Institute of Coaching - Coaching Report

2015 January Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:56:48 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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We are pleased to start off 2015 focused on the evolving field of neuroscience and harnessing the power of your own brain.

If you are still searching for new behaviors or practices for the new year, you may wish to consider meditation. Contemplative practice has gone on for thousands of years and study after study shows the powerful benefits of meditation on human health and wellbeing. What`s particularly interesting in the selected article below, Neuroscience Reveals the Secrets of Meditation`s Benefits: Mind of the Meditator, is that researchers explore 3 varieties of contemplative practice: Focused Attention, Mindfulness, and Compassion and Loving Kindness. Neuroimaging proves the ability of these practices to rewire your brain and leading you to greater health and well-being. Have you considered incorporating a contemplative practice into your daily regime?

We are excited to launch our webinar series this year with two faculty presenters from our 2014 Coaching in Leadership and Healthcare Conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School; Margaret Moore, MBA and Shelley Carson PhD. They will present their latest neuroscience model designed to help you go from "survive" to "thrive" all year long and how to access different brain states depending on what you are doing.

If you are looking for more to read, we have recommended two books that focus on organizing your mind.

It is our hope that as we journey together through 2015, that we do so with reduced stress, decreased emotional exhaustion, and increased resiliency and well-being so that we can all reach our highest potential.

Enjoy!

Laurel

Director of Sponsors, Members, Marketing

Article Content:

From Research To Coaching Practice

Mind of the Meditator: Contemplative practices that extend back thousands of years show a multitude of benefits for both body and mind by Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Richard J. Davidson, Scientific American, November 2014

Special thanks to Deb Elbaum, MD, CPCC, ACC for reviewing this research article and translating the key points to use your coaching practice.

We have been told that meditation has beneficial effects, and this article provides compelling physiological data to support this claim. Research representing almost 15 years of studies conducted at more than 19 universities shows that experienced meditators experience significant changes in their brain structure and function.
These experienced meditators included monastics and lay practitioners of Buddhism who have practiced meditation for tens of thousands of hours. Their brain imaging scans and electroencephalograms were compared to people who do not meditate or are beginning meditators.

Studies were performed on three different types of meditation:
•   Focused-attention -- This type of meditation aims to quiet and center the mind in the present moment. Meditators become aware of distractions and refocus their attention. Four phases of focused-attention meditation have been identified: mind wandering; distraction awareness; reorientation of awareness; and refocus. Brain scans performed during these four phases showed that different brain structures were activated during each phase of meditation.
•   Mindfulness -- In this type of meditation, people cultivate an awareness of the emotions, thoughts, and sensations they are experiencing, but in a way that is less emotionally reactive and creates less mental distress. After a three-month retreat of intensive mindfulness meditation, meditators performed better in studies on attention to visual stimuli and had decreased brain activity in brain areas related to anxiety. Another study showed that expert meditators, as compared to control subjects, had increased brain volume in the prefrontal cortex, an area that plays a role in processing attention, sensory information, and bodily sensations. Expert meditators also showed decreased volume in the amygdala, a region responsible for processing fear.
•   Compassion and loving–kindness -- This meditation practice encourages an altruistic perspective toward others; meditators experience a sincere, compassionate desire to help. Novice meditators who practiced a week of compassion and loving–kindness meditation had greater compassion toward suffering individuals portrayed in visual clips. In contrast, people who had empathy training only for a week experienced psychological distress when watching the video clips.

This research demonstrates that adults can transform their brain by becoming experts at meditation. Now, when you recommend to your clients that they incorporate practice meditation or mindfulness, you can back up your recommendations with scientific evidence.

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2014 November / December Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 05:56:48 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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This month our webinar, research update and book reviews are about the darker side of leadership and a reverse focus look at Positive Psychology. Our webinar looks at issues in coaching noxious leaders from both sides of the desk. Why can one person’s toxic boss be another’s inspiration? What are the challenges when the leader is blind to his or her impact?

We then introduce you to The Upside of the Darkside the new book by Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener. These positive psychologists unpack how to harness our negative emotions to be more effective, and ironically, increase our wellbeing. The authors have written our community their thoughts about coaching. Research shows there is an ideal positive/negative ratio in interactions and in life at about 3-6 positive experiences to 1 negative. We can’t overlook the dark side if we want peak performance

Then we get darker and look at some research on narcissistic leaders and even worse leaders who are sociopaths. Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work has become classic in helping us understand how these leaders can cut through their organization like butter and get to the top. It can take years to identify their true natures and we do so at our peril.

Carol Kauffman PhD

Executive Director

Article Content:

From Research to Coaching Practice

All I need is a stage to shine: Narcissists' leader emergence and performance. Barbora Nevicka, Annebel H.B. De Hoogh, Annelies E.M. Van Vianen, Bianca Beersma, Doris McIlwain, The Leadership Quarterly 22 (2011) 910-925

Special thanks to Brodie Gregory, PhD for reviewing this research and translating the key points to use in your coaching practice.

If you’ve coached or worked with organizational leaders, chances are that at some point in your career you have encountered a narcissist… or perhaps many narcissists. What is it about the co-occurrence of leadership and narcissistic characteristics? In their August 2011 article, Nevicka et al investigate the relationship between leader emergence and narcissistic personality characteristics, as well as the role that context plays in this relationship.

Context matters, as the right situation can allow narcissists (or those with narcissistic characteristics) to really “shine” and exercise their influence and charisma. These authors found that narcissists emerged as leaders more often than those classified as non-narcissists. They also found that teams with narcissistic leaders performed worse on two important aspects of team effectiveness: communication and individual decision making. Applied broadly, we may interpret this to mean that teams with narcissistic leaders may have diminished performance because of less effective communication and decision-making processes.

In terms of context, the authors looked at reward interdependence of the teams – or the extent to which team members were reliant on one another for important rewards. They found that when teams were highly reward interdependent, narcissists in leadership roles performed better, and team members shared more information and helped each other more. The takeaway? If you have a narcissistic leader, build in a requirement of interdependence and teamwork in order for valued rewards to be attained.

Want to learn more? Take a look at Nevicka and colleagues’ Leadership Quarterly article. Given their resistance to feedback and criticism, narcissistic leaders can make for very difficult clients. How can you use Nevicka et al.’s work to help narcissistic clients be more effective with the teams or organizations that they lead?

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January 2024 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 01:12:23 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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What does 2024 stand for at IOC? A Year of Wisdom.

Happy 2024! How great we get to share 2024 together in the IOC community. Just in case you missed it in the holiday rush, our 2024 Coaching in Leadership & Healthcare conference, back in Boston May 3rd and 4th after five years apart (and two virtual conferences), has the theme of WISDOM.

We will explore the topic of wisdom all year – starting right here right now. We asked Eric Kaufmann, executive coach and IOC thought leader on wisdom in leadership, to get us off to a good, aka wise, start:

Wisdom is a natural capacity, the ability to see below the surface and beyond the obvious about a person, a situation, or idea. It’s both seeing deeply – accessing insight – and seeing broadly – accessing perspective. Wisdom flourishes in the soil of open-mindedness, where the roots of understanding and discernment can penetrate deeply. Wisdom, while broad and deep, is also temporary – it is actively evolving, not static. It’s ever changing with an ever-changing world and our ever-changing selves operating in the world.

A common block to wisdom is when we relax into past insights and perspectives, attached to our past wisdom about a person, situation, or idea. This is in fact pre-judging, aka prejudice – deciding rather than discerning. It’s easier to cut and paste the wisdom of old experiences into the current situation than to broaden and deepen one’s awareness and inquiry in the now.

If you find yourself feeling certain about a client – e.g., they don’t have the executive presence they need to be in the C-suite, or they can’t seem to prioritize their well-being, pause and reflect. Start fresh, with new wonder. What new insights and perspectives are awaiting discovery? What is the wisdom of this moment for my client?

Now. What’s a wisdom practice for our clients and ourselves in January? Set aside past wisdom. Open our minds and explore, wide and deep. Discern the wisdom of this moment and, hold it lightly.

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December 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 05:33:22 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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Looking back on a tumultuous year, we are grateful for the joy of being part of a wonderful community of coaches around the world doing great work to support leaders, health care workers, organizations, individuals, and more -- cultivating well-being one person, one team, one community at a time. During this holiday season, let's reflect back on a year filled with learning and connection with our growing community worldwide.

January 2023 - Ready for Take-Off?

As we prepared to begin a new year, we paused to reflect on the power and possibility of shifting a traumatized world towards growth, with the support of coaching. IOC Fellow, Theresa Ramos, summarized this theme perfectly: "Post traumatic growth is more than resilience. Resilience is the ability to recover from a set back and get back to the previous state. Post traumatic growth is going one step further: it is making sense of the traumatic event that happened to us, creating new beliefs about us and the world, and developing new skills and abilities as a result.”

February 2023 - On the IOC Menu in February

We describe the IOC experience as akin to enjoying your favorite tapas bar – where you pick what appeals in the moment, sample many things, and share some delicious bites and conversations with others who are like-minded, or be challenged by those who are not like-minded.

March 2023 - Sparking Innovation

Sparking innovation, in ourselves, and in our clients, is key to our success as coaches, for as agents of change, we continuously worked at getting past our growth edges.

April 2023 - Let’s Spring Forward Together at our April IOC Virtual Coaching Conference

Along with our conference, spring brought the joy of new growth and the vibrant beauty served up by the animal and plant kingdoms. The opportunity for renewal was upon us. While mindfulness experts teach us to meet each moment as a fresh, new moment, for everyone, including coaches, this is no small achievement, even in springtime.

May 2023 - Mental Health Matters

A key conclusion that emerged from our 2021 study of how leaders were impacted by the pandemic, "Leading with Humanity: The Future of Leadership and Coaching," was that mental health and well-being are no longer "nice to have" or solely the responsibility of the individual, but essential to a flourishing, high-performing organization. Leaders can no longer ignore the physical or mental health of themselves or their employees when their top goals are innovation and productivity.

June 2023 - Exciting IOC News

Our exciting news was the IOC launch of a research consortium focused on human-centered leadership and coaching. With IOC benefactor AceUp as the founding consortium member, the human-centered leadership consortium will bring together expert researchers, scholars, thought-leaders, and coaches to define, measure, and implement human-centered leadership – the science-based components that together generate human empowerment, growth, thriving, and sustainability.

July-August 2023 - Summer Picnic @ IOC

A most important goal of coaching is to help clients improve their well-being, leaning into practices for balance, rejuvenation, rest, and restoration. Summer was a good time to restore our zest in life by spending time in nature, away from screens, and connected with family, friends and community. And these practices are not just for our clients, it was time to take care of ourselves as well!

September 2023 - Diving Deep

While our human thirst for novelty propels us to look for whatever is new, including in the science of coaching, it’s just as important to deepen our understanding of the basic building blocks of coaching change, growth, and well-being. As we emerge from the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, having made time to recharge and renew, we were ready to deepen our learning.

October 2023 - Harvest Time

October in the Northern Hemisphere is a time of harvest, a period for reaping the bounty of nature's work on seeds planted during the rains of spring and nurtured in the warm glow of summer. In the spirit of this autumnal energy, we were excited to "harvest" and share the current work of researcher-writers that deepen and enhance our coaching around a wide array of subjects.

November 2023 - Giving Thanks

In the US, November is the season of giving thanks. The IOC team was grateful and appreciating abundance because scholar David Bright joined the IOC team as our senior scientist leading our new research initiative on human-centered leadership and coaching.

We wish you and your loved ones a safe and joyous December holiday season and an exciting year ahead in 2024!

Celebrating together.
The IOC Team

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November 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 20:05:51 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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In the US, November is the season of giving thanks. The Dalai Lama puts it this way:

We need to learn how to want what we have, not to have what we want in order to get steady and stable happiness.

This month the IOC team is grateful and appreciating abundance because scholar David Bright has joined the IOC team as our senior scientist leading our new research initiative on human-centered leadership and coaching. We also want to thank IOC sponsor Ace-Up for funding David’s IOC role.

David brings his unique background as an academic, organization development practitioner, and executive coach. He has conducted research on values-based organizations over the past 20 years. David is especially interested in how our ideas of human excellence find their way into our leadership practices. His research on organizational virtues has explored how practices such as compassion, forgiveness, courage, and humility are understood in organizations and in our daily lives.

Over the coming months, David will lead discussions with the IOC community to explore the meaning and significance of Human-Centered Leadership. The first year’s goal is to explore and create a definition and framework for understanding HCL. As the research unfolds, we plan to create coaching tools to help clients become more human-centered as leaders and people. Stay tuned!

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October 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Sat, 30 Sep 2023 02:29:16 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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October in the Northern Hemisphere is a time of harvest, a period for reaping the bounty of nature's work on seeds planted during the rains of spring and nurtured in the warm glow of summer.

Fall also typically signals "back to school" for children, making it an ideal time to put on our own student hats. In the spirit of this autumnal energy, we are excited to "harvest" and share the current work of researcher-writers that deepen and enhance our coaching around a wide array of subjects: leadership agility, physician/nurse burnout, the new science of curiosity and living in joy:

Webinars

CoachX Conversation

As William Blake reminds us: "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy."

We hope you will join us, and reap the harvest!

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September 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 04:23:15 +0000

Author:

Institute of Coaching

Summary:

As we emerge from the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, having made time to recharge and renew, now we are ready to deepen our learning. To quote Vimala Thakar, an Indian spiritual leader:

As we deepen in understanding, the arbitrary divisions between inner and outer disappear. The essence of life, the beauty and grandeur of life, is its wholeness.

This month at IOC we deepen exploration of coaching ethics, post-traumatic growth, mindfulness, leadership, and the evolution of coaching. We also deepen human connection live in San Diego at the Institute of Coaching Leadership Forum!

Webinars

Becoming The Ultimate Professional Coach: Critical Reflection, Ethical Integrity And Coach Maturity with Wendy-Ann Smith and Jonathan Passmore
Posttraumatic Growth Following Suicide Loss with Melinda Moore

LinkedIn Lives

Institute of Coaching Leadership Forum Sep 21-22 in San Diego: The Evolution of Coaching: Learning from the Past, Living in the Present, Leading the Future.

Here’s to a new level of wholeness for all of us coaches and everyone we touch.

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Coaching Report, Coaching Ethics, Posttraumatic Growth, Mindfulness, Leadership, Evolution of Coaching

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July-August 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 10:56:29 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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A most important goal of coaching is to help clients improve their well-being, leaning into practices for balance, rejuvenation, rest, and restoration. Summer is a good time to restore our zest in life by spending time in nature, away from screens, and connected with family, friends and community. And these practices are not just for our clients, it’s time to take care of ourselves as well!

July's research dose teaches us that these are renewal practices, based on the evidence-based "Personal Sustainability Index" (PSI), developed and tested by renowned IOC thought leaders, Richard Boyatzis, Dan Goleman and colleagues.

While our IOC team may be on a "summer schedule," we bring you an abundance of ways to learn, share, and deepen evidence-based practices.

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Life Coaching

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Coaching Report, Life

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June 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 04:23:56 +0000

Author:

Institute of Coaching

Summary:

Our exciting news this month is the IOC launch of a research consortium focused on human-centered leadership and coaching. With IOC benefactor AceUp as the founding consortium member, the human-centered leadership consortium will bring together expert researchers, scholars, thought-leaders, and coaches to define, measure, and implement human-centered leadership – the science-based components that together generate human empowerment, growth, thriving, and sustainability. Human-centered leadership and coaching will help define excellence in the new world of work.

As the founding consortium member, AceUp is dedicated and committed to developing solutions to help drive a more human-centered organization through transformational leadership coaching. We are grateful to AceUp for co-founding the consortium and for their generous donation that changes leadership for the good. The IOC is establishing a consortium of organizations that share this commitment – please send your ideas and suggestions for research consortium members.

The research program is divided into two phases. The first phase over twelve months will create an evidence-based definition of human-centered leadership as well as investigate how coaching enables human-centered leadership. The second phase, spanning two to four years, will measure and operationalize human-centered leadership at the individual, dyad, team, and organization levels.

This endeavor will leverage, not only the scientific literature and scholars, but also the global experience of leadership coaches who apply the principles of self-determination, positive psychology, work well-being, and eco-system research in organizations.

Our Wonderful IOC Offerings in June

Join our June 6th- 1 pm ET webinar with grief thought leader Dina Bell-Laroche on Death and Loss to explore with fresh eyes the topic of grieving and how to coach clients dealing with huge losses.
Sally Helgesen explores her latest thinking on inclusive workplaces called Rising Together in a LinkedIn Live on June 21 - noon ET and a webinar on June 27 – 11 am ET.
Robert Biswas-Diener joins our LinkedIn Live to talk about Positive Provocation on June 7 - 12 pm ET.
A new IOC Seminar Series by Haesun Moon starts June 14 – 9:30 am ET: Meta-Conversation: How Do We Measure the Efficacy of Coaching?

June is a perfect time to expand your coaching impact at IOC!

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May 2023 Coaching Report

Danad t Deek — Mon, 01 May 2023 14:34:30 +0000

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Institute of Coaching

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Well-being has always been fundamental to our work as coaches, supported by research showing that high-functioning people cultivate positive emotions, gratitude, meaning, relationships, and self-care.

So it is with great enthusiasm that we welcome the month of May as "mental health awareness" month sponsored by the U.S. Council for Mental Well-Being. Sometimes it easier to either avoid or deny our mental health issues -- but all it takes is a quick glance at the statistics to shock us into recognition of this foundation of human functioning. The following statistics are for the U.S., but international trends are similar:

-1 in 5 adults (52.9 million adults) experienced mental illness in 2020.

- 40.3 million people aged 12 or over had a substance use disorder in 2020.

- 32.1% of adults with mental illness also experienced a substance use disorder in 2020.

- Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people aged 10-34.

- 1 in 3 young adults (aged 18-25) experienced mental illness in 2020.

-1 in 6 adolescents (aged 12-17) experienced a major depressive episode in 2020.

With this in mind, Our programs this month connect directly with mental health awareness. First, we traverse back into history with a webinar featuring the work of a 20th century giant, French psychoanalyst and writer, Jacques Lacan. Like Jung, Freud and other major figures in analytical psychology, Lacan's approach to working with ill patients was deeply empathic and focused on the unconscious and conscious symbolism embedded in human communication. You will learn in this month's webinar that his "way of listening" was unique and highly relevant today for coaches who wish to deepen and expand their work with clients through language and affect.

On the modern front, we also are committed to expanding our offerings in the growing field of neurodiversity. Our webinar and LinkedIn Live on coaching clients with ADHD are both designed to expand our knowledge and capability to recognize and coach clients with this debilitating illness.

In honor of this month's theme, we are excited to offer a special rate for our recently launched asynchronous Mental Health Literacy course for coaches. The feedback from hundreds of coaches who have graduated from the full class has been stellar. We truly hope this knowledge will become part of every coach's toolkit. We can step up in our roles, not to become therapists, but to do our part in recognizing, supporting, referring, and most importantly, creating a safe space for our clients to share their pain and suffering.

So it is with a "spring in our step" that we wholeheartedly embrace Mental Health Awareness month and wish all of our coach community the best in physical, emotional and mental well-being. After all, it is only if we take care of ourselves that we can be role models for our clients.

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Race Equity and Inclusion, Leadership, Internal/Organizational Coaching, Positive Psychology