UC Berkeley educator and program director Amy Azuma's long used humor to shift intense moods and energy. In her adult years, she's shifted from using humor as oppositional defiance to a tool for finding and creating presence, with herself and with others.

In a delightful interview, Azuma shares how finding the funny in the serious can bring feelings of joy, relief, and become an excellent personal branding tool. Her 20-year career in education advising, teaching, and directing programs, mostly at UC Berkeley has become a perfect Petri dish for comedy, too.

You can find Amy Azuma here on LinkedIn. Find me, D G (Debbi Gardiner) McCullough, by visiting my website and clicking on the Calendly link. Or, write to me on LinkedIn. If you enjoy this podcast, do share with anyone interested in coaching or wanting to find the coach approach to life’s problems through staying more present.

With Gallup reporting most U.S. workers find 50-hour work weeks normal, no wonder many of us struggle maintaining presence as we work. If our typical flow becomes back-to-back meetings, presence (which I'm defining here as peace, calm, and present with ourselves and others) can feel impossible.

As my coaching practice has grown, I've challenged how I relate to time because  my job requires (at it's core skill) being present. In this week's episode, I share three small experiments which still help me stay present even when coaching abundantly (often 10 sessions in the one day.)

Next up: How does humor help replace tension with calm, presence—even joy? An interview with UC Berkeley educator and program leader, Amy Azuma.

Book me, D G (Debbi Gardiner) McCullough, by visiting my website and clicking on the Calendly link. Or, write to me on LinkedIn. If you enjoy this podcast, do share with anyone interested in coaching or wanting to find the coach approach to life’s problems through staying more present.

Silence creates space for us to feel, meditate, connect with ourselves, and to think. So says Helio Fujita, an HR executive from Brazil who took a Buddhist pilgrimage over the spring to punctuate a 19-year-long, highly successful corporate career. There he found he could further grieve the loss of his father and gain clarity on what's next.

Our interview describes the wisdom, insights, and the clarity Helio gained on his pilgrimage. We learn of ways he continued the peace and calm he gathered along the way, even  when life (and work) gets busy. Leadership lessons come from the pilgrimage too, like finding that going the “wrong way” helps us observe more and come up with bigger, bolder ideas.

You can join the conversation on Competency No. 5 via LinkedIn. Find Helio Fujita  via LinkedIn. The pilgrimage Helio went on you can find here. Book me, D G (Debbi Gardiner) McCullough, by visiting my website and clicking on the Calendly link. If you enjoy this podcast, do share with anyone interested in coaching or wanting to find the coach approach to life’s problems through staying more present.

My guest today is Coach Whitney Stern. She's a certifying executive coach based in Seattle, Wa., a business leader, and a yoga mindfulness instructor with a big purpose: To empower others to lead, communicate, and build strong teams with kindness, confidence, and empathy. 

As a certifying coach, Coach Whitney's  undergone a learning curve with presence, active listening, and communicating quite different to the corporate world where she's functioned for over a decade. At Google, she leads one of the largest global advertising & sales accounts. Our interview unpacks all we can learn about active listening, trusting, and pausing, all part of the coaching journey, but quite different to how we're trained in business.

You can join the conversation on Competency No. 5 via LinkedIn. Find Coach Whitney via her gmail mentioned at the footnotes or via LinkedIn. Book me, D G (Debbi Gardiner) McCullough, by visiting my website and clicking on the Calendly link. If you enjoy this podcast, do share with anyone interested in coaching or wanting to lead using the coach approach.

Every new podcast needs some small clarifying words on what brings us here in the first place. In our introductory episode, learn what inspired Competency No. 5, guests we'll interview, what we'll learn, and why maintaining presence, when we coach, lead, and live our lives has never felt so vital.

An essay on this very topic lives here via Medium, a channel I populate frequently. You can join the conversation on Competency No. 5 via LinkedIn. Book me, D G (Debbi Gardiner) McCullough, by visiting my website and clicking on the Calendly link. If you enjoy this podcast, do share with anyone interested in coaching or wanting to lead using the coach approach.