Reaching higher from within Is Integral Coaching the career accelerant you need?

Many executives want to improve job performance but are stuck in neutral. Integral Coaching can light those fires within. We dive into Integral Coaching from a long-time coach’s perspective. Welcome Alain Gingras, MBA, Certified Integral Coach, New Ventures West, California, USA.

In his 25-year career as an entrepreneur and consultant, Alain has interacted with more than

Five hundred organizations of all sizes in various industries across North America.

His achievements as an entrepreneur and his involvement as a business consultant/coach

have focused primarily on the economic performance of organizations. He

has developed and implemented methods and systems that integrate corporate strategy and

business model with marketing, sales and customer data management. The result: a revenue

growth rate generally ranging from 20% to 50%.

Today, Alain maintains the focus of his practice on performance. Now, he is expanding his

interventions to all the individual dimensions that help leaders become more effective and prepare their team members to perform sustainably. The integral

approach considers the individual as a whole (head, heart, body). It attempts to identify the

narratives adopted over the years that can limit the effectiveness of actions and interactions.

I thank him for taking some time now to answer questions to help us understand what Integral coaching is and its benefits to his clients.

Q. How do you define Integral Coaching, and how is it different from other forms of coaching?

Permit me to start to answer your question with a question.?

How much of your life has become automatic? Are you on a hamster wheel of doing tasks disconnected from your emotions, your families, and the wonder of nature around you?

As an Integral Coach, I create a safe space for you to reconnect with your feelings through your heart and body and mind. I journey with you to help you discover your genius within and find the talents and solutions you already possess. You reconnect with yourself, your family, friends, and the world's splendour around you. You look at life as a journey of experiences rather than an obligation to get to a destination.??

I have been coaching as part of my consulting business for over 30 years and have developed some fantastic relationships. I developed an intuition of which levers to pull to bring about success for the bottom line. It ended up being about solving a specific problem, but as we all know, you solve one problem and not too long after, another arises to take its place.?

As an Integral Coach, when you start to understand the process, you can grasp the scope of the problems. It brings results and accountability with a well-structured methodology. It creates a map of human potentialities so that your client is not just solving the day's issue but can succeed in all aspects of their life going forward.??

Integral coaching is unique because it is not adding or subtracting anything from the client. It unveils their genius and uses their essential qualities to solve their issues. I am helping the client expose their talents. I have seen significant shifts in vitality and passion after a few sessions.?

Many times the negative aspects that surface is a distortion of their essential qualities.

Q. What led you to pursue Integral Coaching, and how did it become a calling for you?

I heard about Integral Coaching from a friend and coach five years ago. At that time in my development journey, I was not at a point to think about or consider it, but the seed was planted. It germinated, and later when my life circumstances altered, I needed to reset because my old formula of working to the point of physical and mental burnout was no longer working. I started exploring New Venture West as suggested by my friend. I found the people, the philosophy, and the way of respecting and loving yourself first was something that completely resonated with me. As I talked to more and more people within the program, I felt more and more like I had finally found my home, my peace, my essence. Integral Coaching became the answer and destination to complete my developmental journey.

Q What lessons in your own life have you taken from Integral Coaching?

I find myself experiencing life more in the moment, focussing on the journey rather than the destination. I know this sounds a little cliche. I feel my presence in the moment and how my body reacts, and experiencing it in real-time has helped me see the bigger picture in life and make better decisions. This level of consciousness has changed my life, and I am more fully aware of what I am doing and experiencing more joy in my life journey. I cannot always be in this state of awareness, but success and practice encourage me to be there more often.??

Q As you have become more aware of your own experience, how has using Integral Coaching techniques helped amplify your client work?

The first thing is you become kinder to yourself. You don’t run away from situations, and you embrace your body’s sensations. When you acknowledge and nurture your feelings, you instead deal with them, and fear goes away. The energy and vitality you project are felt and embodied by your client from your example. The client is more readily able to build their presence and develop coherence between you. Then the conversation descends from the mind to the heart and body, where the experience is more impactful than the words themselves.

Q With this added dimension in your toolbox, what kinds of results have you seen in your clients?

I’ve seen some extraordinary changes, some of these in as few as 5 or 10 meetings.?

One client went from someone who felt lost and had issues holding them back for a long time transformed to being a warrior after working on some somatic (connecting with their body messages) exercises and some emotional exploration.

Another client was being pushed to retirement and realized they had anger. Still, when they could embrace and accept that anger safely, they could evolve to peace, joy and stability and assume the role of sitting on the bench. They chose happiness and investing in themselves.???

A third client has some immediate problems to solve, and their inner wisdom tells them they need to face difficult emotions. They needed to sit with them for a bit and embrace these emotions rather than trying to ignore and keep them buried. Once this roadblock was relaxed other aspects of their life became more enjoyable.

Q Solutions seem like magic. Where do you find them?

The most important thing to grasp as an Integral Coach is that I am not responsible for solving anything. My responsibility is to create a safe space where you, the client, and I, the coach, can face the unknown and allow things to come up without judgment. It is a dance where the client and I create the design. This design or solution is already within the client. We just work together to find it and exercise it, much like an underdeveloped muscle through practice.?

Q It sounds like from your enthusiasm that an integral coach is something everyone could use.

A business coach has coached me, and I have been a business coach. The experience I have had from having an Integral coach myself has been transformational. I have found I can create much better decisions, and it opens up many more possibilities. Deciding on one of these new possibilities can make a huge impact. When you experience this wow, you wish you had had this conversation with yourself much earlier in life. You also realize that you didn’t know what you didn’t know, and you focus on moving forward with your new awareness.

Sometimes you question whether you can justify the cost. Perhaps the consideration should be the cost of not having as much vitality and passion in your life with your work, spouse, kids and even yourself?

Any closing remarks to sum up our conversation??

Coaches are not responsible for making things happen. Instead, it is an invitation to coaching and creating a safe space where many things can be unveiled. It can be a magical space where you can face the unknown and reconnect with your body’s wisdom. Integral Coaching is also Transformational coaching that can change your life and the lives of those around you. Often when you are having issues in life, it is because of some distortion of your shining diamond. I, as a coach, journey with you to unveil the diamond within you and let it shine.

Thank you very much Alain Gingras for helping us find our diamond and reconnect with the powerful wisdom within our being. If our audience is interested in exploring this topic further with Alain, you can find him at?[email protected] . Take care, my friend, and I look forward to many more conversations about this fascinating way of connecting with our life force.

Steve Dietrich is the President of Clearstar Consulting; with over 40 years of industry and management experience, one of the most fulfilling roles he has experienced is coaching newer employees to reach their full potential. Contact him at [email protected] ?