Humans, What's Normal? And the Essence of Brilliance.

On this episode of the Coaching Studio, host Lyssa deHart, MCC, sits down with Michael Stratford, MCC — the self-proclaimed Provocateur of Transformation — who, by the end of the conversation, reframes himself as something even more powerful: an Evocateur of Transformation.

Michael’s story is raw, humorous, and deeply human. From 56 different careers and a near brush with suicide to becoming one of the pioneers of modern coaching, he shares how discovering his own uniqueness became the foundation for his life’s work. Together, Lyssa and Michael explore what it means to coach humans, not “clients,” to let go of labels like “normal,” and to see difference not as a flaw but as the essence of brilliance.

Their conversation dives into the philosophy behind Michael’s immersive MillionQuest™ adventure. A gamified journey in self-mastery designed to help people positively impact one million sentient beings. They also unpack his book The Game of Coaching, exploring how play, curiosity, and presence can transform both coaches and the people they serve.

Witty, wise, and provocative, Michael reminds us that coaching is not about fixing anyone, it’s about evoking the singular human being who’s been there all along.

Check out his website.

Follow him on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Resilience, Beauty, and the Generous Exchange with Dr. Maria Sirois

What if the hardest moments in life, loss, grief, upheaval, could become the fertile ground for resilience and even beauty?

In this moving conversation, host Lyssa deHart sits down with Dr. Maria Sirois, psychologist, resilience expert, and author of The Generous Exchange: How Attention to Beauty, Goodness, and Excellence Restores Us and Our World.

 Together, they explore the science of post-traumatic growth, the truth about resilience as a practice, and the profound ways we can heal through connection, beauty, and compassion.

Maria shares wisdom drawn from her decades of work in pediatric oncology and positive psychology, revealing the “moves” resilient people make, facing reality, choosing what sustains them, and “borrowing better brains” when life feels too heavy. She offers a fresh understanding of grief as integration rather than completion and introduces the Japanese art of Kintsugi as a metaphor for holding both brokenness and wholeness at once.

From leadership to love, from burnout to beauty, this episode invites listeners to rediscover grounded optimism and the grace to grow through challenge.

Check out her website.


Follow her on LinkedIn and YouTube.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

On this episode of The Coaching Studio, host Lyssa deHart welcomes Jille Bartolome, MCC, a coach who has been shaping the profession since 1996. Known by colleagues and clients as “The Velvet Hammer,” Jille embodies a rare blend of compassion and candor, inviting people into courageous self-discovery while asking the questions that strike at the heart of what matters. In their conversation, Jille shares her personal journey into coaching, including the pivotal moment she discovered the field through a magazine article featuring Thomas Leonard. 

She reflects on how coaching first transformed her own sense of authenticity and continues to evolve as the profession matures. Together, Lyssa and Jille explore why true coaching begins with self-awareness, how unresolved personal work shows up in sessions, and why coaching the person rather than the problem is the cornerstone of sustainable growth. 

Jille also offers insights from decades as a mentor coach, faculty member, and ICF assessor. She highlights the growth edges many coaches face, particularly around creating clear agreements and facilitating lasting learning at the close of a session. Her stories underscore the importance of boundaries, transparency, and cultivating safe, empowering spaces for clients. 

Looking ahead, Jille emphasizes the role of human connection as coaching’s most irreplaceable asset in a world increasingly shaped by AI. At the heart of her work, she hopes people leave with a deep trust in themselves and the courage to make decisions rooted in their own wisdom. 

Check out her website.


Follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Join Lyssa deHart in The Coaching Studio with Hayden Lee, MCC, as they explore how the Enneagram and neuroscience reveal the deeper patterns behind growth and leadership. Discover why self-awareness, vulnerability, and courage are the real foundations of transformation.

From his early career in acting and education to his leadership as co-founder of the Master Mind Institute, Hayden shares how curiosity and courage drive both personal and professional transformation. Together, Lyssa and Hayden dive into topics such as passion as a cultivated practice, the balance between vulnerability and authenticity, and the power of aligning intent with impact.

Listeners will gain fresh insight into why inner work matters just as much as outer success, how the brain’s wiring influences growth, and how leaders can build the self-awareness needed to create psychologically safe and thriving organizations.

Check out his website.



Follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

On this episode of The Coaching Studio, Lyssa deHart talks with Elaine Taylor-Klaus, MCC, co-founder of ImpactParents, about embracing neurodiversity through the coaching lens. Elaine shares her journey from overwhelmed parent to pioneering coach, including the profound shift of her own late ADHD diagnosis and how it reshaped her understanding of herself and her family.

Together, they explore why coaching is such a powerful framework for supporting “neurospicy” kids and adults, and how curiosity, agency, and intentional motivation can transform the way we navigate challenges. Elaine introduces her playful term “neurospicy” as a way to lighten heavy conversations while affirming that nothing is broken — brains simply work differently.

The conversation also touches on the role of nutrition and brain health, the PINCH framework for activating focus, and the importance of play, presence, and humor in managing our nervous systems. Listeners will walk away inspired by Elaine’s vision of a world where coaching skills are woven into everyday life, offering hope, resilience, and a deeper appreciation for the creativity that neurodiverse wiring brings.

Check out her website.

Follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of The Coaching Studio, Lyssa deHart sits down with Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener, a global authority on positive psychology coaching and co-author of Radical Listening and Positive Provocation. Known for his ability to ask provocative questions that shake us out of autopilot, Robert shares insights into how listening can be transformed into a practice of co-creating meaning.

The conversation begins with Robert’s personal journey, how his global experiences shaped his perspective on culture, well-being, and human potential. He describes his curiosity for exploring the “edges” of coaching, where science meets creativity. Robert emphasizes that coaching, while young as a field, benefits when practitioners embrace evidence-based practices while still leaving room for surprise, experimentation, and creative interventions.

A highlight of the discussion is Robert’s exploration of Radical Listening, which goes beyond the traditional “levels of listening” to include six key competencies: noticing, quieting, accepting, acknowledging, questioning, and interjecting. He illustrates how these practices can deepen connection, foster transformation, and counteract the distractions of our noisy, fast-paced world.

Robert also discusses the ideas from Positive Provocation, where he challenges coaches to reframe standard tools like homework into “experiments,” to view negative self-talk as potentially useful information, and to become aware of their own assumptions and self-limiting beliefs. His invitation is for both coaches and therapists to balance rigor with creativity and to practice curiosity even in discomfort.

Throughout the conversation, Robert references not only his own work but also other influential texts in psychology and coaching, including Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, which has shaped the integration of emotion and self-awareness in modern coaching.

The episode closes with a reflection on the future of coaching: a call for practitioners to embrace both science and art, and to dare to listen and provoke in ways that create genuine change.

Check out his website

Find him on LinkedIn and on Instagram

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

What does it take to lead when the stakes are sky-high and every move counts? Dr. Carol Kauffman, founder of Harvard’s Institute of Coaching and co-creator of the MOVE framework, knows better than most. In our conversation, Carol takes us from her unlikely beginnings—growing up surrounded by thirty toy poodles and being told she wasn’t “college material”—to becoming one of the most sought-after leadership coaches in the world.

She opens up about the crucible moments that shaped her, the fine line between therapy and coaching, and why leaders need to leave their egos at the door if they want to thrive under pressure. We explore her simple yet powerful practices, such as asking, “Who do I want to be right now?” and her belief that sometimes an ounce of input can spark a pound of transformation. Along the way, Carol brings warmth, humor, and hard-earned wisdom to what it means to be fully present when people need you most.

This episode is a masterclass in resilience, presence, and real-time leadership.

Go get her book Real-Time Leadership

To connect with Carol, find her on LinkedIn

And, check out her website.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mastering the Moment: Emotional Intelligence Tools for Turbulent Times with Dr. Relly Nadler

In this compelling episode of The Coaching Studio, host Lyssa deHart sits down with Dr. Relly Nadler, Psy.D., MCC, to explore the art and science of moment mastery—how leaders and coaches can harness emotional intelligence (EI) to make smarter decisions, build trust, and stay present in today’s turbulent world.

Dr. Nadler shares powerful insights from his decades-long journey, including defining moments from his early career in behavioral youth programs and lessons drawn from the football field. His reflections reveal how every interaction has the potential to elevate or deflate, and why managing emotions in those critical seconds can change everything.

Listeners will discover practical tools like the Leadership Two-Step, the Emotional Audit, and the newly coined Empathy Audit, designed to be used in under 15 seconds to bring awareness, emotional clarity, and intention into real-time conversations. From meditation practices to laughter yoga and polyvagal techniques, this episode explores how to regulate ourselves so we can show up at our best—especially when the stakes are high.

Dr. Nadler also shares a vivid acronym (V.I.V.I.D.) for understanding what people actually want from us in the moment—validation vs. direction—and how that distinction can transform relationships at work and at home.

“If you stay on autopilot, you stay average. Mastering the moment is what makes leaders extraordinary.” — Dr. Relly Nadler

Whether you're a coach, a leader, or simply someone who wants to respond rather than react, this episode is filled with actionable insights that will help you lead and live with greater awareness, balance, and brilliance.

Check out his website

Find him on LinkedIn

Take a listen to his podcast

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Resilience, Joy, and the Power of Choice: A Conversation with Valorie Burton, MCC
In this deeply personal and inspiring conversation, host Lyssa deHart sits down with internationally bestselling author and Master Certified Coach Valorie Burton, MCC to explore the transformative power of resilience, self-compassion, and intentional choice. With 14 books translated into 10 languages and a coaching legacy that spans the globe, Valorie brings both heart and science to this powerful episode of The Coaching Studio.
Valorie shares her own path to discovering coaching, how a life-changing moment in a Seattle bookstore sparked her purpose, and the surprising way her journalism career led her to Thomas Leonard and the coaching world. She opens up about navigating personal challenges—including divorce and redefining her vision for life—by applying the very tools she now teaches. Listeners will learn how coaching became her lifeline and how her background in positive psychology and resilience research informs her coaching philosophy today.
We dive into Valorie’s latest book, Rules of Resilience, including standout rules like “Close Your Energy Gap” and “Rally Your Resources.” She speaks candidly about the myth of perfection, the quiet epidemic of loneliness, and the power of choosing joy—even before circumstances align. With heartfelt stories about her family, her work, and her own inner journey, Valorie reminds us that resilience isn’t about avoiding hardship—it’s about showing up with self-compassion, clarity, and courage.
Whether you're a coach, leader, or someone navigating change, this conversation is a powerful invitation to reflect, reframe, and reclaim your energy and purpose.

Visit Valorie on her Website

Find her on LinkedIn

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of The Coaching Studio, host Lyssa deHart sits down with Paul Sanbar, MCC, a coach who doesn’t just think outside the box—he builds new ones, takes them apart, and reimagines what’s possible. Through LEGO® Serious Play® and hands-on thinking, Paul helps individuals and teams move beyond words, unlocking deeper insights through creativity and play.

Paul’s journey to coaching is anything but ordinary. Originally drawn to architecture as a way to create structure in a chaotic world, he shifted paths multiple times—through business, poetry, psychotherapy, and coaching—a journey he humorously calls A Fortunate Series of Overcorrections. Each pivot helped him refine his coaching philosophy, where play and unlearning are as essential as structure and mastery.

Lyssa and Paul dive into topics like:
 🔹 The power of liminal spaces—why transformation happens in the “in-between” moments.
🔹 How LEGO Serious Play® brings coaching to life—helping clients see and restructure their ideas.
🔹 Why unlearning is key to coaching mastery—and how it shaped Paul’s journey to MCC.
🔹 The neuroscience of play—how creativity helps clients move past stuck points and into possibility.

This conversation will challenge the way you think about coaching, learning, and growth. Whether you’re a coach, leader, or just someone fascinated by how we build and rebuild our lives, you’ll walk away with new perspectives and actionable insights.

This episode is full of practical insights, personal stories, and new ways to think about coaching and growth.

You can catch up with Paul on his website

Or find him on LinkedIn.

Season 5

Host: Lyssa deHart, LICSW, MCC, BCC
Let's Connect on LinkedIn
Website Lyssa deHart

Producer: Michele Logan

Video Editor: Sebastian Crespo

Social Media: Luciana Bottini

Music: Frolic by Harrison Amer

Subscribe, Rate, & Follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.