In this episode, I spoke with Karen Kimsey-House about transformational learning and how to reinvent yourself. When I was coming out of my PhD studies, I was wandering in my own wilderness, trying to find my way. Wondering what else I could do besides clean my house to avoid my dissertation, I enrolled in the Coach Training Institute. And that’s how I met Karen, who eventually became my personal coach, teacher, and dear friend. 

Karen is the co-founder of the Co-Active Training Institute. Today, it’s the largest in-person coach training organization in the world, delivering courses in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  

Karen has been my personal coach, my teacher in a long-term immersion leadership program, a dear friend, and most importantly for the context of this podcast of Learning Through Experience, a mentor.

Key Topics:

03:19 Co-active coaching: The client-centered coaching process that coaches the person, not the problem, and believes that we all have within us what we need to thrive in this world;

10:48 Reinventing yourself: Difficult times and missed opportunities may be calls to learn through experience and maybe even reinvent yourself;

17:33 Get curious about the process: Discover what works for you on your journey of life, what allows you to quiet the world and hear your own internal voice;

22:01 Redefining leadership: Moving away from a certain kind of leadership that doesn’t harness and unleash our full human potential;

24:03 Transformational learning: Creating a learning system that changes the operating system of people and allows them to see the world in a fundamentally different way;

33:25 Racial justice: Sometimes the best thing you can do for DEI is to be as curious as possible about our differences and be willing to engage in difficult conversations.

Additional Resources from Karen

Book: Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, Laura Whitworth

Website