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Coaching An Organization:
Using a Pragmatic/Spiritual Blended Approach
~~ Terri Levine

Imagine you are attending a corporate training/coaching session and the session begins with a meditation, and centering, and then stating intentions. Sounds odd, yes? Take it further, and imagine the room is full of accountants, or engineers, or physicians, or attorneys. Sounds really strange, right?

This is what is going on in companies all across the United States. An approach blending pragmatic coach training along with tapping into spirituality is being accepted, and in fact, embraced and adapted as a business practice. Company cultures are shifting and changing to accept spirituality in the workplace.

We have finally realized, after years of pretending the personal aspects of who we are don't come to the workplace, that we can't leave ourselves behind. As companies have learned, our lives outside of work come to work with us, because we are comprehensive human beings. When a company acknowledges and honors that the person we are is the person invited and accepted into the workplace, a more productive and happier worker shows up.

The pragmatic/spiritual approach gives employees solid, concrete learning to be better coaches and to use coaching tools to lead people. It also shows employees how to tap into their own intuition and to identify their own beliefs. Often the self-talk or the inner story, which plays over and over again, is what is in the way of the employee being successful and feeling happy at work. This blended approach teaches concepts like:

• using the law of attraction - bringing to you what you want, instead of struggling and pushing to get what you want and using a command/control model
• being a deliberate creator who manifests the things you want without effort
• allowing feelings to be fully felt and expressed in the workplace
• slowing down to stop and breathe
• taking time for appreciation
• encouraging conversations about what is going right and what is working and celebrating successes
• acknowledging each other
• bringing beauty into the workplace
• checking in to see how ideas and thoughts feel in your body and trusting your gut
• using all of your senses
• not being attached to outcomes, and trusting more
• holding the belief that all is well
• allowing things to unfold instead of forcing them to happen
• being still and quiet and really listening to yourself and others

To some, it still sounds a bit "out-there" to bring spirit into the workplace, so I encourage companies to start slow with some pragmatic, traditional coaching and then introduce some less traditional concepts. It becomes apparent that they go together. You don't just put them both in the blender and mix them up and hope for the best. The system of blended coaching produces a wonderful "smoothie" that tastes great and people crave.

Companies that are already using these techniques are reaping the benefits of a happier, more productive workforce. Skeptical managements no longer care how it works, they only care that it works, and that, for them, is the bottom line.

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Author info:
Terri Levine, The Guru of Coaching SM, Ph.D., MCC, is the best selling author of several books including the international bestseller Work Yourself Happy, Coaching for an Extraordinary Life, Create Your Ideal Body, the international bestseller Stop Managing, Start Coaching! and her newly released book The Successful Coach co-authored with Larina Kase and Joe Vitale was just released by Wiley. She is the founder the international coach training program: The Coaching Institute, www.CoachInstitute.com. She can be contacted through the web at www.CoachInstitute.com/contactus.html or by phone 877-401-6165.