Coaching from Essence, Creating from the Future
The Conversation Factory
How to Provoke a Client
"I never push anybody. What I tell people is, listen, I'm going to be right with you," he says. "If you stop, I'll bump into you." He talks about evocation and provocation in a minute.
Today, I sit down for a conversation with *my coach* Robert Ellis, about his new book, Coaching From Essence.
Robert has been described as “one of Silicon Valley’s best-kept secrets” and has been coaching leaders at startups, mid-stage companies, Fortune 500 giants, and nonprofits for over 30 years. Robert has taught leadership and coached entrepreneurs at Singularity University and developed Level UP, the leadership curriculum for the Global Startup Program, and taught leadership courses at Stanford University. We met through radical serendipity and I’m grateful for the generosity and grace Robert has coached me with. All of his teaching materials are now publicly available on his free circle community and on youtube.
Robert’s book is like sitting in a fireside chat with Robert, absorbing his profoundly wise and profoundly simple approaches to coaching. Sometimes, a new idea can feel so true that it lands like common sense - all the pieces fitting together so seamlessly and effortlessly. Roberts’ metaphors, stories and models hit like that - like powerful truths you knew all along.
Robert’s visual models help ground a coaching conversation, make it easy to follow along, and make the conversation incredibly sticky. And literally every time I’ve drawn one of these diagrams for a client, it lands with them and becomes a new metaphor for thinking about their challenge and their path forward.
This book isn’t just for coaches who want a more effortless and human approach to doing this work, it’s for anyone who wants to be deeply helpful to their clients, their teams, their organization, and to lead conversations in a more impactful way.
Coaching from Essence is based on the radical idea that everyone has an essence, and that, when we work from it, we can effortlessly create value and impact. Coaching from essence works both ways - the coach coaches from *their* essence, their natural approach…and the coachee is coached to work from their *own* essence - their own natural approach. We’re not telling people how to be. We are here to help them remove the obstacles that get in the way of them finding their own way.
According to Bill Gates, everyone needs a coach.
I would flip this suggestion on its head and say that at some point in everyone’s lives, accessing a Coaching from Essence mindset can be a generous, powerful and transformative way to help someone in our lives.
Some of us choose to make coaching our life's work, but Coaching from Essence is a powerful, generous and transformative approach to helping people that everyone can (and should?) access at the right moment for the right person.
Robert Ellis is the embodiment of what he teaches - he is a generous, powerful and transformative coach who I’ve had the pleasure of working under for several years. I’m so glad this book is finally out in the world so that everyone can have the experience of working with him.
Links
https://coachingfromessence.com/
Coaching from Essence, by Robert Ellis
The AI-powered Podcast Player
