How you can transform conflict and meet everyone’s needs
You dread the conflict, misunderstanding, and distrust in your team, with your supervisor or external partners
- You don’t meet the goals of your organization
- Team meetings are contentious and the same people dominate each team meeting
- External partners don’t buy into your vision and withhold key information
- Team members accuse you of racial bias when you share feedback about their functioning
- Stressed out colleagues yell at you, leaving you depleted and discouraged
- Your staff doesn’t succeed at resolving problems with clients, dragging you into their conflict
- You find the work environment so toxic that you are ready to leave
- You can’t get everyone on the same page so pursuing the mission doesn’t go anywhere
- You bring home your stress and don’t have the energy to enjoy your family
You don’t need therapy. You don’t need someone to hold your hand. You certainly don’t want someone to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. Let alone someone who criticizes your leadership style.
Your superpower is your drive to contribute. You have the guts to self-reflect. You own your challenges and look for ways to grow and improve. You are highly motivated to make this world a better place. And you have the humility to understand you probably have blind spots.
All you want is someone to talk through your issues. Someone who is not attached to your choices. Someone who asks questions you don’t ask yourself. Someone who gives you accepting, non-judgmental feedback. So you can get a fresh perspective and see a new way forward.
That’s where I come in. We discuss what will supercharge you: individual coaching, mediation, a mastermind group with peers, or a membership. And we will work together as long as you want. A few weeks, six months, years.
Whatever it is, you walk away with more self-confidence in your competence. As a result, you can engage others to not just solve problems, but actually find solutions that move your mission forward.
Some of the things that we did together I found very powerful, emotionally powerful. Elly always had creative and engaging exercises that helped me process challenges on emotional and cognitive levels.
I’m earning more with a lot less stress, in less time and with more satisfaction. I feel really satisfied and fulfilled. I feel like I’m making a positive impact on not just the students at my school, but teachers around the area, the larger area of Austin and beyond.
I think Elly role-models the way to be present to other people. So if I were going to be with someone else, how I might hear them deeply or listen more closely to what was going on in someone’s life. To maybe hear beyond the words. Maybe just be present to feeling what might be going on for the other person. So it not only helped me, but it helped me think about how I wanted to be with other people.
Elly’s genuineness in accepting all of my troubles, detail by detail, is felt. But the true wonder of being a collaborator with Elly goes straight to her core beliefs: she is an example that love and empathy will always save the day.
Personal story:
I grew up in a household with a lot of conflicts. Most of the time I was a scared puppy, longing for play, closeness, understanding, and harmony.
Individually, my parents and siblings were wonderful, funny. loving beings, but as a family, we didn’t jive so well.
As soon as I went to college, I started my own life, not paying much attention to my family. I got married and enjoyed life with my first husband.
But something kept nagging me.
Deep down I knew there was a better way. I knew we could laugh together, cry, listen, and talk, so we could hear our dreams, pain, and frustration without fear of losing connection.
When my first marriage was falling apart, I started my quest to understand how to communicate and resolve conflict.
I studied with Marshall Rosenberg and other trainers in Nonviolent Communication. I went on retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh, my favorite Buddhist teacher. I did some soul searching.
I made mistakes. Some relationships dissolved. I didn’t save my marriage. But we did divorce in the most peaceful and loving way possible.
When I fell in love with an American, a co-fan of Nonviolent Communication, I moved to Austin.
We co-facilitated practice groups NVC. Participants started asking me to coach them around conflict, communication, and self-compassion. They brought me into their workplace. They invited me to mediate between them and their spouses, siblings, children, colleagues.
And I gobbled it all down.
I got credentialed in mediation, certified in coaching, and realized that my favorite clients are nonprofit leaders. People with a strong sense of purpose. People who don’t ask what life has to offer them, but what life is asking of them. I love that about them.
And me? I am a happy puppy, loving on her family and hubbie. Every visit to the Netherlands is like being a superstar on tour.
Conflicts? Oh, I still have them. And I am so much better at resolving them into something even better.