Life Alchemy: Coaching, Change & Tranformation
your answers about coaching | how I coach | my coaching philosophy
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
— Albert Einstein
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking
Albert Einstein
Coaching is a collaborative process for accessing greater clarity, wisdom and creativity, and for engineering potential into reality.
Who I coach
If you’re committed, courageous and willing to bring your whole self to the process, then you’re who I coach. The key themes with my clients are change, transformation, personal and professional optimization and transition.
How I coach
We start by clarifying our destination. Clarity is key when setting off on any journey and no less than when setting off into the rich interior of one’s hopes, dreams and aspirations! We also establish what will be changed and developed when we get there. Professional coaching should always have good clear agreed measures for success and a timeframe within which they should occur. Without these in place, how can you know you’re achieving the results you’re wanting or that the coaching is working?
How the rest unfolds varies from session to session. My coaching is what I call a developmental style, meaning I help you develop greater capacity, build mastery and to literally become an upgraded you. To think, act and respond in wiser and more developed ways. This means when the coaching is completed you are able to function more optimally in your life going forward and to continue to grow and develop on your own. We call this ‘self-actualizing’. Great coaching should always make you self-sufficient!
A keystone of my process is a quality called Presence.
Presence is a generative state of embodied, attuned and compassionate present moment awareness which uncouples us from conditioned habit patterns and potentiates the emergence of greater creativity, intuitive intelligence, inner wisdom and a larger sense of self and world.
I think of it as a kind of superpower. A meta-competency for living a fully engaged and intelligently responsive life.
It sits at the heart of the coach training methodologies I’ve developed and led and is a game-changer for revealing and unlocking our greatest creativity, wisdom and potential. Truly great leaders and innovators embody this quality. I’ll support you in cultivating it and integrating it into your personal toolkit.
In my role as creator and head of internationally regarded coach training programs in Europe and USA, I’ve also been keenly developing a cutting-edge coaching methodology which draws on the relatively new area of cognitive science. This is a multi-disciplinary subset which explores how humans think and make decisions and is currently informing us that mind is not simply the six pounds of jello between your ears, but is an integrated whole-body system which clearly needs to be addressed to exact real lasting change. This radical new direction known as Embodied Mind or Cognition has left many of the dominant 20th century change models (such as the once ubiquitous NLP) looking rather dated.
Researchers in this new field currently state that more than 95% of our ‘mind’ lies outside of the conscious workspace. Most conventional coaching tools will only engage with that thin 5% slice, so while powerful, they still leave a lot untouched. Imagine if you have less than 5% of you deciding to do something while more than 95% is committed otherwise, which do you think wins out? We need the lot onboard, right? My process integrates all those powerful conventional coaching tools with several science-backed techniques to bring all of your intelligence and processing onboard. The power and simplicity of this process will astonish you.
If you’d like to know more then please click these boxes below or reach out to me directly.
There’s definitely some confusion around what professional coaching is and isn’t, largely due to the fact that, unlike other helping professions (such as a therapist), there’s no statutory control on the use of the term ‘coach’, so it’s used to describe a pretty wide range of activities.
The world’s premier body for credentialing professional coaches (and my credentialing body), the International Coaching Federation defines coaching as,
‘… partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.’
First thing to note is that it’s a partnership. Coaches come as equals in a sense, and differ from mentors, consultants, therapists and advisors. We see our clients as co-equal partners and that they’re fully capable and resourceful. We don’t advise or have their answers, but what we do have is some really good questions that help them discover their answers. Let’s be honest how can anyone else possibly have them? I’m no expert in you — you are!
That doesn’t mean coaches don’t have plenty of knowledge, insights, observations, hacks and skills which might be of enormous value. That I do have, and if they’re appropriate we get to them in time. But I still don’t have your answers!
We also differ from sport coaches who do act as experts, give strategies and push their prodigies towards greater success. While entirely appropriate for what they do, professional coaches are more interested in supporting their clients to craft their own strategies for learning, growth and change and then supporting them to bring them into being. There’s good reason for this difference, and the primary one is that this supports them in being able to do it for themselves. To switch on their capacity to self-generate solutions, motivation, creativity and so forth. I call this: self-actualizing. This means we help you to be able coach yourself going forward.
Professional coaching is also all about forward momentum via action—going from a current stuck or unfulfilled place in life to realizing your potential and making that real in the world and how you are in it. Where we differ from therapists is we don’t work with mental health conditions or historic traumas and we won’t work very much in your past. We also aim to get very clear with you about what we’re aiming to achieve, what success looks like for the coaching and set a clear timeframe within which that will happen. Professional coaching should be able to demonstrate success for you as a client. You wouldn’t work with any other professional without that clarity so the same should happen here.
There are many people out there calling themselves a coach and while some have completed many hours of professional training including proving (and continuing to prove) competence with a professional body, the others … well, it’s hard to say. As a professional coaching educator and long-term professional coach the only guarantee you have is to check whether they are credentialed with (or their certifying/training organization is accredited with) one of the key professional bodies such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Otherwise it’s a pot luck!
Alchemy was an early forerunner of what we now know as the field of science, primarily concerned with transforming simple and rather everyday items or objects into something of great value and importance. The classic of these was turning base lead into gold. Paulo Coelho, in his book The Alchemist wrote,
‘Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.’
Why I started calling what I do alchemy was not some overblown claim that I’m able to turn you into an instant billionaire or that I have some magic touch to instantly transform your life. It’s because, while I have a pretty high level of professional skill, something mysterious, something magical, something I couldn’t quite nail down yet was nonetheless amazing, seemed to occur via the process I’ve developed. Incredible transformations and growth occurred yet it wasn’t possible to identify any particular element as a cause.
From my perspective, the whole (the outcome) was so often greater than the sum of the parts (all that we did) yet it relied on all of it. On what I call interactualization.
In my coach training programs I have been attempting to break some new ground in the way coaching happens. Most coaching is at the level of professional conversations, employing some great questions and running a few coachey hacks and practices up the flagpole from time to time. While I’m a big fan of the conventional conversational skills and certainly employ them, I also know there’s powerful ways to get deeper under the hood, to the place where real change happens. These are drawn from some new directions in cognitive science and are part of the ground-breaking methodology I’ve been building into coach training programs over the years. Somatics, Focusing, Presence, narrative, multiplicity and many, many more. I’ve been working with some incredible world-class researchers, thinkers, practitioners and teachers to develop my process and I (and they) know it works. So do the more than 2000 professional coaches I’ve trained in my methods.
So when I talk about alchemy and the mystery in there I am also talking about science and results. I might not be able to say precisely how we might have got from there to here, or how this outcome happened exactly but I do know all the ingredients that go into the crucible.
We will meet on Zoom. Most coaches work in this way these days and this means we can both be in any environment providing we each have a good internet connection and privacy. This means you don’t lose time traveling to sessions and back and obviously you can be anywhere on the globe to coach with me. The only catch for us is to suitably synch timezones. I’m generally on US eastern apart from occasional business or personal travel.
Zoom allows connections via smartphone app as well as computer and if necessary you may simply call for sessions in as a normal voice-only phone call.
I occasionally offer coaching hikes. I’m located on the stunningly beautiful Signal Mountain TN with a huge range of wilderness trails virtually on my doorstep. We take 2 hours from trailhead where we’ll meet, and coach along the hike, stopping whenever a pause seems appropriate. Often insights and new views which are not so easily accessible when in the office or in our regular everyday environment, are far more easily revealed when we’re out in nature.
For personal coaching I generally request that clients commit to working with me for a 6 month minimum. We usually meet every two weeks which makes a total of 12 sessions. There’s good reason for this. While much can happen in individual sessions, human development, growth and change is not linear and new behavior, thinking and ways of being needs time to become truly embodied.
For personal coaching: a 12 session investment costs $2,500. You can also pay 6 installments over 6 months of $440 each.
I offer a discounted rate for participants in any of my coach training programs (including those I’m no longer currently working with!). Please contact me directly to inquire about that.
I also try to keep some space for those in need who require coaching yet might not be able to afford my full fee, and I offer a discounted rate in those cases as well. If that is you and you’d like to work with me then please contact me directly to inquire about availability.
For corporate and organizational clients I have other options. Please contact me directly and we’ll discuss.
How the rest unfolds varies from session to session. My coaching is what I call a developmental style, meaning I help you develop greater capacity, build mastery and to literally become an upgraded you. To think, act and respond in wiser and more developed ways. This means when the coaching is completed you are able to function more optimally in your life going forward and to continue to grow and develop on your own. We call this ‘self-actualizing’. Great coaching should always make you self-sufficient!
A keystone of my process is a quality called Presence.
Presence is a generative state of embodied, attuned and compassionate present moment awareness which uncouples us from conditioned habit patterns and potentiates the emergence of greater creativity, intuitive intelligence, inner wisdom and a larger sense of self and world.
I think of it as a kind of superpower. A meta-competency for living a fully engaged and intelligently responsive life.
It sits at the heart of the coach training methodologies I’ve developed and led and is a game-changer for revealing and unlocking our greatest creativity, wisdom and potential. Truly great leaders and innovators embody this quality. I’ll support you in cultivating it and integrating it into your personal toolkit.
In my role as creator and head of internationally regarded coach training programs in Europe and USA, I’ve also been keenly developing a cutting-edge coaching methodology which draws on the relatively new area of cognitive science. This is a multi-disciplinary subset which explores how humans think and make decisions and is currently informing us that mind is not simply the six pounds of jello between your ears, but is an integrated whole-body system which clearly needs to be addressed to exact real lasting change. This radical new direction known as Embodied Mind or Cognition has left many of the dominant 20th century change models (such as the once ubiquitous NLP) looking rather dated.
Researchers in this new field currently state that more than 95% of our ‘mind’ lies outside of the conscious workspace. Most conventional coaching tools will only engage with that thin 5% slice, so while powerful, they still leave a lot untouched. Imagine if you have less than 5% of you deciding to do something while more than 95% is committed otherwise, which do you think wins out? We need the lot onboard, right? My process integrates all those powerful conventional coaching tools with several science-backed techniques to bring all of your intelligence and processing onboard. The power and simplicity of this process will astonish you.
There’s definitely some confusion around what professional coaching is and isn’t, largely due to the fact that, unlike other helping professions (such as a therapist), there’s no statutory control on the use of the term ‘coach’, so it’s used to describe a pretty wide range of activities.
The world’s premier body for credentialing professional coaches (and my credentialing body), the International Coaching Federation defines coaching as,
‘… partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.’
First thing to note is that it’s a partnership. Coaches come as equals in a sense, and differ from mentors, consultants, therapists and advisors. We see our clients as co-equal partners and that they’re fully capable and resourceful. We don’t advise or have their answers, but what we do have is some really good questions that help them discover their answers. Let’s be honest how can anyone else possibly have them? I’m no expert in you — you are!
That doesn’t mean coaches don’t have plenty of knowledge, insights, observations, hacks and skills which might be of enormous value. That I do have, and if they’re appropriate we get to them in time. But I still don’t have your answers!
We also differ from sport coaches who do act as experts, give strategies and push their prodigies towards greater success. While entirely appropriate for what they do, professional coaches are more interested in supporting their clients to craft their own strategies for learning, growth and change and then supporting them to bring them into being. There’s good reason for this difference, and the primary one is that this supports them in being able to do it for themselves. To switch on their capacity to self-generate solutions, motivation, creativity and so forth. I call this: self-actualizing. This means we help you to be able coach yourself going forward.
Professional coaching is also all about forward momentum via action—going from a current stuck or unfulfilled place in life to realizing your potential and making that real in the world and how you are in it. Where we differ from therapists is we don’t work with mental health conditions or historic traumas and we won’t work very much in your past. We also aim to get very clear with you about what we’re aiming to achieve, what success looks like for the coaching and set a clear timeframe within which that will happen. Professional coaching should be able to demonstrate success for you as a client. You wouldn’t work with any other professional without that clarity so the same should happen here.
There are many people out there calling themselves a coach and while some have completed many hours of professional training including proving (and continuing to prove) competence with a professional body, the others … well, it’s hard to say. As a professional coaching educator and long-term professional coach the only guarantee you have is to check whether they are credentialed with (or their certifying/training organization is accredited with) one of the key professional bodies such as the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Otherwise it’s a pot luck!
Alchemy was an early forerunner of what we now know as the field of science, primarily concerned with transforming simple and rather everyday items or objects into something of great value and importance. The classic of these was turning base lead into gold. Paulo Coelho, in his book The Alchemist wrote,
‘Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.’
Why I started calling what I do alchemy was not some overblown claim that I’m able to turn you into an instant billionaire or that I have some kind of magic touch to instantly transform your life. What I had noticed is that, while I do have a pretty good level of professional skill and I show up fully to my coaching, when clients and I both committed ourselves fully to the process I was holding, that something mysterious, something magical, something I couldn’t quite nail down yet was nonetheless amazing, seemed to occur. Transformation and growth happened, radical insights emerged seemingly out of the ether, yet it wasn’t so easy to say exactly what had caused it. What was the precise mechanism.
From my perspective, the whole (the outcome) was so often greater than the sum of the parts (what we did).
In my coach training programs I am and have been attempting to break some new ground in the way coaching happens. Many coaches learn simply to sit and have nice conversations employing some really cool questions and running a few nice coachey hacks and practices up the flagpole from time to time. While I’m a big fan of the conversational skills and certainly employ them, I also know there’s a number of other ways to get under the hood, to the place where real change happens. Most of these are built on some red hot areas of cognitive science and are part of the ground-breaking methodology I’ve been building into coach training programs for some time. Somatics, Focusing, Presence, narrative and many, many more. I’ve been working with some incredible world-class researchers, thinkers, practitioners and teachers to develop my process and I (and they) know it works.
So when I talk about alchemy and the mystery in there I am also talking about science and results. I might not be able to say precisely how we might have got from there to here, or how this outcome happened exactly but I do know all the ingredients that go into the crucible.
A great and clearly important question.
Mostly we connect on the Zoom platform which offers voice and visuals in the same way as Skype, but with a lot more stability and functionality. It’s very common for coaches to work in this way these days and obviously means we can both coach while in any environment providing we each have a connection and privacy. Most importantly this means you don’t lose time traveling to sessions and back.
Oh and as such, obviously you can be anywhere on the globe to coach with me. I regularly work with clients from all over the world. The only catch for us is to suitably sync timezones. I’m generally on US eastern apart from my business travel.
With Zoom you can also connect via smartphone app as well as computer. If necessary you may simply call in as a normal voice-only phone call.
I do offer face-to-face coaching in the Chattanooga Tennessee area and for business clients we will typically combine a mix of Zoom and face-to-face.
I also offer coaching hikes. I’m located on the stunningly beautiful Signal Mountain TN with a huge range of wilderness trails virtually on my doorstep. We take 2 hours from trailhead where we’ll meet, and coach along the hike, stopping whenever a pause seems appropriate. Often insights and new views which are not so easily accessible when in the office or in our regular everyday environment, are far more easily revealed when we’re out in nature.
For personal coaching I generally request that clients commit to working with me for a 6 month minimum. We usually meet every two weeks which makes a total of 12 sessions. There’s good reason for this. While much can happen in individual sessions, human development, growth and change is not linear and new behavior, thinking and ways of being needs time to become truly embodied.
For personal coaching: a 12 session investment costs $2,500. You can also pay 6 installments over 6 months of $440 each.
I offer a discounted rate for participants in any of my coach training programs (including those I’m no longer currently working with!). Please contact me directly to inquire about that.
I also try to keep some space for those in need who require coaching yet might not be able to afford my full fee, and I offer a discounted rate in those cases as well. If that is you and you’d like to work with me then please contact me directly to inquire about availability.
For corporate and organizational clients I have other options. Please contact me directly and we’ll discuss.
Get in Touch
If this above has fired your imagination as much as your motivation. If you are ready for the life you deserve. To roll up your sleeves and do the work of dropping deep into your possibility, then contact me and book a call. Your life can change.
Get in Touch
If this above has fired your imagination as much as your motivation. If you are ready for the life you deserve. To roll up your sleeves and do the work of dropping deep into your possibility, then contact me and book a call. Your life can change.