K Street Coaching

02/13/2023

“I’ll tell you what [a pause] is not: It’s not a moment of nothing. Oftentimes people think it’s this empty, wasted, dead space. It’s not! It’s their space to turn inward and find the answers, and to explore inwardly, which then affects everything that comes on the outside. This space is the doorway to all the other experiences in coaching."

“I’ll tell you what [a pause] is not: It’s not a moment of nothing. Oftentimes people think it’s this empty, wasted, dead space. It’s not! It’s their space to turn inward and find the answers, and to explore inwardly, which then affects everything that comes on the outside. This space is...

08/05/2022

Here's why you may not want to try so hard to hide the traits you're least proud of.

03/27/2022

Please celebrate with K Street Coaching the first 50 Master Coach Collection podcast conversations.

https://mastercoachcollection.libsyn.com/

People who have dedicated their lives to hearing and seeing you are themselves feeling truly heard and seen.

03/16/2022

"He maintains that his greatest teachers are his two young children," says K Street Coaching founder and president Gideon Culman. "They work in true partnership with him – without consciously trying to. Reading classical literature with his 7-year old son allows him to see the world through youthful eyes and to explore big questions about the universe, informed at once by his own wisdom and the “tabula rasa” mindset of his still young son. And by freely expressing the emotions the world hasn’t yet taught them to suppress or mask at ages 3 and 7, Gideon’s daughter and son make him acutely aware of what’s important to them, and where he has opportunities to pay closer attention. He allows, even encourages, them to expose his hypocrisy – never letting himself get too comfortable."

Gideon Culman knows that to put clients at ease coaches often have to make themselves uncomfortable.

Through parenting, reckoning with his place in history through literature and social consciousness, and delving into highly challenging coaching training, he's become pretty good at embracing discomfort. In fact, he welcomes it.

Check out this Coach Spotlight to read more about how Gideon's experience gaining the Master Certified Coach designation and parenting through the pandemic have led him to create new opportunities for community among coaches.



https://icfmetrodc.org/content.aspx?page_id=2507&club_id=587868&item_id=2953

03/08/2022

Coaches who are serious about their own growth will actively engage in this inquiry.

Secure your spot to join K Street Coaching founder Gideon Culman, MCC and 9 other for the sixth annual at http://www.essenceofmasterysummit.com and save a huge chunk of change at checkout with the discount code GIDEON.

02/28/2022

The five most popular Master Coach Collection conversations in February, 2022?

1. Joan Wangler from Washington, DC: "I am a highly sensitive woman who sees the good in almost everyone and who wants to make a difference in the world. I realize that the only way I can make a difference is to love the people around me."

2. Catherine A. Wood from Washington, DC: "That was the reason that I started on my own personal journey: to find that thing that was missing, that made me feel unhappy about my life. And I really feel a level of true, soul-filling joy about my life and who I am these days, so much self-acceptance and peace about who I am, how I commit my time, who and what I say yes to, who and what I say no to. I don't think that coaching could give me a better gift than that."

3. Lyssa hart from Washington State: "I still use what I have learned to be curious with people. But now I don't assume I know. I don't assume I'm right. I assume instead that I have an opportunity to ask a question. The client is at choice to determine what to do with the question."

4. DrParas LifeLeadership-Coach from Pune, India: "My role is to just be present. And partner. And then be absent in the space of ego. And just keep doing that work for years. That's what I call the purpose of empowering people's life."

5. Heru Yuwono from Indonesia: "I want to be the one who is able to support others to become better versions of themselves. So that's why I use the metaphor of a sherpa. I don't want to be in that spotlight. But I want to make people to be in the spotlight."

08/10/2021

An introduction to the Master Coach Collection.http://mastercoachcollection.

07/30/2021

The Master Coach Collection podcast’s summer travels boast a fabulous itinerary: Conversations with MCC coaches in Dubai, Istanbul, Chennai, Bucharest, Edinburgh, and Chicago; oh, and the spectacular origin story of the first Farsi-language coach skills training program serving people deft at matching each ICF core competency to an evocative Sufi poem. It all makes for pretty indulgent listening.

But there’s a subplot only I’ve seen that bears sharing. Listed above are the conversations I’ve recorded and published. For every week I haven’t published anything, there was a conversation on the calendar—sometimes several—that got canceled. Usually day-of. Is this a drag? Obviously. But what's more interesting is the toll I recognized these cancelations taking on the guests who were canceling.

One day, after dropping my son off at camp, I was walking home to record a conversation with an MCC coach on the other side of the world. To say I’d been looking forward to this particular conversation is an understatement. I glanced at my phone and saw the email cancelation: The coach’s mother was suffering a medical emergency. Sadness welled up in my chest. Most painful to me though was the coach’s apologetic tone, as though this last-minute cancelation might cause me to think less of them.

I didn’t make it all the way home. I had to sit down, pull my phone out of my pocket again, and pound out a response from the nearest available bench. I offered sympathy and said in no uncertain terms: "It is my earnest hope for you, and for me, that we can lead lives free of people whose impressions of us are diminished when we postpone commitments to take care of those who matter most to us. I can’t picture a reality where keeping an appointment with a guy halfway around the globe whom you’ve spoken to once is as important as taking care of mom." Whew.

The following week, another cancelation. Another MCC coach attending to their mother suffering a life-threatening emergency. Another email struggling to salvage a reputation that the sender incorrectly imagined was imperiled. Ouch! Was it time to straight-up draft an email template, pointedly articulating the level of compassion and absolution that I was beginning to feel compelled to offer en masse? I pondered the emerging pattern and recalled several other MCC coaches who had already postponed even making plans this month because of the family emergencies they were navigating. Not to mention colleagues. And clients. Hmm.

Over the past weekend I mentioned to my wife what I’ve just shared here. I told her that this phenomenon was weighing me down. “Well, what about you?” she asked. Oh, yeah. Duh. I had let my practice crater a year and a half ago to meet the moment, fathering two young kids during a pandemic. So far every plan to rev back up to a practice that feels nice and full has buckled due to the unpredictable, contingent nature of childcare. Try as I do to ignore this and, yep, even act numb to it, it’s a constant and it hurts. Also, I reliably neglect to mention how painful juggling this reality is.

Most of the people you’ve just read about, myself included, are MCC coaches. Finding professionals more adept at seeing and hearing other people in order to help them navigate the complex terrain of their lives is a tall order. Even so, none of us is exempt from the vulnerabilities of the caring relationships we are a part of. Frankly, it's these relationships that make up the ecosystem that nourishes us. They're the reason we can be there for you so fully when we're on top of our game.

Most of us have taken for granted compartmentalizing our work and our caring roles. It's a norm mostly because it has been. When have we bothered to push back against it? From my lockdown experience, the total permeability of boundaries between work and family is pure hell. But I don't see impermeable boundaries serving us any better. They rot away our insides. As we answer the call from every corner for a 'return to normal,' what can we do to normalize a view of professionalism that is fully compatible with providing care?

05/19/2021

"I don’t think I told you," a friend wrote to K Street Coaching founder and president Gideon Culman yesterday, "but that conversation with Jan Rybeck broke me for several weeks. It was a good break, you know, like being hit across the face with a 2x4."

The conversation? It's part of a new series: The Master Coach Collection . A lot of people say it's deeply unsettling. In the same breath, they say it's really good. We will talk about these conversations here during the next few days of International Coaching Week.

"The idea of the Master Coach Collection came to me on a walk," Gideon writes. "I was snapping out of a debilitating pandemic funk. Having kids cooped up with me in a small home was pushing work to the margins. Accepting that my attention would be divided for the foreseeable future, I wondered how I could get my whole family to buy in to giving me the space I needed.

"I thought of my son. He cheers, 'You're a Master Certified Coach!' I wanted to show him what that means. I imagined inviting him to take part in conversations with other MCCs, to show him who we are. Then it hit me: Most people don't know who we are. I could change that!"

24 episodes and 1,000+ downloads later, listeners around the world are coming to appreciate the human side of the masterful coaching. When will you tune in?

Everybody deserves to be seen and heard. Master Certified Coaches make up a small community of professionals who are exceptional at seeing and hearing others. Through this podcast we invite you to see and hear us.

11/08/2020

While it may not be comfortable, it's critical that we continuously clarify expectations with our employer. The failure to address the elephant in the room of a consistent pattern of underperformance can lead to the loss of your job.

10/16/2020

"How many of us try to enter spaces we thought would be open to us that aren’t?" writes Cultivating Leadership's Akasha. "We are overlooked for a promotion because of our gender or race—or both. We get left behind our peers in school because of our different ability. We are mocked and ridiculed because of our political affiliation. How many of us? Too many."

As I start to write this blog, I am watching a small grey bird, I think a Cocoa Thrush (I do not know much about birds), perched on the mirror of our car. Every 5 seconds or so, it flies to the front passenger window, hovers for a while, and then picks at the window […]

10/14/2020

The drumbeat of bad news persists. I steel myself before looking at the morning news. Did something even more terrible happen while I slept?

We may feel hopeless, exhausted, distraught.

There is a way forward.

Imagine. Evaluate. Listen. Act.

10/01/2020

While perfection leaves us in awe, it keeps us outside its making. In this way, it smacks of arrogance. Imperfection invites us in to imagine and create and improve together. In this way, imperfection seeds curiosity.

By Zafer Achi

09/30/2020

What we amplify and what we diminish becomes our “profile.” The difference between that public profile and our most powerful self becomes our “Performance Gap.” When you connect with your center of well-being, all of your key qualities work in harmony.

By dismissing some of our inner qualities, by leaving those parts behind, we diminish ourselves. We actually don’t come to life’s challenges as our most powerful and complete selves.

Our public persona is increasingly defined by arbitrary character counts demanded by a social media-dominated world.

06/02/2020

Most K Street Coaching clients represent marginalized communities. It's always been this way. Each client has taught us so much and there's *always* more to learn.

To increase K Street Coaching's fluency in diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout coaching, we're spending next week participating in the 2020 Association of Coach Training Organizations virtual conference.

If you're a coach and you're wondering how to meet the moment, please consider participating. Can't wait to see what we'll all learn.

2020 ACTO Virtual Conference Re-Imagining Coach Education: Exploring Diversity, Equity & Inclusion KEYNOTE SPEAKERS We are delighted to announce the following Keynote Presenters for the Virtual Conference: Jay Pryor: How Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender Non-Conforming Stories Change Us All (CCEs:...

05/31/2020

"Oftentimes when we're talking about polarities, there's a false assumption that we have to let go of what we value the most," says Navigating Polarities co-author Kelly Lewis. "In actuality, when you're moving from operating from your preferred pole to the third way, it's not about letting go or losing, it's about loosening up your grip enough that you can make enough room to bring more in."

"Oftentimes when we're talking about polarities, there's a false assumption that we have to let go of what we value the most. In actuality, when you're when you're moving from operating from your preferred pole to the third way, it's not about letting go or losing, it's about loosening up your grip....

05/29/2020

"It's no wonder that we start to complain that we can't sleep, or that we're overeating, or we just don't feel good, or we're feeling depressed. It's really chemistry," says Thought Design leader Denise VanEck. "So one of the things that I'm grateful for is that there are ways that we can intervene with ourselves to regulate some of that stuff to pay attention to it. And one of the reasons why we see all this 'take care of yourself' messaging out there during this time, because what you're doing is giving yourself little doses of serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine to help offset all that cortisol that we're building up."

Each day we set countless expectations: My coffee will taste good, when I say 'thank you' he'll say 'you're welcome', my team will win. We set these expectations without much thought. But what happens when major parts of life that we're used to taking for granted suddenly stop meeting our expectatio...

05/18/2020

The Elephant in the Room knows: Things that go without saying often go better when said. Who will you write to this week to let them know the difference they’ve made for you?