As I’ve begun introducing my approach to professional coaching to a broader audience, I often hear…
“Oh, so you’re a life coach for executives?”
Well, yes, and no. While I do coach striving, high-achieving professionals to thrive, my approach goes deeper.
At my core, I hold a deep-seated belief in the innate capacity of every human to achieve, thrive, and actualize their best self through a process of continuous growth and development. That fundamental belief in our human goodness led me to develop a coaching method that recognizes the humanity of high-achieving strivers. This approach aims to guide strivers to see the wisdom in cultivating their wellbeing and to know and actualize the full potential of their human capacities in every facet of their lives.
That’s why I describe the practice as human capacity coaching for strivers.
HUMAN CAPACITY COACHING FOR STRIVERS
My coaching is designed to help high-performing professionals achieve ambitious goals while cultivating deep wellbeing and harmony so that they can achieve more while living a flourishing life.
This humanistic approach rests on two core tenets:
- Wellbeing is the Gateway to Achievement: Cultivating wellbeing isn’t just a “nice to have”; it’s a powerful enabler for achieving professional goals and fostering a positive ripple effect on colleagues and organizations. In a holistic sense, wellbeing is the foundation of flourishing. In the work aspect of life, many strivers think of wellbeing as a luxury. I think of it as a “business requirement”. After all, how can you expect to lead others to achieve ambitious goals if you are not tending to your wellbeing.
- Our Human Capacities are the Vehicle: We all possess powerful, innate human capacities. At the root of these capacities are our virtues, which are fundamental to our humanity and our individual nature. We are at our best when we align our actions with our virtues, which are more commonly referred to as values or character strengths. Alongside these innate capacities, we can also develop new capacities through the cultivation of mindset, practices, and habits that research indicates improve human performance and have a positive ripple effect on the people in concentric circles of our lives.
REIMAGINING EXECUTIVE COACHING
It’s important to understand how human capacity coaching stands apart from how we might customarily think about coaching for high-performing strivers:
- Not Life Coaching: We don’t segment “life” from “work.” The capacities we support you in discovering and applying are universal, enhancing every phase of life, including work. We recognize that life and work are inseparable, focusing on building foundational human abilities that integrate your entire experience.
- Not Performance Coaching: While improved performance is a natural outcome, our focus isn’t solely on external metrics. Overemphasizing goal achievement is actually a detriment to the performance of most strivers. Further, performance isn’t something a coach “does” for you; it comes from your application of your innate and developed capacities. We empower you by supporting your discovery of your nature, applying your innate and other strengths, creating a meaning-filled sense of direction, and accepting that external performance is subject to many variables beyond individual control.
Humanizing Strivers
Strivers, while outwardly successful, often grapple with burnout, lack of fulfillment, or impostor syndrome. We’re masters at chasing goals, but often at the expense of our wellbeing and human nature. This singular focus can even dehumanize us, turning us into “goal-seeking machines.”
Human capacity coaching helps you break this cycle. It’s not about striving harder, but about striving better – identifying goals worthy of your whole self and pursuing them functionally, without sacrificing your wellbeing. This involves developing self-compassion, finding joy and meaning beyond external validation, and fostering harmony within yourself by leveraging and developing your innate capacities.
The Obstacle is the Way
Our striving nature, and the adverse consequences that sometimes accompany it, often become the very obstacle we need to overcome to strive better. Cultivating wellbeing, which enables us to achieve more and thrive, emerges from facing these challenges. As Marcus Aurelius wisely stated,
“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.”
Achieving our ambitious goals and cultivating wellbeing and happiness doesn’t come from simply striving harder; rather, the pathway to achieving more goes directly through the active cultivation of wellbeing and actualizing our unique blend of character strengths and innate human capacities.
HUMAN OUTCOMES
Ultimately, human capacity coaching recognizes that high-achieving professionals are complex human beings. It’s about equipping you to not just achieve more, but to thrive more, to show up with your full character strengths, and to live a life of deeper meaning and purpose in every aspect of your life.
We aim to help you produce outcomes that truly accentuate your humanity, empowering you to be genuinely well and to draw upon the immense strength that resides within you – your remarkable and unique blend of human capacities.
