I am a commitment to my clients’ most authentic, joyful, interconnected, and purposeful embodiments.
I believe transformational leadership requires we expand our capacity to bring mindful, compassionate awareness to ourselves and others.
Photo by Alex Garland
I am trained in a strengths-based, mindful, and client-centered approach to coaching that relies on the wholeness, resourcefulness, and potential of each person I coach. I hold a container for my clients to build their capacity to notice, feel, name, and stay present with the fullness of their experience and how it shapes their leadership for change.
Systems of domination and exclusion are rooted in disconnection at the societal and planetary levels as well as within us, dividing our minds from our bodies, hearts, spirits, and the socio-political context in which we live and work. From birth, these interlocking, separating systems and the culture they produce lead us to develop ways of seeing, knowing, being, and interacting that protect us from one or another aspect of this reality.
The parts of us that have developed to help us survive within the complex realities of overlapping systems of domination and exclusion can show up as perfectionism, competitiveness, defensiveness, control, appeasement, avoiding conflict or blame, superiority, and shame. While these behaviors have served a protective function in some contexts, they also disconnect us from our full power as individuals and as leaders within a team or group. We may absent ourselves, deflect onto others, relinquish our part in repair or action for change, stay quiet, take over, play it small, dump our burdens on others, or over-extend to the point of burnout. Those who are most directly targeted by different systems of domination and exclusion and those situated below us within an organizational hierarchy often receive the brunt of these patterns.
By bringing loving attention to the fullness of our experience – from the uncomfortable and fearful or angry to the gleeful, settled, and inspired – we can transform what inhibits our personal and collective health, wellbeing, safety, and belonging. We can reflect, learn, and repair when we’ve missed the mark. And we can open to greater choice toward becoming the visions we have for ourselves and the world.
I invite and hold your wholeness along with your possibility for growth as you navigate complex and, at times, seemingly impossible situations at work and beyond. You develop your personal recipes for cultivating compassion, curiosity, creativity, calm, and confidence within yourself. From this place of internal trust, I support you in imagining, practicing, and manifesting authentic and accountable leadership.
Through coaching, we can more clearly tend to these patterns, giving them space to be understood and appreciated, and to change. We can lessen their impacts on us and others, and train ourselves to lead in ways that express our values. These essential, transformational leadership practices open space for ease, creativity, and expanded power to support all of our health and wellbeing.
In my coaching sessions, I use a blend of empowering questions and both mindful and embodied practices. One of my growing areas of practice with clients is using the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, which I continue to receive training in and have been practicing myself since 2019. I often pair this coaching approach with concepts from organizational change and community organizing for equity and justice and share examples from my own journey when relevant.
“Diana's ability to hold complexity, encourage me to see the good in people, and explore solutions that are outside of institutional norms have increased my ability to lead empathetically, while also becoming clearer in my values and what I can support/tolerate as a leader. I have learned and grown more in my time with her than any other time in my career. And, while the solutions are not easy or obvious, this is the work that we are all called to do to make a real difference in the lives of our employees and in our communities.”
- Government Agency Director, King County, WA
In our sessions together, we will…
● co-develop your goals for coaching overall and for each specific session, including what you hope to achieve in our time together and what will be and feel different for you, your team, and others in your life, when you reach those goals.
● learn and apply frameworks and practices that uphold ways of seeing, knowing, being, and interacting that support relationality, sharing power, collective health, and wellbeing, and counter supremacy ways.
● uncover new ways to resource yourself to stay present, accountable, and at choice in difficult situations in leadership, supervision, organizing, and other types of relationships.
● co-create personalized practices to continue your growth and work toward completing your goals outside of our sessions.
● experience a sense of mutual connection that comes with my deep listening, witnessing, and care, guided inquiries intended to draw out your power, and commitment to your growth.
How many coaching sessions are needed and how often would we meet?
I begin with a Discovery Session to learn about you and your goals for coaching. From there, I find that no fewer than 8 sessions are ideal for my clients to develop awareness about their patterns and begin to apply the practices we’ll learn together. I prefer to work with clients for more than 8 sessions and often work with people for 6 months or more. Once we’ve established a relationship and done some work together, I am available for check-ins as needed. I do sometimes work with clients for fewer than 8 sessions and am happy to talk about this in an introductory call.
Do you offer group coaching?
Yes. In addition to 1:1 coaching, I work with pairs and groups. I use transformational coaching techniques to support difficult and necessary dialogue and strategic visioning when there is conflict, tension, uncertainty and / or fear.