I would like to share the highlights
from Dr. Damian Goldvarg
This year the ICF Mid West conference took place in Pittsburgh, from June 20 to 23 with participants from all over the world. This is my fifth conference in the region and it is always great to meet and network with friendly colleagues. There were three key note speakers and I would like to share the highlights from each session.
The first key note was done by Whitney Johnson. She talked about disruption and how important it is to create change in our lives and organizations we are part of. She provoked the audience: How do you feel about disruption? Some of the tips included:
- Take risks
- Play your strengths Some questions you may ask yourself are: What makes you strong? What compliments
- you dismissed? What is your genius?
- Embrace constrains. Quit the right staff at the right time!
- Battle entitlement
- Step back to grow
- Give failure its space. Give failure its due.
- Be discovery driven
The second key note speaker was Jennie Antolak and she talked about the Hero’s Journey (from Campbell) applied to Coaching. In the Journey we start from home, a comfortable place to initiate an adventure. In our way we find obstacles, challenges and a mentor to support us to jump obstacles to transform, grow and reinvent ourselves.
The third speaker was Robert Kegan. The title of his session was: Business as Unusual, a new social contact at work. It was a very interesting session focused on the future of work and how coaches need to be prepared:
- Pay attention to the Messenger for the future. His message may seem weird!
- Time lags between what we know and when we integrate what we know. Keagan gave examples of how some scientific discoveries took time to be accepted and implemented.
- Growth at work. Before development was focused on high potentials, on workshops, at special time but in the 21 Century development is for everyone, collaborative, every day, and transferable
- Quit your second job. If you have a second job, focused on looking good, managing perception, getting people to believe that you are better than you are.
- Identify assumptions, opportunity to test potential limiting assumptions we are holding, You may live part of a fantasy world, engage and transcend assumptions.
- Continuous feedback, supportive and challenging, There is care and candor (bring light to an organization). People are not recognized.
During the conference there were also many workshops. Jeff Nally and I presented on Coaching Supervision and the session was very well accepted.