Episode 29 - Nathan Blair on somatic approaches in coaching and coaching business
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarf, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years, I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach, and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups, and more.
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Ellie Scarf: Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm very, very fortunate to be here today with Nathan Blair. Just by way of a quick introduction, Nathan is the founder of the somatic school, which is an ICF level two body oriented coaching training school. And we'll find out what that means.
Ellie Scarf: As we ask him lots of questions Nathan, Entered into the world of coaching following really a life story from my understanding, which is that in his teens, he was diagnosed with ADHD and there was a bit of a [00:02:00] journey that he took through medication and then through exploring other ways to manage what he was experiencing.
Ellie Scarf: He discovered mindfulness and that it was a very a way to connect him to himself, his environment, and the present moment. And following or through this all Nathan studied psychology. He trained as a coach and he recognized the power of nonverbal communication. And really it seems Nathan studied a range of other perspectives as well.
Ellie Scarf: And so the somatic school is. Really the outcome of Nathan's desire to create the coach training that he was looking for. So Nathan, that's the, that's the formal intro. But I'd really love to ask you as a first question, you know, can you tell us a bit about your story?
Nathan Blair: Absolutely. Thanks so much for the introduction Ellie.
Nathan Blair: And for those who aren't familiar with semantics, we'll definitely unpack that. Try and put it in plain English.
Ellie Scarf: Yes, please.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. [00:03:00] So, you know as you mentioned, I think that as a child, I was a very, very sensitive kid, you know, and I think that this, this, this journey with receiving this diagnosis of ADHD was an interesting one for me, because it sort of led me from this originally this feeling of slight, unease with this paradigm of disorders, dysfunction towards towards wanting to understand better.
Nathan Blair: How do we kind of orient ourselves to what helps people flourish and thrive? And I know Ellie, you've got background in positive psychology. That's kind of the lens with which you're yeah. And that which you're working through. So that's very much. You know, that, that was my, my journey was really kind of looking at, okay.
Nathan Blair: How might I look at this differently when I, when I discovered coaching, you mentioned, I looked at a few different things, so I I'll come back to the coaching just a moment, but yeah, I, the first step in my sort of shift. Was in my, actually in my early twenties and the time I was working at a leadership development [00:04:00] consultancy, it was called lane four.
Nathan Blair: And they've recently been they're now with been acquired by EY Ernst Young, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. But they but while I was working there I, I started to really look at, you know, how might I approach this differently? Like naturally medication, et cetera, got me through academics.
Nathan Blair: academia, where in many ways you could, you can look at that as if the intention of meds, it's sort of kind of bring you to a certain baseline, this idea of normalizing within an academic environment is appropriate, you know, I, I, it helped a lot. But I'm very interested in, you know, Gabor Mate's, you know, there's a book he's written called the myth of normal and this idea that is that there may be a neurotypical around an average, but is there really anything so much as a, as a kind of a normal?
Nathan Blair: Can we really define? Yeah. So I was very interested in that. And and I, and I thought to myself, well, if I am in fact normal. [00:05:00] You
Ellie Scarf: know,
Nathan Blair: just so that maybe I've got a unique set of needs that, that I might need to explore. What are those for me, you know, for this being, and I read a book called the mindfulness prescription for adult ADHD, and it really began to shift things.
Nathan Blair: I reread it recently and discovered that the authors are interpersonal neurobiology researchers, which is fascinating because. Much, much later when we built the somatic school, so much of the science that supports what we do is from this field called interpersonal neurobiology. But but basically that, that book shifted a lot for me and and and the discovery of the coaching approach felt like the next big step.
Ellie Scarf: I'd actually
Nathan Blair: read a book by Ken Robinson called The Element, and I think that there was something in that, too, you know? Just a very quick story, basically, he, he, Ken Robinson tells a story about a child, a daughter the daughter of two parents going to a psychiatrist's office. And the psychiatrist says to the parents at one [00:06:00] point, we just step out of the room for a second and leaves the daughter in the room and puts the radio on.
Nathan Blair: And when they're outside the room, he asks them to sort of look in through the window and say, and says to them and you can see that the daughter has got up and she's, she's there because she can't sit still. She's fidgeting all the time. She can't pay attention in class. And then when they're looking through the window, they can see that she's stood up out of her seat.
Nathan Blair: She's sort of spinning around. Gliding through the room, doing little pirouettes and he says you know, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there's nothing wrong with your daughter. She's a dancer, you know, and I, and I, I thought, you know, right. That to me, there's something of coaching in that because if that little girl had been asked, you know, what do you love?
Nathan Blair: What makes your heart sing? You know, what, what do you want to be when you're older? What do you, you know, what, what the, the kinds of Beautiful, curious inquiry that a coach does in that sort of very person centered, client led way. It opens up a whole [00:07:00] world for an individual that they get to really kind of live a life that's really, that really is them, you know, and I think that's why I became so, fell so in love with the coaching approach because there's something, you know, we always say quite often our gift comes from our wound, you know, and I think that
Ellie Scarf: the ADHD
Nathan Blair: diagnosis probably led me to the coaching approach in some ways of being like, you know, what, what is it like to really, truly empower an individual?
Nathan Blair: And. I haven't really shared so much about semantics there, but that's what led me to coaching. But I can come on to semantics in a moment.
Ellie Scarf: No, I love, I love your story, Nathan, and I love that story. And I think it is a really common story that I hear from coaches that we are brought to this work because of the nature of the story of our life that, that, that unfolded before our professional career.
Ellie Scarf: So there is. You know, that sense of, of wanting to heal a wound that we may individually have had, or that we have, [00:08:00] you know, been exploring an interest in, in that sort of deeper psychological process really of, of helping and usually starting with ourselves or needing to, you know, wanting to do something for ourselves and then discovering that we have this gift that we can share with others.
Ellie Scarf: So. Thank you for sharing that. I think, I think it's, it's, it's amazing. And I hadn't heard that story by Ken Robinson, but I have, I've heard of the element, so I'll have to have a read, but yeah, it's, it's beautiful and it does make me think, yeah, of all of the different applications actually of, of that thought and how often we.
Ellie Scarf: Make some assumptions. So I'm going to think on that. I was just, I was, I was about to hypothesize, but I'm not going to do that. So, so can you give us a bit of a somatics one on one because when, when we talk about, we've already talked about interpersonal neurobiology, somatic approaches, there's some language that I must be honest, and I don't even fully understand.
Ellie Scarf: Can you give us a whistle stop tour?
Nathan Blair: Yeah, you, you certainly aren't alone in that Ellie and actually I would love if possible to help sort of demystify [00:09:00] this, this field as much as we can in the time we've got today. So yeah. So when I discovered the field of somatics, it felt a little like I was Alice going down the rabbit hole.
Nathan Blair: To me, it's been the gift that's kept on giving this whole time, because it's such a. broad and deep field. It has so much in it. But for me, it described and pointed to everything that I believed was fascinating about what makes us human. Somatics in a nutshell is the notion that, that the human, we look at the human as an integrated whole.
Nathan Blair: Okay. So, you know, you might be familiar with the, the language of the, body, mind and spirit. Sometimes people talk about, and often that's been sometimes that can sound like very alternative quote unquote, alternative medicine, right? Yes. It can, it's on the fringe of what we might consider, you know, That's just gone a little past what we can say.
Nathan Blair: Okay. That's rational. Now we're in the woo woo space, right? There's something like that. Yeah. The beautiful thing about somatics [00:10:00] is that it actually supports this, this, this view of the human experience. It's totally backed with science and the shift has occurred in the last let's say maybe 15 years where these these, these scientific discoveries are actually kind of coming, really coming to the fore now.
Ellie Scarf: And
Nathan Blair: so there are fields like interpersonal neurobiology and in body cognition that essentially say that we are neuropsychobiological beings
Ellie Scarf: that
Nathan Blair: are, are the experience of being a body living and experiencing this life through a body is inextricable. We can't, we can't separate that from. our psychology the way that we understand our sense of self, the way that we the beliefs that we hold, you know, that these are all informed by.
Nathan Blair: And then as you know, many of your listeners may have heard of the book, the body keeps the score. There's this notion that also stored in the body. So informed by [00:11:00] our experience of our being a body and then And then also held within the cells, the sinews of our, of our body. And so. What somatics does is it, it, it, it, for me, it, it sits at this intersection between science and spirituality because it also reflects what the wisdom traditions of the East and also many, many non dominant cultures and indigenous communities have been talking about for thousands of years, which is this notion that our bodies are wise, you know, there's wisdom in the body.
Nathan Blair: And so it's a sort of bridging East meets West science and spirituality. And and so, you know, that could be like Taoism, Buddhism, yoga, but then on the other hand, it could equally be looked at from the perspective of neuroscience, neurobiology, yeah, and so on. So, so in a nutshell, it's the idea that the body and mind are in a unified [00:12:00] whole.
Nathan Blair: We often refer to that as body and mind, one word, and that's really somatics in a, in a nutshell.
Ellie Scarf: Okay. I think, I think I get it. And I think if you had, if we'd had this conversation, even five years ago, I would have said this is too far into the woowoo spectrum for me and certainly for executive coaching.
Ellie Scarf: But I think in, in the last, even the last few years, it is becoming much more more accepted certainly in the coaching world and, and increasingly more in the corporate world. But. It is a hard idea for certain people to accept when we've been taught and trained for so long that, that we need to, to get out of our emotions, to be really logical about things.
Ellie Scarf: And so many of us are so cognitive heavy, like it's really. And I count myself in that it's really hard to tap into those, those, even those emotional processes, but certainly those physical processes. [00:13:00] So is that what we do in somatic coaching is sort of learn to listen to that part of us?
Nathan Blair: Absolutely. In fact, there are many, many ways to work with somatics.
Nathan Blair: And somatic coaching is actually a burgeoning field, even though somatics is by no means a new area of study. So I'll come back to that point in a moment, because I think it's worth unpacking a bit more. But you know, it's interesting what you say, it's a hard, it's a little bit. You know, you, in the past, it may have been something you just disregard as, it's just a bit too woo.
Nathan Blair: But you say even for yourself that over the last few years, it feels like you, you know, you're actually seeing this now as something that maybe we can start to open to and embrace a bit more. And that is true. Yeah. Across the board. I think that's very true. But we have to understand that there are many cultures within the world that have never lost touch with this particular way of seeing our experience.
Nathan Blair: That's why I think that semantics and some [00:14:00] people might recognize the term embodiment as a more familiar language for this. It's, you can think about it as remembering or coming home to a sort of a what we, we perhaps intuitively know many of us. Even though we live in society and culture that actually would, that sort of doesn't necessarily support that view.
Nathan Blair: And the French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who said, I think therefore I am alongside other philosophers like Aristotle and others that they, they've, they, they made a, they've, there are certain views that have really stuck in Western modern Western culture. This idea that the logical, rational mind. is a seat of our consciousness, basically, that I think that we think that when I say Me, that's my thinking line.
Nathan Blair: And the body is sort of essentially a taxi for the brain or a, or a [00:15:00] vehicle for, you know, when it emerged this way of thinking it was to support actually, and I know it's a little bit grim, but to support met the advancement of Western medicine, where we were doing, we began doing autopsies and things like that, but that was sacrilege for the church at the time, you know, they would have said, And that's, so what you did was basically create this rift that said, no, it's okay.
Nathan Blair: Your sort of soul or something remains intact. But the body, cause the body is just flesh. A vessel, but semantics would say, actually, no, this is, this is just an integrated, this is an intermingling. There's an integrated whole. I know I'm speaking in, I keep mentioning science, spirituality, and you know, at the semantics school, we very much don't use much language about, we don't talk a lot about spirituality.
Nathan Blair: It's sort of implicit. It kind of comes through in the experience, but we try to speak in a language that everyone can understand that doesn't alienate. Cause this can be understand understood in very, very secular terms. You know, the idea that when you have a gut feeling about something, you know, we just kind of, you [00:16:00] sense that you can't explain it logically, so to speak, but you just know something's not right.
Nathan Blair: about this situation or this conversation or this particular individual I'm interacting with, we wouldn't want to, you know, we wouldn't want to say that there's no intelligence in that, you know, because quite often we look back later and go, I knew it. I knew I shouldn't have done that thing. Or I knew that that wasn't the right thing for me to do.
Nathan Blair: Or, or conversely, I knew that like, maybe you really felt this spark inside. You just felt this kind of stuff light up the resonance.
Ellie Scarf: And
Nathan Blair: you didn't take action in that thing. And later you regret it. And you said, Oh, I had a feeling that was right for me. And so there's the way that we view this in semantics, this is this intelligence beyond the intellect.
Nathan Blair: The intelligence is distributed throughout the body.
Ellie Scarf: And
Nathan Blair: Yeah. You know, we've gone through, we had the kind of decade of neuro of [00:17:00] neuroscience, I think, or, or the decade of mindfulness maybe. It was there first mm-Hmm. And then, and then neuroscience became very popular. And now I think we're moving into what I would call like the decade of the nervous system.
Nathan Blair: You know, I think people are very interested in nervous system now. We could talk a lot about that as well. Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: So, so would we include things like polyvagal theory in what you guys do in the somatic school? Like is that the sort of. Okay.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. I mean, polyvagal theory describes a way our kind of most the most current way of understanding the autonomic nervous system and nervous system regulation.
Ellie Scarf: At
Nathan Blair: the end of the day, polyvagal theory is still a theory, but it has great efficacy. It really, for many, it was very like it lines up with our experience. No doubt in years to come, we'll have even more understanding and more depth. But for now, polyvagal theory is kind of our latest understanding. Thanks.
Nathan Blair: And, you know, when we talk about the autonomic nervous system, especially when we talk about polyvagal and talk about the vagus nerve, that's a nerve that runs, you know, the [00:18:00] wandering nerve, they call it, it runs throughout our body, connecting to our major organs.
Ellie Scarf: If
Nathan Blair: we, you know, if that's not distributed intelligence, I don't know what is.
Nathan Blair: So polyvagal theory, absolutely. It's a very central notion that we often draw on at the somatic school. Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. And, and, and it's so interesting, like as, as I learn this from you and like, I, I understand bits and pieces, right? So I've done some training as a psychotherapist and I'm, I'm sort of, yeah, I've read things, you know, I've read a bit of Gabor Mate and I've, you know, all, all of these things.
Ellie Scarf: So I feel like I. Like have bits and pieces, but I really do feel like it's very hard for me to, to fully understand. So I'm wondering how, how does semantics integrate with coaching? Because coaching, I know, coaching I'm good with, like how, how might I use it in my practice? If I were to like hypothesize the sorts of things I would imagine I could really, you Would add to my practice would be, I guess, [00:19:00] more tools to help when we're talking about you know, reasons why people are experiencing you know, stuckness or distress or echoes of the past showing up in the way that they, they appear in their coaching.
Ellie Scarf: And. You know, I think there's probably some intuitive language that I use around the body, but it does tend to be quite a psychological conversation. Is that how, yeah, tell me, I'll make that an open question.
Nathan Blair: Well, you know, it's so it's, it's fascinating to me because somatics has been around for a very, very long time.
Nathan Blair: And you mentioned you have some background in psychotherapy and in the world of psychotherapy around the sixties, There was a big emergence of all these body psychotherapies as Eastern thought made its way into, particularly into the States, into California, to Essendon, which you may be familiar with the, there's a location in California where the human potential movement really was born out of.
Nathan Blair: And that's where the coaching approach later [00:20:00] actually kind of came, came forth from there. But you know, it's, it's amazing. No, no matter how long it's been around for example, so in 2020, the ICF had a had a webinar about their core competencies and the updates and their core competencies, and they were asked the question, you know, why isn't the body.
Nathan Blair: Or semantics mentioned in in a coaching mindset or embodies a coaching mindset, that particular competency. And they said that while, while they have anecdotal evidence that some coaches use somatic techniques. In their practice, the, the, the degree to which that emerged to be significant enough and that wasn't a it didn't emerge significantly enough in their data for them to for it to be included, basically, that's what they said.
Nathan Blair: And when I saw that we'd already been training somatic coaches for two to three years at that point. And and so I saw that and thought, you know, this is about to change and all like not on our watch. So, so what we, what we train, what we [00:21:00] share with coaches is ways to support clients with a whole host of different topics and issues, if you think about it.
Nathan Blair: Semantics is another dimension to your, your, your typical coaching work that you're doing. So if we think that in most coaching, we're working exclusively with verbal communication and the thinking mind, what we're doing here is we're working with that. Yes. Yes, thinking, yes, speaking. And what I often call the second conversation, which is the nonverbal, the nonverbal gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact, or lack thereof.
Nathan Blair: Even if you're very attuned to your clients, you know, you might see their face blush or them grit their teeth or their eyes become a little tearful. And those, those nuances of nonverbals. That we can track become open up a whole new world [00:22:00] of information in some coaching. We might think about that as data.
Nathan Blair: Sometimes it's referred to, but yes, I was about
Ellie Scarf: to, I was definitely going to refer to that as data, which is so interesting and definitely a sign of my preference for the cognitive. Yeah.
Nathan Blair: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, and and and, but it is, you know, it is more of that. So you were right to think that it's, it's, it's, that's just one way of referring to this.
Nathan Blair: The, the kind of the, the absolute breadth of information that's available to us. So first of all, there's that aspect, but then there's also what, why would we might describe these embodied ways of knowing. So this is accessed through what's known as interoception. So essentially sensing ourselves from within.
Nathan Blair: And so, you know, we mentioned earlier the kind of gut feelings that we might have in a, in, in a sense of rightness, you know, that comes for us. And we all have access to this, but some maybe a more familiar or more practiced with that than others. And certain embodiment practices can [00:23:00] support with that.
Nathan Blair: Like meditation, for example, is a simple example but nonetheless, we all, we all have that. We're conscious of it or not. So from that perspective, we're just accessing more data to use the language that's more common in the world of coaching. Right. On the other hand, there's. A number of topics that somatic lends itself very well to.
Nathan Blair: So being stuck for example, somatic approach is help us access. I often say help us access that which is not already known because quite often in coaching, we might do a lot of reframing or asking these questions that help to help, help us to see things from different perspectives. But those deep insights, what's often referred to in coaching as the aha moments
Ellie Scarf: are
Nathan Blair: so readily available when we work with the body because there's so much latent information and so much that's held in what's known as implicit memory and cellular memory even.
Nathan Blair: But, but, but, but just the implicit memory is good enough to think [00:24:00] about it like this, which is essentially a little like the unconscious. In fact, someone called Eugene Jenlin said that the body is our unconscious, which is a bold statement. But basically it's the idea that this is, there's so much available outside of conscious awareness that, that actually almost, and I don't want to say this as an absolute, but almost let's put it this way, can't is harder to be accessed.
Nathan Blair: It's harder to access if we're not working with the body, but when we work with the body, often it just bubbles up into conscious awareness. These insights, these deep truths about ourselves that we previously weren't consciously aware of. And they kind of bubble up into conscious awareness. And then our clients have these regularly, have these, what we would refer often as aha moments.
Nathan Blair: So getting unstuck, working with relational challenges and conflict. Stress management, absolutely reactivity connecting to a deeper sense of purpose or what brings us alive, our deeper desires or longings. Yeah, and amongst other things.
Ellie Scarf: [00:25:00] All of which are things that we're working with in coaching, right?
Ellie Scarf: So all, all of those things. And the one that stood out to me that you mentioned then was that idea of reactivity. And often, often as particularly executive coaches, we are working with leaders who are struggling with emotional regulation. So that's the sort of language that we would use. And, you know, that's a really complex thing, right?
Ellie Scarf: Because it can't just be a purely intellectual process. to solve, right? We have to be able to tap into that feeling of the emotion. So, so I imagine that, that, yeah, it makes sense that somatic tools are going to help to do that.
Nathan Blair: Absolutely. I mean, I guess this part perhaps brings us back to polyvagal theory.
Nathan Blair: And
Nathan Blair: somatic coaching is is different to somatic therapy, right? You just said there that that all of these topics that we've explored feel very much like what we'd be exploring with our coaching clients.
Ellie Scarf: But
Nathan Blair: quite often when you hear people [00:26:00] talk about somatic coaching, they often conflate it. I, in my opinion, with somatic therapy, so quite often you'll hear them talk about trauma.
Nathan Blair: I think that's
Ellie Scarf: exactly what I'm doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Blair: Well, curiously though, there are many ways to work with somatic with polyvagal, as you mentioned in ways that are very much coaching. In fact, polyvagal theory is quite a wonderful way of understanding the body because it also sort of normalizes our stress responses in such a way that we can engage with them without feeling very judgmental, judgmental of ourselves or our experience.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Nathan Blair: But this conflation with somatic therapy leads people often to think that somatic coaching is all about trauma work, which in my opinion is really the realm of trauma specialists. And typically those are therapists. So somatic experiencing sensory motor psychotherapy norm therapy, all examples of somatic trauma therapies.
Nathan Blair: Those are years of study. Often have placements, you know, but in the world. [00:27:00]
Ellie Scarf: Yes. Yeah. Well, no, I think that really, that really helps my understanding because one of my concerns is, are we opening up people who are not experienced? So coaches who may have, you know, some knowledge of somatic tools in the context of coaching, are we opening up conversations that they're not equipped to have, right.
Ellie Scarf: With people who. You know, and, and exposing coachees to a deeper level of, you know, trauma coming up that maybe is not safe for them in a coaching context.
Nathan Blair: It's a very real concern at it because there are many, many online trainings these days that are like eight week mind body therapy courses and things like this.
Nathan Blair: And I don't want to speak disparagingly, but that's cause for concern for me. It gives me pause. Ellie, like when I see those things, I think to myself, wow, yeah. And as somatics grows in popularity, you see more and more of this, especially in the context and topic of [00:28:00] trauma. People are reading books and then going out working with their clients.
Nathan Blair: In this way, in my opinion, I think that that is largely unethical unless we've done some training that has us be qualified to work with those individuals. So what we were very interested in as a somatic school was being what we call being true to coaching and true to somatics in equal measure. We are very, very much a coach training provider.
Nathan Blair: And so what does it look like to use somatics in a coaching context? In essence, you can think about it as the difference between sort of like trauma healing work And embodied sense making. So like where, so body owned coaching, as we train it at the somatic school is more of the latter, this embodied sense making now with that, when you work with the body and you work with the unconscious, therefore we have to have, there are a number of things that we have to be taking into consideration.
Nathan Blair: We have to have a great sensitivity and attunement. There's as much that's [00:29:00] important to know what not to do. As there is to know what to do, that has that work be safe, ethical, et cetera. And polyvagal theory helps a lot with that. So I did say we'd speak a little bit more about that. And I suppose an understanding of nervous systems, this this kind of hierarchy of autonomic states and how, how clients shift in and out of, regulated or dysregulated states help a lot.
Nathan Blair: And how they move flexibly between those autonomic states, but understanding how, you know, for example, our presence alone And set the conditions for safe coaching. Carl Rogers, who's one of the founding practitioners of the humanistic tradition.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Nathan Blair: Had these initial, had these kind of core conditions, right?
Nathan Blair: These core conditions, which were unconditional positive regard. And which I've heard you talk about in your episodes before. Yeah. Empathy and congruence and, and, and so empathetic empathy or empathetic understanding is a, how we demonstrate that we are [00:30:00] understanding or attune to our clients. Congruence is that we're aligned in the sense that, you know, that what we say and what we do is aligned with how we feel inside.
Nathan Blair: It's a certain level of transparency that ultimately creates a sense of safety to use more of the language of polyvagal theory. When there's not something happening that feels like it caused cognitive dissonance for us, this kind of idea of like, they're saying they're happy to see me, but they have a furled brow.
Ellie Scarf: That's
Nathan Blair: a great example of how we're tracking non verbals and somatic data Automatic information constantly, whether we're consciously aware of it or not, and it creates this neuroception, they call it this perception of threat. You know, something's not quite right here, but then unconditional positive regard is a great one.
Nathan Blair: Unconditional positive regard. I've always thought it's a little bit like unconditional love. It's a tall order. Like,
Ellie Scarf: yeah.
Nathan Blair: How can you truly be unconditionally loving or unconditionally positive? That's a, that's a lot, right?
Ellie Scarf: Which, which is tricky when it comes to congruence in itself. Right. Because we want to be unconditional in our positive regard, [00:31:00] but if we are in fact, like sitting with some judgment, then, then that's a really, a really hard one for the coach.
Nathan Blair: That's right. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, some people might ask themselves then, well, then how do I, how do I do unconditional positive regard in practice in a sense? Right. How do we do that? So one of the, one of the One of the gifts from a school of practice called Hakomi, Hakomi has got a funny name and it's a little difficult to explain.
Nathan Blair: For now, let's, let's say that they just describe it as mindfulness based assisted self study. It's a type of therapy and it is somatic. Yeah. Lots of words. I know. But but Hakomi has a particular practice called loving presence. We train this on the course at somatic school, but this is just a really, really simple little thing that demonstrates how an understanding of.
Nathan Blair: Conscious awareness of our bodies, in other words, like a posture on our facial expressions, our tone of voice as coaches, plus an understanding of the polyvagal theory [00:32:00] and how nervous systems interact. Helps us to create conditions for safe coaching. So in, in loving presence, you've got this idea of we, we source inspiration and nourishment from our clients actively.
Nathan Blair: So what do I, what do I track to be inspiring or nourishing in my client, whether that's through what they're saying or in their non verbals. And then we allow that to beam or, or demo or reveal itself through our demeanor. That's the tone of voice. Eye contact, et cetera.
Ellie Scarf: And
Nathan Blair: from polyvagal theory, what we know is that there, what we receive in our nerve autonomic nervous system as cues of welcome as safety of things like eye contact which isn't possible for everyone depending on
Ellie Scarf: neurodiver,
Nathan Blair: neurodiversity and that's about eye contact or softness in the eyes.
Nathan Blair: A sincere smile, which is Reveals itself with creases at the corner of the eye. Prosody in the voice, which is this melody in the voice, as we speak is natural up and down in the voice. A kind of a [00:33:00] flexibility or softness in the system, which reveals itself often for a tip, like a natural tilt in the head.
Nathan Blair: Those things come online quite naturally when we're, when we're looking for inspiration and nourishment in our clients. The, the aver, the, on the flip side of that is like an rigidity in the system, which is like a stiff neck, lack of eye contact, monotone voice. Yeah. And, and, and that is picked up by the nervous system as cues of warning.
Nathan Blair: So just knowing that our presence alone before we've even uttered a word as is doing so much for our client's nervous system.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Nathan Blair: You're setting the scene basically for safe coaching or not, depending on how you're showing up in that way. And so that's just an example of like right upstream before we even get into the somatic coaching techniques.
Nathan Blair: There's so much we can be doing to create the conditions for safe coaching to take place and not going into past content, not going into, into trauma to resolve trauma, but working with dysregulation as it arises [00:34:00] is one of the things that we do as a body injury coach as well.
Ellie Scarf: And so, okay. So, so in somatic coaching training, I imagine you're talking about how to, how to manage the dynamics that come up in that regard.
Ellie Scarf: So, you know, because what you're potentially like, if, like you say, you have that really strong connection, your presence is, is that open? And I think I, what did, what was the phrase you used? Loving something.
Nathan Blair: Loving presence. So that's what they call it. And I
Ellie Scarf: like that. Yeah. You know, I imagine that that sets the scene for people to be more willing to, to share some of those things that potentially we know our coaches have never spoken to anyone about.
Ellie Scarf: Certainly not a therapist. So is that a toolkit that your coaches have, which is how to navigate that knowing when to refer to, to someone knowing what is and isn't within the boundaries of competence?
Nathan Blair: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there is a clear sense. Do you know why it's [00:35:00] difficult sometimes to draw hard lines between coaching and therapy?
Nathan Blair: Because often in practice, they look much the same.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Nathan Blair: There are definitely, there is a sort of what is beyond the scope of a body oriented coaching skill set. And so we are equipping coaches to know when to refer when is the time to hand over to a specialist, but also what to do in instances where they may feel out of their depth so they can work at somatic depth without feeling out of their depth.
Nathan Blair: That's the, that's the idea. And, and so there are lots of, You know, through we we've now trained over 500 body oriented coaches. It's like 33 courses of between 10 and 18 people. And over that time has this this has evolved to, in fact, we've removed certain things from our training that we've seen to be actually, that's.
Nathan Blair: has potential of, of leading to more dysregulation. So we've, you know, we really got to a place here where it's like saying that this is how you can do somatic coaching in a safe [00:36:00] and responsible way. That comes through that, that level of, you know, that time and experience to know and it's important but when you work safely in this way, it opens up a whole world, you know, that's, that's kind of right beneath our noses, quite literally, literally and has so much to offer so much wisdom, so much insight that, that, that enriches any coaching conversation with any client, even those who are not necessarily super open to it.
Nathan Blair: There are things you can do that even for the more. Skeptical, especially in the executive space. You'll, you'll often find that there are things that you can do that can still be helpful to them, like constellations work we do. And that, that tends to be used in organizations quite regularly. And we, we train constellations as part of the course as well.
Nathan Blair: Systemic constellations helps. Execs work with understanding what might be happening at the different levels of their organizational system or through their team, you know? And, and when it's [00:37:00] framed in that way, even though we're often working quite embodied in somatic ways. And it becomes available to even the more skeptical execs that we might be working with.
Ellie Scarf: So on, on that note, I think when we're selling into organizations and selling coaching in, it can be hard to break out of the mold of what is known as sort of traditional executive coaching. And so I'm wondering, you know, are you seeing organizations be more open to somatic approaches? How are people having that conversation?
Ellie Scarf: When it comes to selling particularly,
Nathan Blair: that's such a great question, Eddie, because I myself have even had doubts about the openness of corporate environments to this work over the years. The, what I'm hearing more and more these days, and I speak with with a business consultant a few business consultants and And people who work in leadership development and HR and what I'm learning, [00:38:00] what I'm hearing is that actually the openness to this is, is on the rise, you know a few things have contributed to this.
Nathan Blair: One is the, the, the emphasis these days more and more on wellness within organizations, these wellness and wellbeing initiatives that are happening as part of HR strategy. You know. And so somatic work and an understanding of say, for example, we've spoken a lot about polyvagal theory today, but the idea of like a nervous system regulation for stress management and avoiding burnout, for example, which is clearly an issue today, right?
Nathan Blair: Naturally these things lend, you know, these, these topics lend themselves very well to wellness and wellbeing initiatives, but also the democratization of coaching within organizations today. So you get a lot of you know, you get a lot of agencies. And, and consultancies who have associate coaches going in and working with not just senior leaders these days, but with, with members of staff or members of the organization at every level, there's democratization of coaching, [00:39:00] coaching as part of the the sort of, whether that be engagement or development programs, you know, just support essentially for staff means that.
Nathan Blair: Approaches like this become, I think, more more what's the word relevant, more relevant because they're not necessarily approaches that you would necessarily immediately see as directly tied to performance outcomes. So like a more traditional performance coaching approach would be, would make more sense if you're, if you're coaching senior leaders to somebody who has a limited HR budget, for example.
Nathan Blair: Right.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah.
Nathan Blair: But now, if you're coaching everyone in an organization, and it's not necessarily about their KPIs, but about how they're doing in their role and how they're doing in their life and how that then feeds into the quality of their work, then these approaches make a lot more, you can make a [00:40:00] more of a business case for them.
Nathan Blair: Even though these approaches also lend themselves very well to performance outcomes, because naturally somebody who is feeling whole connected to other ways of knowing beyond the internet, right? So that's intuitive. You know, the book blink by Malcolm Gladwell, you know, this idea of intuitive decision making helps a lot when in, in strategy and leadership.
Nathan Blair: But also this idea of, you know, a nerve, a regulated nervous system is obviously going to do
Ellie Scarf: And it is occurring to me as, as you speak, and I don't know why I wasn't thinking of it in this way before that, that when we sell coaching, we are selling the outcome, not the process. And in fact, the perspectives that you bring to your coaching practice are wide and varied anyway. So when we add.
Ellie Scarf: Somatic approaches to that toolkit that we bring, it's not necessarily something that we put on a flag and saying, Oh, by the way, I'm going to be doing some somatic touchy feely coaching with you, not literally touchy feely. You know, so we're not actually going [00:41:00] to be leading with that. Are we, we're going to be bringing it as, as one of the perspectives that we bring alongside like our developmental approaches or our positive psychology approaches.
Ellie Scarf: It's all, all integrated. Really.
Nathan Blair: Essentially, you are becoming a more integrated and holistic practitioner or coach who, who has just more to work with, you know at your disposal, at your disposal. And then there are also ways to speak to it more explicitly, you know, you might not need to put the flag up, like you said, and have it be your, your storefront.
Nathan Blair: I have an embodied somatic approach because like you said at the beginning of this podcast, I'm not quite sure what that means and you're not alone in that, you know, so as you lead with outcomes, as you describe. One of the things you can do is also offer some of the science, you know, that sits behind these approaches because, you know as you get into looking at things [00:42:00] like how, let's say, I don't know, an understanding of the autonomic nervous system again, once again, so about the autonomic nervous system how that might correlate with a decrease in overwhelm and burnout, I don't know, for example, that data that that's those statistics can be a great marketing tool.
Nathan Blair: You know, and those can be directly related to your somatic skill set, you know, that you've acquired.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. Yeah. And we, we, I mean, those, those, we can follow the bouncing ball and start to quantify, right? So days, sickness, days, days, absent attrition all, all of those sorts of things. Great
Nathan Blair: ROI on that.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah, exactly. One other question I had is when we talk about democratization of coaching and. You know, the different working with people at all levels of an organization that often includes working not just one on one, but in group capacities. Is, is that something that this approach lends it to, or is it by definition, a one on one process?[00:43:00]
Nathan Blair: It absolutely lends itself to group and practices. In fact, we literally just launched our certificate in body oriented group coaching. So that, yeah. So. Working with groups is obviously a different kettle of fish, so to speak. There's a lot that's the same, those, those essential kind of foundational coaching skillset applies, but naturally working with more than one has a different I think we, we appreciate this different, there's a difference there.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. Right. So, so just to give, My way of example of what we include in that training, for example, is and this is a training that's for graduates because we, we, it's the idea that they've got that kind of foundational body education skills. Yeah. But, but to give some examples would be like I mentioned earlier constellation work.
Nathan Blair: So we train a particular type of systemic constellation work called structural constellations, which is something that can be a wonderful [00:44:00] process to facilitate with teams. Structural constellations is very available to people. And unlike other systemic approaches, like family constellations, which may work with people representing different aspects of the system, which can for some people feel a little bit like.
Nathan Blair: Out there, because are you familiar with the systemic family, systemic constellation work?
Ellie Scarf: I would say very high level. So I think you might need to explain it.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. The, the I'm wondering to what degree to, to go into depth with this, but basically it's the idea that different people can represent different parts of a system within a family.
Nathan Blair: Let's say. for example, parent, brother, sibling, these people though, that represent these individuals within a family are not the family members themselves. They're typically either strangers or people who are part of a therapeutic group, you [00:45:00] know. But what happens in consolation work is that the representatives often say things that that are entirely relevant to the system of the client, the particular individual who's going through this process.
Nathan Blair: No one really understands how exactly that happens. And I kind of love that because this kind of constellation work is used a lot in organizations, which may be surprising to hear, but I love that it's kind of slipped under the radar in a way of not necessarily being able to fully explain. why that's the case.
Nathan Blair: Sometimes it's referred to as the knowing field. Sometimes Otto Sharma refers to it as fourth person knowing and Otto Sharma who created Theory U has been working within corporate environments. Well, that's primarily for the direct for almost the entire period that he's been a corporate and teams and organizational facilitator and coach.
Nathan Blair: So so structural constellations works a little differently where you use [00:46:00] floor markers. And that's a little less kind of out there.
Ellie Scarf: Right.
Nathan Blair: And so you work with these floor markers and you can use teams to work with this and it can be a great way of accessing this kind of more embodied ways of knowing this kind of bottom up thinking processes that by the way, have a much lower cognitive load.
Nathan Blair: So we do this process when we're doing our business strategy.
Ellie Scarf: And what
Nathan Blair: we find is it's very energy efficient. It's a very energy efficient way of working instead of sitting there trying to work it out, figure it out. You know, after a while, you start to get a headache because you're like, well, you know, okay, maybe we take a break now.
Nathan Blair: These approaches that are more bottom up tend to have. really lighten the cognitive load, you know, very very efficient in that way. Yeah. I
Ellie Scarf: can see that it seems less there's less labor going on cognitively because we are getting an additional information source or a different additional source of intelligence that, that we're feeding into it.
Ellie Scarf: Now I'm, I'm just conscious of, of time and I [00:47:00] wanted to be sure that I asked you, Nathan, how do you use. These tools in your business, because, you know, the point of this podcast is really to talk about coaching business. And I can sense that there's a huge amount of appetite for how we might appetite or ability to use these tools in our businesses, because business is actually really, really tough.
Ellie Scarf: And we have, you know, it can be a very. emotional experience. So I'm wondering if you have a tool that you could share with us that might help.
Nathan Blair: Totally. We have a mantra at the somatic school. If it isn't resonant, it isn't right. Oh, this speaks. Yeah, indeed. This speaks to that. We are really holding a frame of the authority of the body.
Nathan Blair: that says we're listening to that intelligence that wisdom within when we're having a meeting, if somebody feels a bit gritty about it, a bit sort of [00:48:00] like there's a knot in someone's stomach or there's a tightness or a contract constriction in their chest. Or that they are not even necessarily aware of the physical marker of that, but actually they just have this feeling like something doesn't quite sit right with me about that, you
Ellie Scarf: know, in
Nathan Blair: more conceptual terms, you know, it doesn't, it's not quite sitting right.
Nathan Blair: Even though if you were to dig a little deeper, they'd probably be experiencing that somewhere in the body. But But in those moments, we pause and we, we check in what is that telling us? So what does that individual know? What does the body know that we might need to name, acknowledge, and include?
Ellie Scarf: And in
Nathan Blair: doing so, quite often decision making is is shaped and informed by that. Now, this is about balancing what we know logically from the data from our finance for a financial figures from our metrics, et cetera, with what the body offers us to. So it's not about being sort of [00:49:00] led by. you know, the winds of our emotion or, or, or intuitive impulses, but it's about including that.
Nathan Blair: And when we do so, we make much better decisions in our opinion. So that's one thing.
Ellie Scarf: There's another thing. Oh, tell me the other thing.
Nathan Blair: Okay. So the other thing is, well, I suppose is you know, when you understand the nervous system we can start to work in ways where we put the nervous system first.
Nathan Blair: So for example, when we come into meetings, we know that if we come to a meeting and we don't check in with each other, we don't acknowledge the human and where people are at and things like that. We come in, we go, right guys, we've only got 30 minutes, we need to crack on. What that's probably going to be doing is stimulating our sympathetic nervous system activation.
Nathan Blair: Now there's nothing wrong with the sympathetic nervous system. It is also referred to as the mobilization system. It's mobilizes, it moves us into action. That's great. But what's even better. Is because that is, sorry, let me just pause and just say that that can very quickly tip into [00:50:00] stress and dysregulation very easily if there isn't an anchor, so to speak, in what's known as ventral vagal.
Nathan Blair: That ventral vagal is part of the autonomic nervous system that is essentially what you might refer to as safe and social. Everything's okay. It's the kind of optimal state for homeostasis or allostasis, this kind of where our body functions just work normally and where we basically are able to have creative, engaged and connected interactions, which is kind of what you want in business meetings on the whole, wherever they be with employees, team members.
Nathan Blair: or clients, you know any of them. So when we understand nervous system, the nervous system and how it functions, we can, we can really work in nervous system conscious ways. And one of the ways, you know, it's interesting, you had Imogen Marechal here talking about play and the importance of play.
Ellie Scarf: Well, one
Nathan Blair: of the ways we can understand play and a lot of what Imogen was sharing about how [00:51:00] experimentation is, there's a utility to experimentation.
Nathan Blair: Right. And And one of the ways to understand that from a nervous system perspective is that play is this unique experience where we have the mobilizing energy of sympathetic activation.
Ellie Scarf: You know, we
Nathan Blair: can kind of be in motion with this anchor and ventral vagal, this blended state of sympathetic and ventral is referred to as
Ellie Scarf: play
Nathan Blair: or that's what we experience in play, this blended state of sympathetic activation, but we feel safe.
Nathan Blair: Enough of words, there's this mobilizing energy, but there's safety. So at The Semantics Crew, we, we, we have a very experimental attitude to business. It's all about iteration, permission to play, let's give things a go, let's see how it goes and giving permission for that kind of sense and respond, let's try something out and let's just tune in.
Nathan Blair: What, what's the result? And then let's respond to that course, correct, adjust as we go. Allowing a team [00:52:00] to have a kind of experimental attitude like that is empowering, frees them up to be autonomous and have, I feel that they have agency in their work and ultimately they feel safe and regulated while they do that.
Nathan Blair: And maybe it's fun too. Which is fun. I hope so.
Ellie Scarf: How, how would you apply that to someone working on their own? So like a coach running their own practice, how would they, how would they do that for themselves?
Nathan Blair: One of the ways that I like to think about this is. I actually like to use the symbol of the yin and the yang,
Ellie Scarf: the
Nathan Blair: yin and the yin yang symbol, right, which is an ancient Chinese symbol.
Nathan Blair: Yin can be thought about as the implicit symbol. the indirect, the creative, sometimes the chaotic. The yang is the structuring, the ordered, the the containing and the kind of linear as well, where the yin might be non linear. So if you're working, [00:53:00] if you're a solopreneur or you're an executive coach who works as a kind of a, on your own and you don't have a team like, like we do at the somatic school then the way I like to think about this is you want to be doing all this creative, innovative intuitive work.
Nathan Blair: You want to also be making sure that you have the structures in place that allow your nervous system to feel safe, to settle. Structures like clear financial records, structures, structures like structures like calendar management client management systems. Contracts, you know routine, for example or having your payment method ready when you have consultations, knowing your prices, knowing how to, how to take payment when somebody says, great, sign me up because you know what happens when you don't have those structures in place when you don't have that yang containing holding kind of, you [00:54:00] get to that point, let's just sign me up, you get frazzled.
Nathan Blair: stressed nervous system dysregulation and what has otherwise been a creative flowing generative conversation now, now starts to spiral into something that feels like disorder and, and chaos and that client doesn't sign up. They don't become a client and it could have been avoided it with that harmonious balancing of the yin yang, the structuring and the creativity and the flow.
Nathan Blair: It's one way I like to think about it.
Ellie Scarf: I love that. And I think that's really helpful for a lot of coaches because a lot of coaches, you know, are. A very purpose oriented. They make the decision to become a coach because they want to really lean into that heart centricity. And then they may neglect that structure and process, which in the end becomes problematic because if we don't have clients, we're not going to be able to sustain it.
Ellie Scarf: So I love, I love that. Almost, almost polarities would be another [00:55:00] way of thinking about it, right? Which is if we lean too hard into one of them, we, we can then have to react You know, even more strongly on the other side. And so we need to be thinking about balance and, and having both, not one
Nathan Blair: Exactly.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. Polarities in any area. And, and also, yeah, you could think about masculine and feminine. Yin and yang is
Ellie Scarf: Mm-Hmm.
Nathan Blair: If in a non-gendered way, essentially. Yes. Yin and yang is that too. But yeah, polarities is definitely,
Ellie Scarf: Mm-Hmm.
Nathan Blair: Yeah. And do you know. And one, one more thing actually, as well, when it comes to sales, like an understanding of the nervous system there, we can know that as it comes to the point where we're potentially going to be enrolling or a client or closing a contract, when anyone's parting with resources, whether they're HR, L and D specialist or they you know, an employer or the exec themselves that can sometimes create a little nervous system dysregulation that can be a bit like, okay, even if it's just the, the, [00:56:00] the, the change that's ahead and change.
Nathan Blair: change can be unsettling. So I'm enrolling on something or I'm, I'm going to be starting some coaching process that is going to be proceed like bringing change into my life. So when we understand it from that perspective, what we can do at that point is be very conscious of our presence for some of the ways that we talk about embody into coaching, how our presence alone, you know, the power of our presence, some of our presence, some of the way that we are very folding, very structuring at that point in the conversation.
Nathan Blair: Just like we spoke about before with ourselves, we could do the same with our prospective clients and become very, very clear in our communication, very direct, have a, have a kind of tone of reassurance. I got you. We're going to be cool. And that's basically saying, I understand that this could be unsettling.
Nathan Blair: This might be creating a little bit of sympathetic activation for you right now, or even a bit of shutdown, a bit dorsal. And so. [00:57:00] So I'm going to take care of your nervous system here whilst actually in boarding a new client. That's a radical way of looking at it, but basically that's sales as an active service, you know?
Nathan Blair: Yes.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah, I love it. And I often talk about sales as service, but really more from a mindset perspective. You know, which is how do we think about, about sales, not as this, you know, horrible thing to be avoided. So that is, is, is super helpful. And Nathan, I just feel like I could ask you a thousand more questions.
Ellie Scarf: So I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to stop. I do want to ask you though with the somatic school, I know that you're running an event soon, and I wondered if you could share a little bit with us about it.
Nathan Blair: So we are running an open to public free event that we are very much looking forward to.
Nathan Blair: It's been a long time coming it's called the embodied business symposium. So it's very relevant for your listeners. It's on the 7th and 8th of September. This year. So next month at the time of recording this September, September [00:58:00] 2024 it's basically an immersive weekend where we have 18 free drop in sessions, all about doing the business of coaching with the body in mind.
Ellie Scarf: Amazing.
Nathan Blair: And. We've got sessions on topics such as bottom up business strategy. Somebody has one called ease the freeze, building business courage, and we've got Instagram as a welcome exhale. So these embodied ways of doing social media, working in alignment with coaching agencies and, and, and many, many more.
Nathan Blair: And all of the session hosts are, The expert speakers here are from our alumni of successful Somanauts, we call them. Yeah. And they're all running their business. You know, their coaching businesses, the body oriented way. And so they're, they're sharing what they've learned in that process.
Ellie Scarf: And so, so what sort of coaches would it be most suitable for
Nathan Blair: this?
Nathan Blair: I would probably say this is most suitable [00:59:00] for rather than the internal coach or necessarily the associate coach, probably more the coach who has their own business. So the entrepreneurial coach, the coach who markets their own services, who sells their own services and who has to run day to day.
Nathan Blair: The business of coaching, because as you in all of your episodes speaking to Elliot, you know, the business of coaching is its own craft. You've got this. Yeah. You've got the coaching skillset, what you do in the room, and then you've got the business of coaching. And so this, this, rather than focusing on coaching skills or body range coaching skills here at this event, we're focusing on the business of coaching and the art and craft of that.
Ellie Scarf: Yeah. I love it. And I will certainly be signing up. And I recommend everyone that does, will you be, will there be recordings available?
Nathan Blair: Yes. Yes. Yeah. So. So, so actually I forget exactly how we're doing the recordings if I'm completely honest but the, the [01:00:00] sessions will be recorded. And I think I remember now, so basically the recordings are available for 72 hours after the event.
Nathan Blair: And then for, for our community members, they have lifetime access to those recordings. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, So anyone who that, who, if anybody decided they wanted to join our Somanauts community, become a trainer as a body coach, they would have lifetime access to all of these 18 sessions.
Nathan Blair: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Ellie Scarf: Okay. Oh, fantastic. So we will put the link to the symposium, the embodied business symposium. Am I right?
Nathan Blair: Exactly. Got it.
Ellie Scarf: You got it. I'll put the link in the show notes so that, so that everyone who's listening can, can sign up because I think, you know, there's something in that for everyone.
Ellie Scarf: And most people who listen are coaches in business themselves. So I think it'll be, it'll be very well, well suited. And if you are a coach who is thinking about going into business, I think a lot of these tools are really helpful to learn ahead of time because often we don't know what we don't know.
Ellie Scarf: And if we can set [01:01:00] ourselves up to sort of. I guess flatten the learning curve a little bit. I think this will be a great way to help you to do that. So, yeah, thank you so much, Nathan. I really, really appreciate everything that you've shared with us today. And you know, just watch out. I might hit you up again in, in a, in a few months.
Ellie Scarf: So
Nathan Blair: it would be an absolute pleasure. It's been a joy. Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the business of executive coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us.
This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics, and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses, and more info on the [01:02:00] Impact Coach Collective can be found at ellyscarfe.
com. Have a brilliant week, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
