What Happens When Coaching Meets Quantum Relationality?

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (00:02)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the eight domains of human potential, a podcast designed for professionals committed to elevating their wellbeing and success as a whole person. I'm Laurel Elders, founder and CEO of the Institute for Integrative Intelligence. We're an ICF accredited certification provider where it's our passion to elevate human potential through both the art and the science of masterful coaching. I have with me today, Carrie Sackett.

For over 25 years, Carrie has been practicing a boldly transformative approach to emotional wellness and personal growth in the coach's chair and outside the coach's office as a Fortune 500 global change leader and award-winning employee engagement professional. She is the author of Social Therapeutic Coaching, a Practical Guide to Group and Couples Work. Welcome, Carrie.

Carrie (01:00)
Hi, Laurel.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (01:01)
So good to be with you today.

Carrie (01:03)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (01:08)
Me too, me too, especially after Michael introduced us just not that long ago. So I'm really, really excited. So for those tuning in today's topic is focused on the relational domain. This includes our relationship to ourselves, to others, to what is and to what is not, but it's also about examining the role of relationship within ourselves.

within our families, within our companies, our teams, and our communities. So I could not think of a better person to be talking with today than Carrie. And Carrie, let's just dive right in. Can you share your definition of social therapeutics so that we have an understanding?

Carrie (01:53)
Yep, the definition is that social therapeutics is a group-based approach to emotional well-being and personal growth, and it helps people build up their relational muscles so they have the tools to build meaningful connections with others and are empowered.

to create that sense of community and belonging that many, many of us are craving.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (02:26)
Especially, gosh, in this day and age, how we can, we barely, some of us barely know our neighbors. You know, and we're trying to tune in to figure out where can we be more in community.

Yeah. And where does, where does social therapeutics originate?

Carrie (02:50)
Social therapeutics and coaching have a similar historical timeline. Both came out of the social motion of the 60s and 70s. And both went about innovating, doing something different than what was then psychotherapy or psychiatry. So social therapeutics in particular, its origins come from a multiracial grouping of community-faced activists.

who were trying to innovate tactics and social justice. And the leader of that grouping, Fred Newman, was a PhD in the philosophy of science from Stanford. And he recognized that for everyone to be out in the field and trying to create something new and doing very hard work, everybody needed emotional support. So he started creating these groups.

and social therapeutics grew out of that in the sense that it was a fusion of doing and observing what's happening in these groups that's helpful to people and then putting some language to it. So he and his collaborator, Lois Holtzman in the 90s.

wrote several books that put the multidisciplinary intellectual foundations of social therapeutics on the page. So that's where it comes out of.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (04:16)
Okay, and you are looking at this through a coaching lens. Does the origins of it have a coaching lens or is it broader?

Carrie (04:24)
Yes.

I would say the origins was in creating a new approach to human development. And I would argue that coaching has those same roots.

And coaching and social therapeutics are both grounded in co-creation with the client. That was also a big break in its day with psychotherapy. And we also share that commitment to growth and transformation. So social therapeutics has some methodological, what I would call advances, but social therapeutics and coaching come out of the same place. Back in the nineties, the word coaching was just

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (04:43)
Thank

Carrie (05:13)
emerging so it's not baked into the title social therapeutics but therapeutic in this sense and I believe that's how it was intended by the founders is in our human capacity to go and grow beyond ourselves in order to create something new with others.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (05:33)
I really appreciate that because you know my my initial reaction when I see the word therapeutic I think counseling I think healing and Now that we're we're kind of looking at it through a coaching lens. I see it may be closing gaps Okay, yeah

Carrie (05:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

You want to say more of what you mean by closing gaps?

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (05:58)
Like pulling together pulling people together in relationship Leave in looking within ourselves to see where we might make more connections within ourselves

Carrie (06:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (06:12)
Nice. And I

know at least with our school, I'm not sure about other programs out there, but we talk about how coaching, the coaching approach is, you know, helping someone develop their own wisdom and insights. And yet the coaching process can be therapeutic, even though it's not therapy.

Carrie (06:31)
Yes, yes. I think it's important what you're saying because I think, again, back when coaching was founded...

psychotherapy, the APA was attacking coaching as it like a turf fight. And so when coaching started, it was like, no, we're we do we only do this, we swear we don't do any of that stuff. But it's 30 years later. And frankly, the innovation of coaching has had a huge impact on psychotherapy. And so I think there's more under of an understanding today that the realm of emotions, the realm

of relationships and relationality, it doesn't belong to anybody. That's part of who we are as humans. And we all have the capacity to grow and develop. And I don't think that that lies in anyone's, nobody can own that territory. We're humans, we can all go and develop.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (07:34)
Yeah.

Lovely. So in terms of, you know, we're speaking about the eight domains and the relational domain. So our capacity as human beings to develop in relationship, be in relationship and thrive in relationship. I'm just curious, what does, what do you see social therapeutics, what does this teach us about the relational domain?

Carrie (08:03)
Yeah, I love that question. maybe I'll give a short answer and then we'll have a conversation, because I think here's where we're going to discover things and get to know each other. Relationality and social therapeutics is derived from quantum physics in the way that it broke with modern science.

So relationality in social therapeutics, it's an activity that people do together. And so there's a set of tools around that that I trained coaches in. And part of that is seeing, being able to see that we are in relation.

with others all the time, whether we feel it or not. We're a social species. We all live on this planet together. We all impact on each other and are impacted on by each other. when I train coaches on asking relational questions, I see that as people building up their muscles to do.

more meaningful intimate activities with each other. So that's one kind of avenue of that.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (09:23)
I love that. it reminds me of years ago, I had this, this realization that, you know, we're, we're all what you were just saying, we're all connected, whether or not we're conscious of it. And the fact that I can, I can say this about somebody, I don't have any connection with that person. Something about maybe something they said or did rubbed me the wrong way. And so just the fact that I'm impacted showed me

there is a connection, right? Because we're impacting each other. And, yeah.

Carrie (09:53)
Right. Exactly. Yes.

Yes. And so, yeah.

It's hard for us to see, especially in American culture, because we're being really organized. We're already an individualist culture, but we're really being organized now to only see me, think me. I think other people would agree that it's harder for us to see that we're all organically connected.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (10:28)
Yeah. And feel that really feel it. And it's so fascinating to me too, because I'm noticing that, you know, with the cancel culture, it's like, people just automatically reject something and just ignore it and splinter off instead of getting curious. And, know, I'm, to me, this is just my opinion and thought and theory is that, you know, we've got these extremes coming up in society and

If truth's in the middle, how are we gonna get there unless we're open to saying, well, wait, what is really going on? How come that person, if I perceive someone as having an extreme thought or position, how come they got there? What is going on? that, you know, and just wondering about your thoughts on that.

Carrie (11:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, one of the ways that I help my clients, I lead, I do a lot of group work. I lead something called Life Development Groups. And it's all different people, all different walks of life, all different points of view on the world. And one of the things we create together in our groups is the, and the way I help clients build up their relational muscles is to be able to ask questions.

not even so much on the understanding of how they got there, but on the experiential. Like, are you curious how this is impacting on me? I'm curious to hear what are you hearing in what I'm saying? Are you, you know, when is your example of, you know, you realize somebody irritated you.

Wow, what if we had more of a capacity to ask each other, hey, are you curious of how I'm experiencing you right now? We can't know. That's not even a moral judgment about because the other person's doing something good or bad. It's because methodologically, we sit inside of ourselves. It's others who see us operating in the world, and those others

help us can be very helpful to us in seeing who we are, where our gaps are, where we might be able to grow, or how we impact on people. We can't know it just in here. We can know it here.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (13:01)
Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious too, how, what drew you to social therapeutics work? So, you know, I know you, you became a coach. and then, yeah, I'd love to hear more about your story.

Carrie (13:17)
Yeah. thank you. Well, I left college seeking out social and political innovators.

So that was a very self-conscious choice. And going back to what we were saying earlier, I did study psychology in college and I had some disagreements and I saw some limitations. And then I decided I'm not going to go that but I do want to find some innovators. And so ultimately I did find Fred Newman and Lois Holtzman and this multiracial grouping of people that was out trying to innovate. And so I did both. I was a community organizer and I trained

with the founders of social therapeutics. And once I trained, I was ready to have a practice and group work and building up a client base. And I realized that I could not imagine sitting in the same chair in the same office all day long in New York City. Like...

I was young and I liked to be out in the world and I just couldn't imagine it so I didn't do it. I put all that on hold and I went into the corporate world, you know, because you can get out of your chair all day long and go to meetings and walk down the halls and go to the water cooler. And what I discovered is that the social therapeutic method is very flexible and it really made me an excellent.

professional when it came to seeing and relating to groups, change management, employee engagement. And back in those days that wasn't linked with coaching. And I actually didn't even run into coaching until, you know, 15 years ago I was like, well, I think I'm old enough now to sit in a chair all day. I think I could do that. Maybe I'll go back to my roots and go back to doing this work. And that's when I discovered coaching and it was like,

It was like finding your long lost cousin. And then off of that, I have now built a full-time practice where I see individuals and couples and families, and then I lead these life development groups. so, yeah, that's a little bit of my journey. To ask a relational question, how was that for you to get to know me a little bit?

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (15:41)
that's great.

It was so fun because

I actually could really relate to what you're sharing. I too started out going down therapy path and had some, some, or saw some, limitations. So, yeah, definitely helped me understand your perspective and also the passion where your passion comes from as well. Yeah. The roots of that.

Carrie (16:09)
Yeah, yeah, it's in my blood.

Fred Newman used to say, well, you've grown up with this. It's like water to you. And so now my job, I wrote the book, Social Therapeutic Coaching, to take those intellectual foundations and bring them down and make them more practical. And now I'm training coaches and actually some therapists.

in practicing the approach, which is, it's both a big shift and a little shift. A lot of coaches say, wow, you're putting language to some of the things I already do, and at the same time they're saying, whoa, this is paradigm shifting, soul shifting, and they feel very excited and empowered and can see how the method applies to whatever kind of coaching they're doing.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (17:03)
I know Michael, our senior partner here at the Institute, he took your two-day program, I believe it was, and just was, he's like, it was riveting. was really high impact, was so excited.

Carrie (17:14)
Yeah.

Yeah, and the beauty of it again is its flexibility. it's not like everyone has to throw out what they already know and learn this. And also it's not an off-the-shelf kit where you just memorize the things and apply them in the right circumstance. It's continuous relational activity and that we can do everywhere.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (17:43)
Yeah, and I'm just imagining, I mean just knowing what I know about relationships and you know there's certain level of growth that we can't do siloed, right? We can't think our way into more connection. It's it's being in it.

Carrie (17:59)
Great.

Yeah, what you just said seems so simple and obvious, and yet it's so important and powerful because we are living in a culture that puts a lot of emphasis on thinking. And we get a lot of messages to make us think we can think our way out of it. So what you're saying is really significant.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (18:04)
Yeah.

How has, what have you learned as you've embarked on this path as a coach and in this work with social therapeutics? What have you, yeah, what are your internal takeaways, I guess?

Carrie (18:47)
Hmm, there's so many different ones. That's a great question. Part of what I've learned is personal. That, I can do this. I do have something to give to other people.

my God, this is learnable. When you're a founder and you make something, it's yours. I was trained by the founders, but I'm not a founder. So going into all this is, can I give this stuff away? Is this teachable? And it is. And then it's the people that I'm training that are teaching me how to teach social therapeutics. And it keeps getting better and better and better and more.

easily accessible and practical.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (19:39)
How do you see social therapeutics as like an extension within coaching? So for example, your programs are so CCEs for coaches, right? So they're already, they've already got the coaching skills down. So now they're expanding as a coach when they come to you, I can imagine. How do you see this as a really good extension of what coaches are already doing?

Carrie (19:58)
Yes.

Yeah. Well, there's a couple of different ways. One is various really well-known, well-respected coaches right now in the last year or two have been saying, we as an industry need to innovate.

So for example, Jonathan Passmore is saying the future of coaching is group coaching and transformational coaching. The way we're going to survive AI is we go in a direction that AI can't do. Social therapeutics specialize, I mean we specialize in group coaching and in emotional growth, which is transformation. So we're like right there.

Coaches are calling for innovation and we're saying, hey, this is a methodological innovation. It's not only a new idea, like the Lego trainings, a great new idea. What social therapeutics is, is a whole new way of seeing, doing, speaking. It's a whole different kind of culture.

And so that addresses, it's one response to the calls across the board to go beyond goal oriented coaching, which that's what Dr. Richard Boyatzas is talking about, or to go to not negate our core competencies because we need them. That's what forms us as a coach, but to also have more tools to go beyond and to keep going. So there's that piece of it. Other pieces like you

might be familiar with coaches that are running improv trainings for other coaches. So social therapeutics, one of the four pillars of social therapeutics is taking those tools of improv in theater and not only growing ourselves as coaches in that area, but bringing it into the work. So literally there's a metaphor, we use the metaphor in social therapeutics of performance in the sense of the tools of theater.

you can do a new performance, you can try on a new performance. So especially like in my work with...

couples all sometimes integrate in improv exercises into the work or I'll do an improv game with the first session of a group or the first session with an individual. So that's another place that coaching is already there and social therapeutics is saying we don't even have to keep it for ourselves we can bring it into our work.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (22:50)
I love that. Can we go back for a minute? Something you said really touched me or caught my attention. So you said emotional growth because that's the transformation. Now it's so interesting to me because going back to what you're saying earlier about how, know, we're so focused on the mind, like our mindset, we can just think our way through. And yet the research is showing the research I've seen is showing that the emotional, which

Carrie (22:55)
Mm-hmm.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (23:19)
sometimes is maybe there's a lot of myths around emotional, the emotional realm in our society, right? emotions are unreliable. There, you know, all these myths and, and yet that's where the transformation happens. Could you share more about your thoughts on that?

Carrie (23:23)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah,

well what you're pointing out I really agree with when when I was writing the book chapter four is called seeing emotional growth as the path to transformation and like any good author if that's the title of your book you better be prepared you got to google who else is talking about emotional growth so you have something to say you know hit enter into google there's nothing

emotional growth does not exist as a concept in psychotherapy. That's where it would exist if we found it anywhere. The only place I could find it was in emotional growth of toddlers and young children so that they can sit still in school when they start going to school. That's the only concept out there of it. I would say societally, culturally, as you're saying,

we under appreciate the role that emotionality plays. Going back to the founding of social therapeutics, Fred Newman was running these experiments of taking these community organizers and trying to teach them advanced math.

but not only from a knowing perspective, also asking, checking in on the emotional level of what's the emotionality of trying to learn something that's way beyond your capacity to learn. I don't know how we grow as a species if we don't engage creating with our emotions. Like what we're taught is you have to manage them, know them.

I think that's a limited view of emotionality. Easy way to create with emotions, this comes up all the time. And now my group members will say this to each other. Because once you get going with a group, they're going to pick up on the culture of this. And they take the tools as theirs, which is the way it should be. That is the spirit of coaching. And now someone will come into group and say,

you know, I feel, I feel really down. what do you do when you feel down? What? What kind of question is that? Nobody asks that question.

We can create and play with our emotions. Another group, and this is written about in the book, someone comes in and says, what kind of lonely are all of you? I'm generational lonely. I'm not, my kids aren't gonna have kids, so I'm not gonna have grandkids. And everyone went around the room creating their emotions, meaning they're the ones who made up the name and the meaning of what it was. We are so, our culture is, they, no.

They so preformed, pre-made, take off the shelf, that's me. Social therapeutics gives people the tools to create and say that's me instead of consume and say that's me.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (26:53)
That's really fascinating. Well, and it's what I'm loving here is that we're connecting these dots, right? The eight domains don't exist in a vacuum. They're, fully connected, right? So the emotional and relational, you know, the connections there. And it's so interesting because when I reached out to you first, seeing if you'd like to be on the podcast, I, I was so conflicted. I'm like relational or emotional, like where, because that's so connected, right?

Carrie (27:19)
yeah. Yes.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (27:24)
Now, go ahead.

Carrie (27:24)
Yeah.

Why is it it's all connected. That's the thing. Western science has, listen, we love Western science. We have penicillin, we have cars, we have podcasts, like science, modern science has made a lot of great stuff. And when you take that method and push it onto studying people, it comes up short. So.

on the people realm, everything gets divided up. You have to choose between emotions and relationality. It's always either or in modern science land, and that's its strength. And the world is more complicated. The quantum, next generation science is a break with that stuff and says, no, we can do both and. It's both at the same time.

little thing, huge break with Western culture. Either or has been part of Western culture for a very long time. So we're, it's all, we're all connected. It's how we make our meanings with it.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (28:38)
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, everything you're sharing right now is the heart of integrative intelligence and how we're, we're kind of helping people connect those dots within themselves. And one of our favorite quotes here at the Institute is from Rumi. I know you know this one, even though we haven't talked about it in that for those tuning in, you think, because you understand one, you must also understand two because one and one makes two, but

Carrie (28:43)
Hmm.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (29:07)
You must also understand and.

Carrie (29:11)
That's beautiful.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (29:16)
Well, and it's so interesting to me too that, you know, we, we, in Western thinking, you know, goes back to Descartes and the compartmentalization that was brought forward for scientific purposes. And, know, that's brilliant because it can be so important to understand, this is a, this is a frog that is not poisonous. This one is poisonous. So I know to stay away from, you know, something like that. So there's helpful times and yet.

Now we're studying everything in universities separately. Is that serving us? Right?

Carrie (29:48)
Yes. Yes.

I actually, I got my degree in college in medieval Renaissance studies. So I didn't actually study the Enlightenment ever. And, but what I did study was this.

was the intellectual conceptual shift that occurred from pre-modern times to modern times. So what I studied was this moment in human history when people were radically shifting how they were seeing and being in the world. And you know, that generally gets attributed to people like Galileo and state and, and that

public idea that no, the earth wasn't the center of the universe, it was the sun. And that set off lots of questioning and lots of permissioning to look at things in new ways.

out of those moments came the Enlightenment. I like to say that we're living in another such moment in that those intellectual conceptual tools that we've inherited from the Enlightenment have served us. And now we're like living in this transition period into some new culture and ontological world view.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (31:21)
Yeah.

Carrie (31:22)
we're all making together. We're not gonna buy it, we're making it as we go along and at some point we'll have more language and shape to it. So I think that's the moment we're living in. As hard as this moment is and the instability is so upsetting, every once in a while I let myself...

I don't know if enjoy would be the right word, but at least contemplate that we're in the middle of creating something new together as a species and we don't yet know what it is.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (31:53)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just so relating to what you're sharing and internally what came up for me a couple years ago when I was struggling with, you know, just the discord, the division and all of it and knowing that it need not be this way. And what I realized was the time for linear thinking

linear approaches has run its course. It's done. It's old. And it's time that we start seeing the connection. That's the truth of all that is everything is connected. And until we start to operate with that route, within the reality of that context, you know, that's where, yeah, anyway, I could go on forever about this topic.

Carrie (32:24)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (32:52)
So I just wanted to not let this one go. I wanted to ask you more about your thoughts and experiences or anything you'd like to share about moving more from the me to we mindset.

Carrie (33:08)
Well, that ties into, I was almost gonna respond to you just now and I'm like, okay, come on, sack it. I mean, how much are you gonna talk? But maybe I will give a response as a way to moving into the me to the we lens. The we lens is our capacity to see and relate to the group.

In American culture, there are a few places we're allowed to see the group, like sports games, the team. Now, nobody thinks that one person wins a football game. It takes a team to do that. Music is another place, orchestras, bands, choruses. The third place is theater. And there's even a special word for it, the ensemble.

So the shift from me to we is allowing ourselves to hang on to that capacity to see the group even after we leave the theater or the stadium.

And to shift to seeing the we is to be seeing the interconnectedness and as you're saying, moving away from linearity, moving away from seeing only isolated individuals that only aggregate up to a certain number. In group work, the...

The measuring out time for every person to speak is, first of all, group work is always, always, always more powerful than individual work. So I'm not saying this as a critique, but as a methodological thing. The assumption of everyone has two minutes to speak is that everyone is an isolated individual and they're taking a thought out of their head and then it comes out their mouth. And that's it. And they're done. They've got out of them.

Seeing the we, well you might ask the group. Where's the group at? What's the group thinking? Different people will respond. They'll give what they give. Some people won't talk, some people will talk. But what we're attending to is that sum that's greater than the individual parts. So that's.

That's part of the shift from me to we and what that looks like in group work. And what you were talking about before around linearity, another one of the pillars of social therapeutics is this 20th century child psychologist innovator Lev Vygotsky. Any one of your listeners, watchers who is in the field of education at all would probably know him.

He was a contemporary of Piaget. Lev Vygotsky was a contemporary of Piaget. And Lev Vygotsky said children learn language not linearly, but because they're in a wee environment where everyone's at different levels of development.

creating a conversation together. And of course the speakers are, they're acting as if they're performing as if the baby is making sense. So all that to say the difference with Piaget, Piaget said children's cognitive developments happen in four stages and you can define them like this and you can measure them like this and they go through linearly from one to the next to the next. And then Piaget says,

and all that development happens inside the child. Classic enlightenment science. And this other guy, Piaget, is saying, actually, we grow in groups. Actually, we grow and we grow and learn things because somebody's relating to us as if we were, Vygotsky's words, a head taller, as if we were ahead of ourselves. And that's how we grow.

So maybe that's a long answer to your question. Maybe that's a long answer to your question, but that's what I was thinking of in response from the shift from me to we.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (37:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

That's great. I'm imagining just doing work in the realm of leadership coaching, leadership development. Leaders that are me-focused fail pretty fast until they start to move into the we and see, OK, what is my impact here?

Carrie (37:39)
Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yeah, that's really important and it is, it doesn't come naturally to us anymore in our culture. So they are muscles that have to be reignited. They're there, you just gotta reignite them.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (38:04)
Yeah, I love that you said that because, know, having kids, watching them grow up where cell phones and media, they have just in their forefront and this shift from having more opportunities to be internally tuned in now being more externally distracted, you know, and seeing some of the consequences of that and, and the

anxiety levels go up around relating to other human beings.

Carrie (38:41)
I actually see, so I have a practice as well, I think we mentioned that, and I see actually a lot of teenagers and teenage girls in particular who have a lot of anxiety and that's what we work on. We work on being radically present with each other and playing emotional, emotions games, so I do a lot of improv work, and helping them take that risk with me.

to try to connect. So it's the practice ground, which is true in my groups too. They get related to as practice grounds where we can try new things, take risks.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (39:24)
Powerful sounds really powerful, especially having grown up. I was painfully shy so Having you know to learn how to come out and be with people and How rich that is I do you mind if we go back to a Distinction that you brought forward about emotional growth and I was wondering what are your thoughts on? The distinction if there is one between emotional growth and emotional intelligence

Carrie (39:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do have strong opinions on that. And it's really in the title because emotional intelligence assumes that we have to know in order to grow. And emotional growth does not assume we have to know. Behind emotional growth is we do things.

We try things, we take risks without knowing what's gonna happen. And it's only after that that you can look back and say, I did something new. it went like this or it went like that. We can't pre-know. there's a lot, language comes with pictures in our heads. And so intelligence, the picture of intelligence is knowing. And again,

It's not like all the tools we have out there today are not helpful in some ways, because they are. So I don't want to completely dis everything. And they come with conceptual pictures that we are stuck in. So I just wrote this blog piece, Emotional Growth Happens with Others. that it's, we are being,

The messaging is, you know, go read a book, go meditate, go do these things, and they're great. It's not that they're not great. And we still, we have to add to that. We need others. And when you're with others, when you're in relation, you can't control it. You can't know it.

It unfolds, it emerges, and that's what we do as coaches. are radically, it's one of our best days. We are so fully present that we're not knowing anything, hardly. We're co-creating with what's emerging in the moment.

How does that sound as a response?

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (42:00)
I love it.

Yes, that makes so much sense. I'm really glad that we went there. was just, yeah, really curious. That makes so much sense. And I wonder how much that really speaks to how we've intellectualized so many things. And that's something at the Institute we want to like break through for folks is that intelligences, this is whole person intelligences. It's not that we limit ourselves.

Carrie (42:07)
Yeah.

Yes.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (42:30)
And what's fascinating to me too is that how when we put the emphasis on intellect in the mind, we accidentally limit ourselves because that's the one part of us that's capable of self-deception.

Carrie (42:30)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (42:48)
Interesting.

So we're leading with the one part that has a potential big blind spot.

Carrie (42:57)
Yes. Yep. One of the epigraphs in my book to start the chapter on emotional growth is from Vine Deloria, who was a huge Native American, well-loved lawyer, activist, 70s, 80s, 90s. And his quote is, while we may misunderstand, we don't mis-experience.

And I hear you saying that in what you're saying. If you get into here, then it's yes, and it's all into am I doing it right? Is this right? Was that that was wrong? this didn't meet my expectations. And yes, so you can deceive yourself because you're only here.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (43:28)
wheels.

Yeah. And if we're here, we're not in relationship. We miss, we can miss opportunities and that, you know, that's something that we learn in coaching, right? If we're here, we've left the client. So how can we return to that relationship so that the synergy and the creativity can come forward? Nice.

Carrie (43:47)
Yeah, we need to, yeah. Right. Exactly.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Your work sounds fantastic.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (44:08)
How can?

Likewise, that's how, speaking of your work and all the amazing things that you're doing in this realm, how can people find you, work with you, that love for listeners to be able to connect with you.

Carrie (44:22)
Mm-hmm.

So on the coach training side, if you wanna learn more about social therapeutics in a relational way, I don't wanna just put it in your head, my book is available on Amazon and you can read the intro chapter for free and then you'll know. Once you read the intro chapter, you'll know if it's for you or not.

I run trainings for coaches. do a weekend intensive and I have two of them coming up this spring. I do a full cert, and those have CCEs for ICF coaches. And then I do a full certification program, which is 60 hours so that you can carry the badge of being a social therapeutic coach.

On the coaching side, I lead life development groups and that might be something that people want to refer their clients to or they might want to try it themselves. I actually have a group, a bi-weekly group of coaches. people, so we can, coaches can be in that rich, rich, growthful environment.

So yeah, I have a four week intro group that's also starting in May. So I think those are the different ways. And on my different websites, the training website is groupandcouplescoaching.com. And then on the coaching side,

It's ZPD coaching, Zebra Peter David coaching. There's a lot more there on life development groups and you'll find tons of resources there. have a media page, I have a bunch of blogs.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (46:17)
Excellent.

And we will put those links in the description below as well. And just a reminder, Carrie's book is social therapeutic coaching, a practical guide to group and couples work. We'll put a link to that as well so that you can scoop that up. Carrie, any final words of wisdom you'd like to leave our listeners today with?

Carrie (46:41)
Well, a word of wisdom is we all as coaches have to keep growing and innovating, especially in this moment. I feel very so passionately about that. And one really important thing about social therapeutics is it was created 40 years ago for this moment. If you look at what's happening politically in America,

Nobody has the thing that's right for this moment because they had to have created it 40 years ago for it to have enough traction and juice to be appropriate for now. So for all of us to keep growing, not to get conservatized in this moment, keep innovating. And I also just want to close with words of gratitude to you, Laurel, because I'm so glad that Michael brought us together and that my

really have loved this conversation and look forward to continuing to get to know you and the Institute's work.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (47:42)
Likewise, Carrie, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure and an honor to be with you today and be in conversation and relationship around this really rich topic. And I just, appreciate you. All right, listeners, that brings us to the conclusion of today's relational focus. And we hope that today's discussion has been a lantern to your evolution as a business professional coach, leader or therapist.

Learn more about our ICF accredited coach training or leaders coach program by visiting us at integrativeintelligence.com. Bye for now and we'll see you at the next episode.