Coaching begins with your introspection, whether it’s coaching an executive, child, teacher, or principal. You have to do that work, and then you can walk along side someone else, sometimes with a gentle nudge, but never leading and pulling. Leading by example.

My gift comes from conversation. It’s trust, it’s relationship, it’s empathy.  I try to lead a coaching life. People walk around with questions inside that they’re often unaware of. Because I embrace questions and am not afraid of the answers, I can help many get to their own questions. When I learned to question everything, I became more Clavis. I was able to pull the child back in, embrace the questions, become more authentic. People think that I’m going to give them some inspirational quote or give them the answer, but I invite them to go inside. They come up with their answers and interrogate who they really are and what they really want. 

When people sit knee to knee, eye to eye with me, they talk about ‘feeling stuff’. They will often mention the energy, and what it’s like to co-create and share a sacred space in which we can be our truest selves. It’s truly transformational and takes both relationship and knowing. When you walk in, you are held in that bubble, in a place of positive tension that says, “ You must move forward.”  It’s not about practicing vulnerability, it’s about actually being vulnerable; and I think that’s what people respond to. Sometimes the response is that people run. It’s more than people want to be responsible for or reveal. That is not failure, if you learn something in that. 

The happier I become, the more I grow and transform, and the more secure I become in who I am, the more I want that for other people. No one should be walking around miserable. And that, to me, has very little to do with your station in life but the quality of choices you make. Choices born of quality questions.