From Smart Work to Yin

In the fall of 1999, I left the training company I had worked with for 17 years, and began my own coaching business, The Smart Work Company.  It was perhaps the smartest thing I’d ever done professionally. I worked primarily, (though not exclusively) with technical professionals who had gotten promoted into leadership positions, and mainly in high tech.  It provided me with over two decades of rewarding work.

And yet.  For many of the people I worked with, the focus was always on the next promotion, the next bump in pay and status.  Over 25 of my clients reached VP level.  Almost inevitably the “whoopee” and “hallelujah” moments were followed by “oh shit” moments – “what have I gotten myself into?” Almost none of them were, six months later, happier and more fulfilled than they had been at earlier points in their careers.  It was becoming more and more obvious to me that the global corporatocracy wasn’t working—for those inside or outside of it.  Let alone for the rest of us.

Over the last ten years, sped up by the pandemic, and amplified by the reality of global weather destabilization, my interest in creating a functional world that works for all has led me to look more closely at the sources and causes of dysfunction, depression and decay in our current ways of doing and being.  This, along with a directive from my teacher, Hyemeyhosts Storm, led to writing Yin, Completing the Leadership Journey in 2020.

Since then, I’ve continued reading and exploring as well as coaching.  I’m working more and more with young women and people in small businesses, since I’ve become quite convinced that  bigger is NOT better in the business world.  And I’m working to develop a variety of new ways to hold conversations about how to develop our Yin in the face of overwhelming Yang, as well as what it looks like when the two are in balance.  I invite you to join me!