Leading with COURAGE, AUTHENTICITY and INSPIRATION
I work with leaders ready (or almost ready) to UNAPOLOGETICALLY harness their greatest power for the greatest good. I help you ACTIVATE your internal compass so that you embody INSPIRATION and COURAGE as daily practices. I will help you identify your North Star core values that become your through-line for congruency in how you show up and lead brave!
I partner with leaders and organizations to create agile, innovative, courageous, and inclusive organizations in environments where constant change is required. Change is our new normal. I help you create or reset the cultural blueprint needed to address demanding business challenges as it is not business as usual. I help you rethink what is possible.
I offer customized executive and leadership coaching programs, group coaching, facilitated workshops, and dynamic mastermind groups to bring productive sparing into conversations and collaborations that inspire challenge, risk-taking, and ownership. I offer the Cloverleaf portal for reinforcement that uses assessment data to provide digital nudges to everyone in your organization to improve performance, increase leadership effectiveness, strengthen cross-functional collaboration, and inspire personal development.
Sample facilitation topics:
- Emotional Intelligence & Agility
- Executive Presence
- Courageous Leadership
- Conflict Management
- Leading Organizational Change
- Leading High Performing Teams
- Team Building and Organizational Effectiveness
Coaching is a highly personalized partnership that expands leadership skills, self-awareness, agility, and professional performance. It is designed to help you create what is needed for you to be your personal best. This has been a time like no other, and leaders are finding out there are skills they need to lead in constantly changing environments that require strategic, situational, emotional, and cultural agility. It is a lot to ask and a lot to deliver, and you don’t have to do it alone. My role as your coach is to help you navigate this bumpy terrain, explore, reset, and lead from even a new place with uncovered or newly found skills.
Maybe what you need is awareness. Lumina Spark reveals your whole personality, providing a unique portrait of who you really are. Increase self-awareness, reveal hidden potential, and cope better under pressure. Lumina Spark provides an accurate, personalized reading of an individual’s strengths and developmental areas. Whether you’re the CEO or a new recruit, it provides rich personal insights and practical benefits for everyone. I am certified to deliver this powerful product that embraces paradox. It inspires people to develop the skills most needed today and in the future- adaptability, agility, a growth mindset, partnering, authenticity, and the ability to lead themselves and others.
Maybe what you need is feedback. Not everyday feedback, but the type that can only come from the Shift Positive® 360 process. The Shift Positive® method is different than most approaches to 360 feedback, and as a result, it’s far more effective. It uses:
- Appreciative questions to understand the best of what is.
- Solution-focused questions to identify specific desired behaviors.
- Systems thinking to garner allies from the leader’s “people system”.
- Social network analysis to gain insight into energy-raising behaviors and energy depletion.
Overall, this process is not just about the individual leader receiving feedback. It is about creating an environment that is conducive to the leader’s progress and engagement, creating fertile soil for growth. It is about creating deeper, lasting change faster, with more dialogue, disclosure, and depth of thought by all participants — all allies in each other’s success. It is a game-changing process.
Karen is a steady source of encouragement and positivity; she encouraged me to try out (and try on) new ideas and concepts. Our sessions resulted in my changing perception of conflict and inviting individuals to spar – a previously foreign concept to me. She helped me to navigate my transition to a start-up organization, the Board | ED relationship, and shifting board chairs. She provided a plethora of resources as I operated in a virtual environment (as the first staff person) and worked to balance the day-to-day and visionary work. She was my biggest cheerleader, a sounding board, voice of reason, and thought partner. Through our coaching sessions, I have come to realize that I can do hard things. While we spent time in the present unfolding challenges and opportunities, she also encouraged me to look ahead and consider my legacy. She has a treasure trove of articles, books and quotes that were instrumental in helping me arrive at those ‘aha’ moments. I am grateful for her leadership, wisdom and the beautiful space she created for deep introspection, confidence building and exploration.
Tricia Hyacinth, Executive Director at Five Frogs, Inc.
Mastermind groups offer an interactive combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability, inspiration and support in a virtual group setting to sharpen and enhance your professional skill and enhance your personal life. Mastermind groups support members to live authentically, live all-in and face the challenges living brave will bring. You will be in the company of smart, diverse and courageous people who will inspire you to go further than you would alone. A mastermind group is not a class, group coaching or networking. It is a collaborative of like-minded individuals coming together with the intent of living braver lives or to be braver leaders. It is the pursuit of a higher calling.
We meet once a month in video conferencing for 2 hours. The groups size is limited to 8 participants (minimum of 4) to ensure that each member has the opportunity to discuss their challenges, receive feedback and set goals. There is an application process to enhance compatibility in each group. Group members will help each other set stretch goals and support each other in accomplishing them. This means there is accountability for each member to be committed to their participation and committed to the success of other participants. The group requires confidentiality and a willingness to both give and receive feedback, ideas and advice in a manner that creates and maintains strong relationships. Group members become friends, mentors, advocates and partners on their path to daring living or daring leadership.
A mastermind group is not meant to be comfortable. It is meant to cause that prickly feeling of stepping into something new, exciting and a stretch. It is meant to bring you ALIVE!
We started working with Karen in 2021 as we courageously moved to a Managing Director/Artistic Director model- moving from a Founder-led organization to a shared leadership model with both of us reporting to the board. As we prepared for this next brave growth move, we sought a coach to help us navigate that journey thoughtfully and intentionally, leading with heart and vulnerability. We are also still a predominantly white organization that is confronting and dismantling the systems of oppression that exist within our organization and field, so we were seeking a coach of color who could hold us accountable as we continued our own personal and professional cultural competence work. Karen’s vast expertise in whole-hearted coaching, her professional experience as a leader and mentor, and her tender, nurturing, joyful manner has shown us a way forward that is filled with values, heart, and abundance. We enjoyed working with her so much that we raised more funds to continue our work with her and bring her in to facilitate both a team and a board retreat.
Molly Merrihew, Managing Director, WAM Theatre and Kristen van GInhoven, Producing Artistic Director,
