On Tuesday of this week, I’ll teach several hundred professional coaches about burnout, compassion fatigue, and how to coach someone through it.  My class is accredited by the International Coaching Federation for continuing education units, and includes two models I developed with my partner, Antoinette.

February is a month with a lot of teaching for me. Last week, Antoinette and I ran a workshop on personal resilience for caregivers. Next week I’ll be on a panel at the San Francisco Writers Conference. Later this month I’ll guest lecture in an organizational development class at a university, then wrap up the month with another caregiver workshop. Plus, of course, this accredited class on Tuesday.

I find it a little surreal, to be honest. When I was 18, I was sure that my career was going to be in computer programming. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The first 10 years of my career was a mix of software development, technical writing, and marketing in tech startups—embedded operating systems, the first PDAs, and the first smart phones.

How do you go from programming in 8086 assembly language to teaching how to help caregivers overcome compassion fatigue? It’s not a very straight line.

In fact, when I was young, no part of me thought I would be teaching later in my career. For years, I thought I was shy and reserved. I thought of myself as a tech-first person who could write and communicate.

But this is what happens when you are open to opportunity, you challenge your self-limiting beliefs, and you receive good coaching and advice along the way.

After a few career pivots, here I am about to share my expertise and lived experience with hundreds of other professional coaches to help them be better at helping people through tough times.

Even though I’ve been doing workshops and webinars for a long time now, I still don’t see myself as a teacher. I’m a coach. I help people grow and achieve more than they thought possible. Teachers deal in broad-scope concepts, delivered at scale. But I love getting into the weeds on the unique issues a real person deals with, in relationship with other real people, with real stakes on the line.

On Tuesday I’ll be expanding the existing skill set of other professionals. They’ll be incrementally better at their jobs because of the knowledge and wisdom I’ll deliver. It’ll be on each of them to take that knowledge and wisdom, and integrate it through hours and hours (and hours) of real-world application.

That’s how I acquired most of this knowledge and wisdom I’ll be teaching on Tuesday… by helping hundreds of people, one by one, over many years, and by living through some shit of my own. 

You can also benefit from my knowledge and wisdom, either by bringing me in to teach your team, organization, or group, or by working with me one on one.

If you want me to teach this material (or anything else) to your team, your board, your organization, or your ICF chapter, drop me a line.

Or if you want to see what it would be like to work with me one on one, grab some time on my calendar.

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Schedule a consultation session or sales call now, or drop me a line.