About

my story | my training | my professional credentials

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

— Oscar Wilde

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all

Oscar Wilde

Here’s where you can find out a little more about me.

rod francis coach

Born in Australia, as a relative youngster I found myself drawn into what became a long and genuinely fulfilling international performing, creative and teaching career. It was my first real taste of vocation — of calling. A meaningful way of being rather than just a doing. When performing, I just felt complete. As though I’d somehow found exactly what I was made for at that very point in my life. In truth it more often felt like it had found me!

My early career led me through the elite national academy of the Australian Ballet and then onwards professionally throughout the globe. Never a star but always in work, I landed on stages, opera houses and screens around the world for well over a decade. Whenever anyone asked ‘What do you do?’ my response was a no-brainer. It wasn’t what I did but what I was. Nevertheless, in what seemed like a blink I learned the tough lesson all elite athletes encounter: Early comes the day when it’s no longer healthy, practical or even possible to keep at it. Young as you are, the body itself simply says ‘Enough!’.

When that day seemed upon me, It seemed that this was the point for me to get proper ‘serious’ in life. While the performing arts are highly creatively rewarding they are rarely so financially, and it now seemed like that time to go chase down the money dragon had finally arrived. But how?

Well I explored some interesting career threads (plus went back to school and college for some book-learnin’) until fate led me into entrepreneurship establishing a busy design-led business in the design-savvy epicenter of London where I was then living.

Successful as that became, it equally became clear to me that something wasn’t right. Inside me I mean. Despite the offices, staff, full order books and national press coverage, I felt empty and like I was in some other guys life. That missing something was a sense of meaning and fulfilment. The very engine which had driven my performing career—what I was and not simply what I did—I’d unwittingly overlooked to pursue an inherited mirage of success and security as an entrepreneur and general go-hard business guy. Not to say these fine callings are ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, but what I realized was they sure as heck weren’t the route to fulfillment and success for me. I was literally in some other guys life. What to do?

When you’re in a hole, don’t keep digging!

I took time to reflect and get some much needed clarity. A large part of my journey of discovery and fulfillment was coaching. Once I’d experienced coaching’s alchemical potential for catalyzing deep insight and empowering change it was a no-brainer to see it was to be my next path in life as well. After training I finally moved professionally into coaching more than a decade and a half ago. I was recruited early on into working on coaching programs, now spent over a decade developing and leading programs in Europe and the USA and have trained more than 2000 industry professionals in my methods over that time. I’m professionally credentialed with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a Certified Focusing Professional and Focusing Teacher with the International Focusing Institute.

My range of clients runs from CEO’s and presidents of international media conglomerates right through to avant-garde performance artists, composers, writers and stay-at-home-parents yet the common themes with all of them is change, growth, transition and fulfillment. My coaching skillset owes much to the incredible, enlightened teachers and mentors I’ve had the good fortune to work with, as it does to my diversity of experience and interests including all those seeming wrong turns and misses. Mastery, if we we can develop the right mindset, is built upon integrating all our life experience.

Mindfulness underpins much of my work. I began my personal meditation practice around 40 years ago, have sat many silent retreats mostly in the western Insight tradition and continue to do so regularly. My guiding teacher is Yanai Postelnik. I’m a CFM Qualified MBSR Teacher with the Center for Mindfulness at UMass. I’ve also completed the Search Inside Yourself  mindfulness and emotional intelligence (EI) leadership program when it was still Google’s inhouse offer.

Alongside my private coaching practice I have created and lead the Emergent Coach Training program, the culmination of my years of experience and a radical innovation in coaching methodology which integrates cutting-edge cognitive and contemplative science, Focusing, somatics, narrative, multiplicity, developmental psychology and natural world interactions with International Coaching Federation (ICF) competencies. I offer this through InterActualizer. Go there to download a free copy of my ebook Coaching at the Edge.

I currently live on a mountain in southern Appalachia with my wife and dog—as close to the wild as life currently allows. I love learning languages, hiking, discovering and telling old stories, following the delightfully arcane game of cricket and getting my hands dirty in the yard.

rod-sig-copy

Rod Francis PCC

 

Well I explored some interesting career threads (plus went back to school and college for some book-learnin’) until fate led me into entrepreneurship establishing a busy design-led business in the design-savvy epicenter of London where I was then living.

Successful as that became, it equally became clear to me that something wasn’t right. Inside me I mean. Despite the offices, staff, full order books and national press coverage, I felt empty and like I was in some other guys life. That missing something was a sense of meaning and fulfilment. The very engine which had driven my performing career—what I was and not simply what I did—I’d unwittingly overlooked to pursue an inherited mirage of success and security as an entrepreneur and general go-hard business guy. Not to say these fine callings are ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, but what I realized was they sure as heck weren’t the route to fulfillment and success for me. I was literally in some other guys life. What to do?

When you’re in a hole, don’t keep digging!

I took time to reflect and get some much needed clarity. A large part of my journey of discovery and fulfillment was coaching. Once I’d experienced coaching’s alchemical potential for catalyzing deep insight and empowering change it was a no-brainer to see it was to be my next path in life as well. After training I finally moved professionally into coaching more than a decade and a half ago. I was recruited early on into working on coaching programs, now spent over a decade developing and leading programs in Europe and the USA and have trained more than 2000 industry professionals in my methods over that time. I’m professionally credentialed with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of the International Focusing Institute.

My range of clients runs from CEO’s and presidents of international media conglomerates right through to avant-garde performance artists, composers, writers and stay-at-home-parents yet the common themes with all of them is change, growth, transition and fulfillment. My coaching skillset owes much to the incredible, enlightened teachers and mentors I’ve had the good fortune to work with, as it does to my diversity of experience and interests including all those seeming wrong turns and misses. Mastery, if we we can develop the right mindset, is built upon integrating all our life experience.

Mindfulness underpins much of my work. I began my personal meditation practice around 40 years ago, have sat many silent retreats mostly in the western Insight tradition and continue to do so regularly. My guiding teacher is Yanai Postelnik. I’m a dharma leader with Chattanooga Insight under the direction of Thanissara and Kittisaro and am a CFM Qualified MBSR Teacher with the Center for Mindfulness at UMass. I’ve also completed the Search Inside Yourself  mindfulness and emotional intelligence (EI) leadership program when it was still Google’s inhouse offer.

Alongside my private coaching practice I have created and lead the Emergent Coach Training program, the culmination of my years of experience and a radical innovation in coaching methodology which integrates cutting-edge cognitive and contemplative science, Focusing, somatics, narrative, multiplicity, developmental psychology and natural world interactions with International Coaching Federation (ICF) competencies. I offer this through InterActualizer. Go there to download a free copy of my ebook Coaching at the Edge.

I’m the host and producer of the The Story of Change, a monthly show on US National Public Radio (NPR) which explores all areas of development, change and transformation.

I currently live on a mountain in southern Appalachia with my wife and dog—as close to the wild as life currently allows. I love learning languages, hiking, discovering and telling old stories, following the delightfully arcane game of cricket and getting my hands dirty in the yard.

rod-sig-copy

Rod Francis PCC

Before you go…a suggestion!

It may well be that you feel I’m simply not the coach for you and that is always fine. For coaching to be effective it’s important to have a good fit. However please know that the world of coaching is full of snares and pitfalls. Sadly there are no regulations on the use of the term coach and as a result you may have someone with years of professional experience and education hanging out a shingle beside another whose entire training consisted of  two hours somewhere on the internet watching youtube clips and munching Cheetos. One of the few ways you can figure out this puzzle is to check if the coach is a credentialed member of one of the recognized professional coaching bodies such as the ICF, the Association for Coaching (AC) or the EMCC or at least completed a program accredited by them. Being a credentialed member demonstrates that your coach has been judged as competent, that they have continued to prove their chops and that they abide by a code of professional ethical conduct.

Sadly the rule here is the same as in most of life: caveat emptor or Buyer Beware!

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