Today, I want to discuss a topic that many leaders struggle with: the decision line of retention vs firing in the case of underperformance and how power influences these moments at work.

Here’s a take on one aspect of power dynamics and firing that maybe you haven’t heard before.  

I recently had a conversation with a heart-centered CEO who is grappling with the issue of potentially having to let go of some longtime teammates who’ve been with the company through many stages of growth. The organization has the funds to maintain the headcount, but these teammates are...

Common opinions about expanding our power at work often cite things like getting promoted, gaining decision-making power, getting a raise, expanding your network, and becoming recognized as a leader in your field. 

But none of these are foundations of power. They are actually expressions of power.

If you've been here with us at Wayfinding, you'll know we have a more specific, nuanced understanding of power than the average bears out there, and if you're new here—welcome!—and peep that link for your power orientation.

So how do we nurture our foundational...

Helping others rise to a new level of consciousness asks certain things of our beings. 

This community is comprised of a wide range of such bridges. Each of you helping to infuse more expansive worldviews into the world of work in amazing ways like regenerating the real estate industry; advancing DEIB in organizational leadership, practice, and policy; bringing psychedelic wisdom to the mental health field; redefining best practices at the highest levels of law; and guiding organizations to get work done in more adaptive, human ways. 

You bridge a reality of what’s so...

Sometimes a map gives us a whole new perspective.

Throughout this year, we’ve seen the heart-centered leaders in our community experience enduring shifts in their ability to perceive power after seeing and working with this detailed version of the Wayfinding Power Landscape that we developed in January. This impact is hugely significant since the widespread collective understanding of power is so low — what it even is, how it works, how to interact with it in regenerative ways, and how we're each constantly conducting power through our...

What Are the Energetic Postures We Can Experience in a Recession?

If perception informs behavior just as much as reality, what does that tell us about how we are responding to the prospects of a recession? The truth is, even the possibility of a recession is going to inspire many of us to change our behaviors. 

Marketers take this opportunity to start sharing insights on how to sell during a recession or how you and your business can become “recession-proof”. Before you begin to scramble, consider which posture you want to stand in.

Here are four energetic postures to...

I had the incredible pleasure of being interviewed by Julia Winston on her podcast, Facilitator Forum, about my awareness as a facilitator and how I engage to facilitate people's power and leadership via sensing, rites of passage, wayfinding,  and learning from nature. This was my most fun podcast interview to date!

Here's the episode description:

“We need time to rehabilitate from the trauma of the pandemic” as Dr. David Rock, CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute, wrote in the Harvard Business Review in February. This is a crucial pattern for all leaders and teams to take note of with many more contributing factors than just the pandemic.

It's notable when I have a moment when I'm having the same conversation across all my clients. This is one of those moments.

Here are some factors contributing to why we’re seeing such a widespread pattern:

1. Immersion in a constant trauma field in the world &...

I was terrified of remembering my power because I have abused it before. 

So when I received the offer to become part of Vital Leadership, I experienced huge inner resistance. Flashbacks of power abuse where I was the perpetrator came flooding in. Guilt towered over me, heaving rocks of shame. I was caught up in a storm, and I was drowning in a sea of fear.

If I get to remember my power, will I be intoxicated again?

But if I don’t trust myself to be capable of wielding my power for good, how am I supposed to support my team in creating systems for ...

The end of the year invites us into our bones.

Whether it's landing our learnings in our bones, being grateful for life's blessings down to our marrow, feeling stripped to the bone by challenges, turning inward to nourish ourselves at the bone level, having the desire to curl up and rest our bones... May we listen and learn from the bones.

Here's a conversation Larissa and Nick had recently to land their learnings and sensing of 2021 in their bones.

Nick: Would you mind inviting me into the house that you speak from when you talk to this community in our newsletters? 

Larissa: Yeah,...

Wayfinding is not only the name of our organization and the signature system I’ve been contemplating, embodying, and weaving to find my way and support others finding their way in life, leadership, and organizational evolution. It is also a long-standing human skill that has existed across time and still exists in rich cultural traditions.

Wayfinding is our ability to find our way to places we have maybe never been before, or to places that we have been, but on a different day, as a different self, in a different time, and so in that way, too, they can be new.

...

Meet Jimmy Chin. He’s a world-renowned National Geographic photographer that brings us into incredibly intimate relationship with mountainscapes from all around the world (*you should definitely follow JimmyChin)

Jimmy and I have something in common. We both know that questing is a privilege. These are the journeys we choose to make room for and command all of our resourcefulness to make happen.

The Solo Quest is a signature element of the Alchemical Leadership program at Wayfinding. It allows the leaders who...

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Recently, I was working with an executive coaching client who got clarity on his calling.

Not just a market opportunity, but rather: what life has been preparing him for to bring forward greater service to the whole that aligns with his gifts and life experiences. He shared about it with excitement, named the trepidation about all the electricity coursing through him, noticed the ways it pulled at his ego, inhabited a visible sense of feeling humbled, then sat breathing deeply and quietly.

Here he was sitting on the threshold of...

Some of the expertise that my clients value the most comes from my personal life and my healing journey from a near-fatal accident that happened 10 years ago on Jan 10, 2011.

This journey is inseparable from my work in the world, informing my work every day. 

In honor of my ten-year anniversary, here is a map I made — primarily of the physical layers of my healing journey.

Leaders consistently value the insights I learned through this extended terrain because I learned how to bring a system (my body) back from near-death to bright aliveness, and I know how...

As I get excited to dive into this year's Culture First conference tomorrow, I'm remembering a highlight from last year of designing and hosting a panel exploring safety and intimacy at work featuring Chris Marcell Murchison, Jay Bendett, Max Masure, Celeste Hirschman, and William Winters. With this diverse set of panelists with specialties in gender inclusion, activism, and sex and intimacy coaching, this conversation explores the tensions of intimacy dynamics at work and possible ways to move toward professional, intimate connection in our teams....still so relevant. One of my favorite...

"Navigating unmarked territory to find our way through the mystery is an inherent drive in the human spirit. This ability is the essence of the skill known as wayfinding. It is invaluable, in general, and especially now, as we face very real, high stakes globally."

We speak our values and the way we see life into existence through words, so names have great power. People often ask me why I chose Wayfinding—what it is, what it means to me, and why it's relevant for our times. This is my answer.

Sensing, power literacy, and doing inner work together are crucial skills for stewarding systems change, yet they are rarely discussed due to the double binds we can experience around power dynamics and job security.

Here's a mini clip from my talk—Sensing Power and Cultivating Organizational Aliveness—at last June's Culture First conference hosted by my friends at Culture Amp

In the full talk I explore:
- Our sensing capacity as a critical tool for revealing tension and guiding self-correcting actions in living systems—our selves, teams, and orgs—and how we can...

In September of 2018, I had the pleasure of speaking on the mainstage of Responsive Conference about power abuse in our culture and at work, and I invited the audience to consider their own rites of passage to release limiting beliefs and fears in order to become more influential agents of change in their organizations. Watch it and hear more here.

I was interviewed by the wonderful Robin Zander on his podcast, The Robin Zander Show, and my episode was just released!

In preparation for the third annual Responsive Conference that Robin hosts where I’ll be presenting on the main stage, Robin and I discuss rituals, transformations, and cultural tensions that are coming to the surface all over the world. We cover the connection between physical injuries and emotional turbulence, the importance of beginnings and endings, and much, much more. Check it out here.

In June after presenting at Culture First, I had a rich (and very fun) conversation with Brad Owens, host of the Small Business Hiring podcast, about the gift of challenges and how to use sensing to reveal the power in the things we most want to avoid. Listen here :) Thanks Brad!

On the eve of Friday December 8, I threw a ReBirthday dance party ceremony to celebrate the end of my 7-year healing journey.

These years since I stood up suddenly, blacked out, and fell off a waterfall on Jan 10, 2011 have been a journey I could have never imagined. One that I’m forever grateful for because I grew into a greater version of myself—more alive, more true, more loving, more joyful, and more powerful. But, oh lordy, what it took to get here…. Read more...

2016 was a tumultuous year across all fronts—politically, ecologically, socially, economically—and 2017 is poised to be similarly ripe with turbulence and great change. In this global and social context,

• What is the role of coaching and the contribution of our field?
• How can we support individuals and teams to grow into their potential and be agents of change, while also taking steps in our work to affect larger, positive social change?

Following the U.S. election of Donald Trump as president, I shared a rich conversation with the good coach’s incisive and...