# My approach to coaching I coach leaders and professionals who feel they’ve “done all the right things,” yet something essential still feels stuck. I bring specific expertise in two domains that are often treated separately: the internal world and human relationships. Together, we'll work through the internal patterns—shame, fragmentation, old coping—that keep your most important goals from emerging. At the same time, I'll help you navigate the relational and system forces you interact with daily as a leader. # **Turn Conflict and Shame Into Momentum** Most coaching traffics in uplift. - “Become the best version of yourself.” - “Rewrite your own narrative.” - “Set your intention and the universe will respond.” - “The only limits are the ones you create.” What ridiculous, self-aggrandizing, individualistic crap. You don’t have bootstraps. And if you did, no amount of pulling on them would meaningfully change your life—except, perhaps, a herniated disk from all of the straining. What’s real is that we all get snagged on what I call “the unfavorables”: frozen by shame, burdened by unprocessed grief, interrupted by broken trust, or old coping patterns take over. We’d rather hide these pieces of ourselves—and the world is often more comfortable when we do. Nonetheless, it is these parts of ourselves that we need to look at if we want our lives to feel different. > [!abstract] **Who is this for?** > - Leaders facing transition—org changes, life changes, destabilizing events > - People carrying more responsibility than they have space to metabolize > - Professionals who function well on the outside but feel fragmented, stalled, or misaligned internally > - Those who want forward movement without bypassing what’s actually in the way > [**Schedule a conversation**](https://koalendar.com/e/first-conversation-with-cam) If you’re here for a glow-up or to “step into your power”, look elsewhere. Maybe it all comes back to that old Beatles’ tune: “we get by with a little help from our friends”—except with a specific definition of what a “friend” is. “Friend” comes, by way Proto-Germanic *frijōjands* meaning lover, from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *priy-ont*, its’ root (*pri*) meaning “to love”. As the PIE root moved through Germanic and Celtic languages it developed a sense of “freedom” or liberation. What I’m getting at is that for the fullest expression of our gifts in the world to bloom and blossom, we need to be loved in a particular way. We need to be held firm when our shadowed parts work to pull us off center. We need help in order to hear what we can’t in our own voices. We don’t “find answers within.” We find them *between us*—in the space where someone else’s attention helps us hear what we can’t in our own voices. Most of us don’t have all the answers yet—if you did, you’d have done it by now, don’t your think? No. We uncover them through conversation, friction, and honest witnessing. That’s what I create in our coaching relationship. > [!abstract] **How we can work together** > I offer two ways of working, depending on the kind of support you’re looking for. > > **Integrative Coaching (6 months)** > A structured, in-depth engagement focused on internal patterns, relational dynamics, and sustained change. > > **Leadership Support (monthly)** > Ongoing, lower-commitment support for leaders navigating live decisions, transitions, and relational complexity. > > We’ll talk through which option fits during an initial conversation. ### What to expect from a coaching relationship **Nourishing challenge.** One of my mentors has what he calls a “sacred prayer” for shame, and it goes like this: “FUCK SHAME”. (Which, I admit, is a little shaming in its way). But the sentiment remains. One of the mechanisms that keeps us stuck in organizations is shame. So expect to encounter your shame in the course of our work. It won’t be comfortable, but we will make it as safe as possible. I won’t promise “safe space.” What we build is brave space — a container where discomfort doesn’t mean something’s wrong; it means something real is happening. Shame will show up in our work. So will resistance. That’s expected. My job is to help you meet those moments without collapsing or abandoning yourself. **Accountability.** “Hold me accountable, would you?” “I’ll hold you accountable to that.” Nope. I won’t check in with you to see if you did your homework on Monday morning. Accountability comes from you. Together we’ll set goals. Ideally, you’ll “fail,” slip up. So I’ll be there to help recognize those patterns; to notice and interrupt when you drift, rationalize, or self-betray— and ask you to try again. Stop outsourcing your agency. **Responsibility.** What I refer to as “the ability to respond.” Various things can keep us from our capacity to respond. These include shame, mistrust, broken trust, fear, anxiety, and so on. I see my role as your coach, in part, to help you increase your ability to respond. The truth is that you have a beautiful life and it deserves your attention. **Integrity.** From the Latin *integer*, meaning “whole, complete.” Integrity carries the idea of disparate parts moving together toward eachother to become a larger “one”. The real question behind integrity is, “am I who I want to be in the world?” I’l hold you to develop robust answers to this question. > [!abstract] **Outcomes from this type of work:** > Look, you're smart and capable. You have the answers you need. > But if you were ready to act on them you wouldn't be here, would you? > > People don’t come to this work because they lack insight or effort. > They come because insight alone isn't enough. > > Over time, people I work with often notice shifts like: > - Less internal drag when making decisions—fewer second-guessing loops, less self-sabotage > - Greater capacity to stay present in difficult conversations without shutting down or over-functioning > - Clearer access to what actually matters, beneath urgency, obligation, or role expectations > - Reduced shame and fragmentation—parts of themselves no longer pulling in opposite directions > - More sustainable leadership energy, especially under relational or organizational pressure > - A felt sense of alignment between inner values and outward action > > These changes tend to show up gradually and practically—in how you speak, decide, relate, and recover. ### About Cam (as a coach). I’ve never belonged neatly to one world. My development as a coach comes out of the intersections of organizational life and deep emotional work—two environments that rarely speak the same language but need each other desperately. For more than a decade, I’ve worked inside organizations navigating politics, leadership tensions, restructures, performance stress, and the subtle pressures that slowly bend people away from themselves. I hold an M.A. in Organization Development & Leadership, and I’ve co-authored books on what helps humans actually thrive at work—not just perform well. At the same time, an equally long thread in my life has been devoted to grief, men’s work, shame resilience, and spiritual practice. I’m trained as a grief tender, certified in shame and courage work, and have spent years in circles where people tell the truth about their lives with a kind of precision you rarely see in professional spaces. The coaching I offer is born from these two lineages: the strategic clarity of OD and the emotional rigor of depth work. I’m not interested in manufacturing breakthroughs or selling a story of self-optimization. My work is much quieter, and much harder: helping people stay in honest relationship with themselves, especially in the places where they’ve historically split, performed, or gone numb. I pay attention to the stories you’ve organized your life around, the protective parts that have kept you safe but small, the grief that hasn’t been metabolized, and the subtle fractures in integrity that show up as hesitation, overperformance, or exhaustion. My work isn’t to create a polished version of you. It’s to help you stop splitting off pieces of yourself just to get by — so the person you are and the person you want to be can finally move in the same direction. This blend of organizational insight and inner-world practice doesn’t make me a “better” coach; it makes me an unusual one. I’m not here to offer you a perfected version of yourself. I’m here to sit with the version you are now—the one full of longing, contradiction, intelligence, avoidance, courage, and fragmentation—and help you move toward a life where those parts aren’t at war anymore. That’s the work. ### My training & influences #### Core Training & Certifications Grief work (Francis Weller, Malidoma & Sobonfu Somé) Shame resilience & courage (Brené Brown) Organization Development & Leadership (M.A., Group process facilitation) #### Influences Parts work (Internal Family Systems) Meaning-making (George Lakoff, phenomenology) Artistic recovery (Julia Cameron) Somatics ### How we work together We begin with a six-month commitment—enough time to do real work, not just scratch the surface. Six months isn’t an arbitrary. It’s the minimum amount of time it takes to stop rehearsing the performative version of yourself and start working with what’s real. We will usually meet weekly, with time in-between our sessions for integration, activities, and practice. > **Curious what this work feels like in practice?** > [Book a no-cost introductory session](https://koalendar.com/e/first-conversation-with-cam) ### Who This Is For The people I work with are usually leaders or professionals who feel like they’re doing "all the right things" but still feel like something's missing. Maybe they’ve hit a ceiling that has nothing to do with skills or strategy. Maybe they’re navigating a transition and discovering it's stirring up more than you expected. Maybe they’re tired of performing and ready to show up as themselves—whatever that means. This work is for people who are done with compartmentalizing. Who know that “work” and “personal” aren’t separate worlds but one nervous system trying to keep up. Rather than encouraging you to “bring your whole self to work,” we’ll look at why you felt you had to split yourself in the first place — and what it costs you to keep doing it. ### What I'm Particularly Good At - **The successful-but-hollow leader** — You've achieved what you set out to achieve and it doesn't feel like you thought it would - **Leadership transitions involving loss** — Leaving a role, being let go, choosing to step away, or stepping into something that requires you to grieve who you were - **Shame spirals that keep you small** — The voice that says "who are you to..." or "you're not ready yet" or "once you fix this about yourself, then...”. My work isn’t to make you “more empowered.” It’s to help you stop negotiating pieces of yourself away just to function. - **Integration over compartmentalization** — I don’t help people “step into their power.” I help them stop abandoning the parts of themselves that already have it. ### What I Need From You **This work succeeds to the degree that you are willing to stop bullshitting yourself.** I need you to: - **Show up with everything.** Even (and especially) those parts you don’t want see. Not much matters more than ruthless honesty in the success of our relationship. - **Be willing to be uncomfortable.** If you're looking for someone to help you optimize your way out of hard feelings, this isn't it. - **Take responsibility.** I'm not here to fix you or give you answers. I'm here to witness and support you as you find your own. - **Honor the commitment**. Life happens, and we'll work with that. But this requires consistency to work. ### What I won't do: There are a few contra-indications for this work. These are covered in my intake form. > If you feel pulled toward this work, you can schedule a conversation here. > [**Book a session →**](https://koalendar.com/e/first-conversation-with-cam)