representation and more representation. But it’s there’s the there still is the time spirit of the 1000s of people standing behind every black person that gets shot or that get what that is speaking this out. And it’s a long journey. And how do we do that? Without fixing it in the same way that we created? And how do we do it without judging those that we think are wrong? Because they are? They’re against diversity? So how do I do it in such a way? That is not the same blame and the same aggression and the same ugliness? That things happened in the past? I think that is one of the challenges for us as coaches in the industry, how do we walk the talk of that?

How do you transcend and include?

Yes. We just participated in Loretta Ross’s course on calling in it’s actually Loretta Ross is the host of Atlanta loan Tran was the creator of the phrase. And I’ll just I’ll shout that program out. It’s an amazing program on how to do human rights work with love and honor and respect and calling people in the course is running again in August, and it’s $20. Because they keep the price low and accessible. There’s an option to add more to the price, which I did. Because I thought, wow, that’s really inexpensive. I thought, Oh, wait, if I think that, then I’m the one who’s supposed to add the more at the end. And, but it was a fantastic, it’s a fantastic program with some actionable practice sessions that we’re also incredibly thought provoking. So that’s a cool space to look at.

It’s it’s interesting, like being in this conversation, which is a very high stakes conversation, you know, and how can we show up with our gifts and our, what we have to bring, but also opened everything that we don’t understand, right? And how to how to even begin to structure that as a body of coaches. And I was thinking, as you’re saying that how deep and powerful it is, and how my take on that same question when the entirely different direction. In terms of more selfishly, when you said the when you asked about the challenges that we’ve seen or faced, and the first one that I would say for myself, is that I’ve spent my whole career being just a little bit ahead of my time. And I think that my colleagues here, probably the same, that it’s a challenging thing, always to be bringing something new, right and not under, understood and to try and create that opening and to develop that dialogue and to have people see the potential and bring it in. So it’s always almost everything I’ve done has been from that place, right of taking something from the fringe to the to the mainstream and, and the challenge of always being on that pioneering edge, even as you know, we were speaking now, right? How to be how to be part of that. The other thing that’s been a real challenge for me is how to scale individual coaching to make it pay as a business. So I started off as a, as a life coach working with individuals and still have never been able to figure out how to make that work the way I would want to work it in a sustained, you know, in a sustainable job. I mean not unless not without having an extremely elite clientele, you know, with a lot of money so I haven’t I haven’t done that and I found myself in said sometimes by default, because I have a systemic view and other gifts right going into too. organizations are places where there is a structure that will pay in support that, but that’s always, there’s always a tension in that. Because the people in those organizations are always means to the end and the end so that the the investment and the measurement and all of that kind of stuff is the value of that person to whatever the larger entity is, is trying to move. And that sometimes aligned and sometimes not aligned. But that sense of being a utility, is something that personally I find very, very challenging, right? Because wanting to really have that, that freedom of having that person’s unfolding and their, their vision and their skills and that be able to, to flower and find expression. And that’s what drew me to it, what I what I most love to do. And I’m not saying I can’t and don’t do that in sort of organizations, but it always it always feels like yeah, I always wish it was possible to, for more people to afford coaching in a more pure space.

I want to combine a couple of questions now. And you know, the mentor coach and me is like, Oh, you’re gonna stack questions, Melanie. But I’m going to because I want to combine them so you can answer the them the way you want. I want to ask you what’s been the most rewarding thing about your career and what excites you about coaching now. And I’ll start with Marita.

I love to hate you hate you Love you.

Love you, love you Marita to.

I think COVID One of the good things that came from COVID Was that because of the isolation that COVID created and careful ways in which we once a week or whatever it was going to the stores, I will get to the question to answer. One of the things that I started doing was I started thinking about how do I create social construct? And the work that we do in coaching? How do I create it in the grocery store? So I started this thing that when I go to the grocery store, I would have conversations with the personal check me out with the personal effective bag, and we would joke and or I would talk with the people behind me and and I think for me, that was those were experiences where I suddenly realized that we hold coaching, sometimes too much as a profession. What does it look like on the street? What does it look like with ordinary people? And I think that provided me with highlights not only from a social construct perspective, but from that place where Wow, this makes that happen to all of us on the street, not just in that paid situation even if pay is not as great as you’re talking about that. But how do we do that like you can cut this out if you want to but here’s an example i i certainly store one day and there was a guy that check me out who by now was he sees me says freight John, it’s your that hear you my first client today. And it’s so we did our thing. And then as he was checking out I noticed somebody coming in from the side and there was a big milk jug sitting on the corner of the of the checkout counter. And the person grabbed that jug and slammed on the table and said, Thank you for forgetting my milk and walked out. And he looked at me said I have never seen that person before. I have no idea what she’s talking about. And I started putting together that she must have forgotten or somebody must have forgotten the packet in her bag or whatever it was. She got home in the muck wasn’t there and then that kind of thing. But I watch him this being rattled. And at some stage I was busy with my stuff he could barely concentrate. And I at some stage I said you know, I wonder what happened to her this morning before she came here. And he stopped and he said I never thought of that. That is Would we call a coaching moment? I think we don’t often do it enough out there. But in another podcast, we’re talking about family as the last exam, I can be a really good coach. But there are times and evenings and nights that you do not want to see me with my. So I’m sorry, I’m gonna go to the minute small things. But for me, I think those are the moments that I have a dream that in post my life, this is what will happen between people on the street.

I think they’re, I’m trying to, I’m looking around my bookshelf to see I can find, I think it’s Jeremy Fox, who wrote a book called The Empathic civilization. Yes. And, and it’s just, it’s monstrous, hundreds and hundreds of pages ever, I can admit to having finished it all. But I every once in awhile, like, strum through it. And I think that that’s, if if, if coaching is the tip of the iceberg of what is possible, between people, then we should be teaching coaching skills in kindergarten. And, you know, I think in everywhere, like, I happen to have spent 26 years in France, and I came back to New Jersey, and New Jersey always has a little bit of a chip on its shoulder of not being New York, right. And it’s like, and, you know, it’s like you looking at me, I’m looking at you, right, there’s the post COVID, it feels like everybody is just waiting for the their milk bottle, not to be in their, in their bag. And it can be hard. So I would love to see our profession. Even have, you know, just like as medicine has multi many disciplines and things is that we continue to have multidisciplinary type coaching where it marries itself with different other modalities. And, you know, maybe I don’t know if anybody’s doing coaching with children, but even just teaching those skills because we I think we, we used to think that those skills would get transmitted by parents or family or things like that. And I think there’s, there’s no guarantee anymore, that that is. And I think what excites me, Melanie is I would I just because I’m terrible, but I wish this was the last podcast I was on. And I don’t mean that in a terrible way. But I, I want to invite you to my beach house and have us all be together. I think that’s one of the things that I’m seeing in our clients is that they’re hungry now, for the face to face connection. And I think that we will, I think, if anything, that we have a possibility of reinforcing. not mandating, but reinforcing the community ties. So going back to your supermarket example, I think we have an obligation in our in our profession to be spokespeople for that kind of empathy. Kindness doesn’t mean that we can’t be upset or have conflicts or things like that. It’s not Pollyanna-ish, but it’s actually the fundamentals of social connection, belonging, inclusion, etc.

So, I’d like to coach more politicians to by the way, might not be skillful enough for all of them. So there’s a lot and I love your reference to to children and making it available easier and earlier, because I think kids I’ve seen how fam, have some of our coaches that use it for their families. The kids get it before the coach parent does. And it reminds me of that Einstein quote that says until you can explain something to a six year old, you yourself are not understanding it properly. So there’s something and that’s what I’ve achieved at lean.

Picking up on the Libby’s childhood conversations. As was mentioned earlier, I was involved in especially in the early years of the Adler School of coaching and building on it Larian principles, and Adler’s work and philosophies and his encouragement, etc. were first most adapted in the childhood, the Childhood Education field. And so I was just it made me think, again about those connections early on in the school, we had piloted some coaching for children around that, around that. And I don’t know where that’s gone, because I’m not really involved in that world. But I just made me think about, again, ways to do that. And I know some independent school systems do but how to in a place where they’re even banning books in in schools, you know, I went to see are you there? God, it’s me, Margaret, the movie last night. And the fact you know, and I was at the librarian and my first career so I just seeing the power of that, and how gel zealously guarding the impact on kids and trying to sort of keep them corralled, in a particular mindset is happening. So I mean, there’s so many challenges to, to trying to address kids of the culture. So you’ve just got my mind swirling away from the, the original question and into the possibilities. So will you repeat that? Repeat the question for me now…

What excites you about coaching now, and what has been the most rewarding thing about your career?

All right. So what excites me about coaching is really what I what I said earlier, about how it’s possible now to be invited into an organization with a broad remit, for how coaching can be, can be used and integrated into the fabric of that and to see the multiplied. Blessing blessings have that all the spin offs of it going, going everywhere, and that’s just the most thrilling thing, especially for someone who’s always on the cutting edge to now be seeing some of the Reaping, and the multiplication of that has been pretty great. The, but that’s not what’s been most exciting to me. Although that’s great. It’s been again, personal, right? And back to that, that, from, from my own fulfillment, is that coaching has opened the world to be, you know, I went from a job where I was an administrator, and, you know, a large organization, and out into the wild west of coaching that was just emerging. And it’s taken me to meet so many fascinating people into, you know, working in it. I mean, I’ve worked in agriculture in Norway, you know, and in hospitality in the Middle East and in all of the different places that, that it, that it’s taken me and to be pioneering new, new work as much as I said, that’s one of the challenge, but to be pioneering new work, meeting new people expanding the world, it’s, it’s provided that to me in a way that I can’t imagine any other career doing. So I’ve just, yeah, it has allowed me the fulfillment in life that I most wish for my clients.

It is a kind of a cool job.

It’s, um, it’s so these it’s so interesting to hear all of you and, and as I said, at the beginning of the show, how much each of you are mentors to me, I, I often find myself as a coach, I think of myself as a bit of a goody two shoes, like, you can’t really hire me to go like, kill your colleagues in a high, you know, fast paced tech world, like, I’m not going to be your Machiavellian partner. I’m, I’m way too. I want to like find common ground and, and be nice. Like, I’m just not all that and, and, and I I wouldn’t have thought I got that from anyone but then like, you guys are all kumbaya er about children and coaching and like, wow, like, of course, I’m that like, I know, I know where my roots are. Anyway, I and I’m as kumbaya as all of you. i i run in three year cycles, and I published my book and 2020 I think I’m at the end of a cycle. So I don’t know what I’m excited about next. It’s interesting. And it’s there’s always like this dead period where I’m like, Oh my gosh, I’ll never have another thing And I think that’s kind of where I am right now. So it’s interesting to hear what you’re excited about. I do keep having this sort of thought in the back of my head. That is something like, I think there’s like a deeper conversation between people. Like, we get to about three questions, and then people wander off. And what if we went deeper? Like, what if the just whatever you were talking about, you got more curious for another few questions. And I don’t know what those questions are. And I don’t know. But it’s like, people, it’s like, they get ouchy when they go, like three questions in and then they, it’s like they they touched a hot stove, and they run away like that was enough. And and so I keep being curious about what if people had a conversation that was just like, five questions deep or something, and I and I don’t know how to facilitate those or how to, but that sort of, I don’t know if it’s coaching, or it’s just talking or it’s just like going to a campfire and sitting around. But it’s the thing that’s kind of calling to me. And also in coaching, like to just go a little like to keep asking those questions that go a little deeper, a little deeper, a little deeper. And it’s amazing what you can do in 10 minutes, I’m learning if you don’t shy away or act like there’s a red hot poker. So that’s kind of what’s exciting to me about coaching and teaching like, wow, I didn’t know, who knew I thought I wasn’t a teacher. I think as long as it’s really. If I don’t have to deliver curriculum, I could be a teacher. So I’m excited about that, too.

Melanie? Yes. I would just like to hop in there just because you use that kumbaya phrase, phrase to refer to us. And I just that just landed with me. A little self depreciating. I’m so sorry. No, no, it didn’t. I don’t, don’t be sorry. Because it’s good, right? Because I had a reaction to it, which is wonderful, which which their reaction is I think that is kickass brave, ah, to be to have these aspirations, to dare to think on those scales, you know, to challenge the, you know, real world, orthodoxy even as unchangeable kind of as, as, as being, you know, the, a little bit in the just in the woods in the fireplace, you know, instead of in the fryer, and especially when I was listening to Marita speaking earlier, right? I just thought how, how brave to think so ambitiously?

There’s Have you ever heard of the back back tail test?

So I remember the name but not at all what it means.

Yeah. So it’s it’s from. So the Bechtel test is from Alison vecto. And it’s about porch. It’s about analyzing a film to pass the Bechdel Test, a work feature, at least two women, and these women must talk to each other. And their conversation must concern something other than a man. And, and I was just thinking about how amazing it is to talk here with women about coaching. And I was thinking about, you know, how international all of you are, and how little we’ve talked about that, and how it’s in the background, but it’s not the landscape. And the landscape is quiet and immediate somehow in our conversation. And it’s just a very different conversation to have with the four of us. And so I’m just appreciating that and the Bechtel test just came to mind of the richness of the conversation that we had and how special it is to me.

You made me think of something and I have no idea so we’re now dialoguing with questions or something. But if there was a moment for me, it came back when you talked about how you international experience how much international experience there is here. And when I talked earlier about coaching, starting from mostly whites, I misspoke the language because English is not my first language. I talked about decolonizing of coaching. It’s decolonization, right? That’s the correct word. It’s decolonization. And these are the ways in which even those of us who seem to be so confident, and so whatever we catch ourselves, there’s a moment of, oh, my gosh, it is a podcast that she can’t edit that one out. And I used to in that stuff, I was going to put another word with starting with an S there, but how we have our own inner judgments in so many different ways, and how it’s not always safe to talk about our own differences. So it was just you reminded me when you asked him, What is account do remember what you asked, because there was so essence for me, but there was that moment, when I realized that there was something that I did that was a little bit embarrassing. Oh, you’re talking about something? Or you’re asking if we were talking about something that’s uncomfortable, it was like, Man, I abused the English language there. And I was looking for the word I was absent for a while there, because I couldn’t, I couldn’t figure out what, oh, it’s decolonization. Okay, I got it. That’s probably it.

Totally, it’s so funny to hear, you know, and hear you say that, I think it’s one. I don’t know about you, Melanie. But I didn’t notice. And two, it’s like, I just see you as just a competent, like, I’ll consider all wise women, and maybe, or at least the three of you. So the fact that even if even if your level of competency, we sometimes stop studying, you know, it’s like, that’s the whole, you know, you get to the human and you get to see. I have this I don’t know why this is, your I have this card. And it says, well behaved women rarely make history. And so I want us all to be really not well behaved, you know, and I think that’s something that I like to bring into my coaching is a little bit of a reverence of, you know, it’s just me.

Totally with you, they’re totally there.

But well, and, and Marita, I want to say that when we started doing our podcast, we had our three year anniversary in March, and for the first year, you know, we had people on it was kind of people we knew, and we started to realize it was really easy for us to have cisgendered white men, they had books, they wanted to be on the podcast, and I realized that I wanted other voices. And I realized if I was gonna have other voices, I had to become more comfortable, to say things wrong to talk about race to talk about gender to talk, like, I just might get it wrong, but I had to be brave. And I’m sure I’ve gotten things wrong over the years. But we really try to keep our platform open to people who don’t look like me. And and it’s it’s been a journey, like it’s, it’s, we focus on it intentionally and continually. And you know, it part of part of it is that there has to be, it has to be safe to fail.

Well, and again, I think I brought the example, not from a purely place, but from that place where I want for all of us, starting with myself, Do I have a different? It just empathetic understanding of what happens across from us. It doesn’t matter how competent or how self assured or how whatever anybody presents every single human being as a deep sensitivity that I think the more unskillful people get, it’s because the more protection they put over those in sensitivities that we then begin to judge as them doing nasty stuff in social media, but what is it that is being protected underneath? So I think that there’s just if we can bring more compassion for knowing that humanity, which you’ve said, Melanie, we all fail.

We’re gonna fail, fail.

Failing is part of what gets us moving forward. So just but how do we normalize that more and more and more, I know that there is no there there, all of us are going to have that experience some time or the other.

So I want to give you each a chance to say, where people can find you. So where can people find you? Darlene…

do your best to reach me by email at darlene@lifescapers.com Let’s like landscapers with a life instead of land.

Perfect. Yeah, Libby? 

Well, where you can find me in two places. For our leadership development and executive coaching work. You can find us at www.integralcoaches.com. And for our level one, level two, and now Level Three certified ICF certified programs you can have to be at www.advancedcoachingpracticum.com.

Thanks. Marita?

I think for me, the email is a good place to start with as well. It’s marita@crrglobal.com. And then the www.crrglobal.com website have access to all our programs and everything that is in process and podcasts and resources. And then our latest book on systems inspired leadership. We got some best seller status here in the in the Americas. And we now have been I don’t know what the status is now. But system inspired leadership has been a number one under leadership books in the Netherlands for a while and now translated into German and Dutch and Chinese and Japanese and systems by leadership is so much of the expression of what I think we hold and believe.

That’s amazing.

Such a phenomenal contribution to our field and I just want to honor that.

Thank you so much, all of you.

—

Happy International Coaches week to you. Thank you for the contributions you make to the world of coaching and thank you for being on my show.

Important Links: 

• www.integralcoaches.com
• www.advancedcoachingpracticum.com
• www.crrglobal.com

Marita Fridjhon

Marita Fridjhon, born in South Africa and based in the USA, is co-founder of CRR Global. Marita has an academic background with degrees in medical and psychiatric social work as well as family systems therapy.

Growing up in South Africa during the apartheid era and being a faculty member at Cape Town University profoundly impacted her and created the basis of exploration in systemic change. That became the driver to embark on cross-cultural research, including two years on the Amazon River and work in Brazil, Perú, Columbia, the British West Indies, and Puerto Rico, to name but a few. The outcome of these experiences provided training and focus on corporate, NGO, and government work using mediation, process work consulting, and coaching.

Together with her partner, Faith Fuller, she founded the international training and consulting business CRR Global, home of the legendary ORSC curriculum.

As CEO of CRR Global, Marita heads up a global distributed leadership team with partners in fourteen different countries and a global training faculty. She also develops curriculums and provides team coaching.
Marita is a highly sought-after global speaker and is the lead author of the article “Relationship Systems Intelligence: Transforming the Face of Leadership” and co-author of the book “Creating Intelligent Teams” and “Systems Inspired Leadership”.

Darlene Chrissley

Darlene Chrissley works with high performing leaders who have made the choice to invest in their own development. They understand that the mindset, skillset and strategies that got them to where they are today aren’t going to take them to the next level. And in the world of business the rule is learn, grow, or be left behind.

Leaders often seek out a coach when they take on a new role or a new assignment that will stretch their current capabilities, when the organization is undergoing major change, or when they find themselves bumping up against their limitations and realize they have to make changes in the way they are operating if they are to thrive.

Darlene is a master coach with twenty years of experience working in a range of industries in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. She was a founding faculty member of the Adler School of Professional Coaching and the International Coach Federation Toronto chapter.

As a coach, Darlene’s style is strategic, intuitive, creative, warm and direct. Every coaching interaction is highly personalized to the individual leader and their context.

In addition to her work as a leadership coach, Darlene is a writer, inspirational speaker and performer. Her book Conversations for Power and Possibility was published in 2012. In 2016 her solo show, In Chaos I Trust, was featured at the Toronto Soulo Theatre Festival.
When not travelling the world she makes her home in Hamilton, Ontario.

Libby Robinson

Libby is the Managing Partner of Integral (www.integralcoaches.com), an award-winning leadership and executive coaching company working with Fortune 1000 companies globally. A former Wall Street Banker, aerospace engineer and national champion equestrian, Libby has worked for 26 years with senior leaders globally, helping to bring more mindfulness, resilience and greater capacity to brilliant and ambitious leaders. Libby has been an Master Certified Coach since 2009.

Integral uses a multi-disciplinary approach to foster deep personal change in leaders and to evoke “conscious leadership” cultures for their clients. Libby’s latest venture has been to launch BackFeed+, a new app that helps individuals and organizations get better, faster feedback using a method backed by the latest neuroscience data about how individuals receive feedback with less stress. You can learn more about BackFeed+ at www.backfeedapp.com.

Libby is also the Director of Coach Training for the Advanced Coaching Practicum, an ACSTH accredited coach training program with 5 tracks from ICF initial certification, through to a Gaining MCC and Master Coaches Community.

www.advancedcoachingpracticum.com The ACP has provided dozens of scholarships to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the coaching world.
Libby lived 26 years in Paris and now lives near the beach in New Jersey, with her son, Justin and her dog, Nita.

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