Knowing who you are is at the heart of effective leadership–and is an ongoing practice of deepening self and social awareness and taking action informed by what you notice. We view leadership coaching as an accelerator to deepen this awareness, grow a leader’s capacity for managing complexity and stretching into greater responsibility, and build competence and comfort with issues of identity and culture.
As leadership coaches, we lead from a place of inquiry to meet clients where they are and partner with them as they navigate from where they are to where they wish to be. We engage with compassion and candor, listening to and observing what is shared by the client and reflecting back what we notice about a leader’s presence, communications and engagement style, and patterns of behavior with the aim of deepening awareness and sparking new actions. We work alongside individual leaders and leadership teams to explore the dynamics of power, identity, norms and standards in their environments, to examine the behaviors, default tendencies, and practices that may be causing inequity and harm, and to consider the role they can play to create more equitable and inclusive organizations and communities.
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Culture is a concept that may feel amorphous and squishy and that is difficult to change unless you understand its component parts and how they are showing up in day-to-day experiences for people. We define culture as the beliefs, values, norms, and standards of a collective (that may be understood as an organization, a group, a community, etc.). In our work with organizations, we often notice a disconnect between those in leadership and the rest of the organization when it comes to the experience of the culture. We invite leaders and organizations to pay attention to the experience people are having of the organizational culture and what may need to be different. Our systematic way of examining culture centers the voices and experiences of those who are historically marginalized and minoritized, elicits opportunities for growth and change, and positions us to co-create recommendations and next steps.
We gather information in different ways depending on the size of the organization to understand multiple perspectives with the aim of getting a picture that is broad and deep. We seek to understand the context people are experiencing to get a better sense of what aspects of the culture may consciously or unconsciously oppress specific groups and hinder positive change. We apply our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging evolution framework to what we find and provide recommendations on near-term and longer term actions to create meaningful change.
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From noticing what is needed, to setting a vision to bringing everyone else along, leaders are at the forefront of making something new and different possible. Leaders go first–and they need support. We work alongside leaders and their teams as they hone in on what is most important, try new things, learn from them, adjust, and take steps forward.
We partner with leaders who are committed to advancing racial equity and working to create liberating structures–small shifts in how you engage, empower, connect, and activate people that both nurture the people involved and support the work that needs to happen. Through one-on-one meetings and facilitated conversations, we explore possibilities, share observations and feedback, and support leaders and their teams in aligning around what matters most with clearly defined roles and responsibilities and concrete next steps toward what they envision. We provide perspectives on strategic decisions and offer guidance for increasing the impact of DEI initiatives and creating more equitable policies and practices. Our individual styles balance creating space to explore and generate ideas, building relationships to nurture trust and accountability, and getting concrete about the actions needed to mobilize people and create lasting change.
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