The Ripple Effect of Inside-Out Leadership with Nikki Carpenter

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Leaders always have a lot to deal with, and often that heavy load can cause stress. But when we understand where our experience is coming from it can be a game-changer. Nikki Carpenter is a coach who is dancing with the possibilities of supporting leaders to understand the Three Principles as a means to move beyond their apparent stress, burnout and overwhelm.

You can listen to the podcast by pressing play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or watch the video here. Below are the show highlights and full transcript.

Show Notes

• Working with leaders on the challenges of bombardment they face today
• Staying away from problem-solving for clients
• How it’s just as easy to bring strengths to leadership as dysfunctions
• Focusing on the people that leaders lead
• How knowing where our experience comes from creates choices
• Creating space for exploration and growth with coaching clients
• On the kind of thinking that causes suffering in leaders

Resources mentioned in this episode

• The Serenity Principle by Joseph Bailey
• You Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz
• The Wise Advocate by Jeffrey Schwartz, Art Kleiner, and Josie Thomson

You can find Nikki at CreateabilityLeaders.com.

Transcript of interview with Nikki Carpenter

Alexandra: Hi everyone I’m Alexandra Amor from StopSufferingAbout.com and I’m here today with Nikki Carpenter. Hi Nikki!

Nikki: How are you today?

Alexandra: I’m great thanks.

Let me introduce you to our listeners.

Nikki Carpenter is a former clinical nutritionist and leader who discovered leadership development training and eventually coaching in the mid-1990s. She’s been a self-employed ICF certified coach since 2000. Her coaching focus is leadership development and career discovery.

Her first brush with the Principles was via the work of Joseph Bailey in early 2000 and then more recently she came upon the Three Principles in 2014. Since that time she has immersed herself in learning the principles from a variety of practitioners and perhaps a few too many courses and books. I can relate to that.

Currently, she is dancing with the possibilities of supporting leaders to understand the principles as a means to move beyond their apparent stress burnout and overwhelm when this fits their desires for coaching. When the Three Principles are not an overt conversation they underpin her orientation to others as already whole wise and capable.

I loved hearing all the exploration that you’ve been doing and all the different sort of coach training and all that kind of thing.

Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got into coaching in that kind of thing.

Nikki: You mentioned that I was originally a leader in health care and clinical nutrition and we had a lot of changes going on in the organization; mergers and consolidation of hospitals.

And then I had my first son. I had been a leader for years and I always knew I wasn’t going to be dietitian forever. I just didn’t know what I was going to evolve into. I loved the part of leadership of developing people.

There was an opportunity to do leadership development training in the organization I worked in and I got certified and was one of a team of trainers developing other leaders. And I always say I felt like I took off high heels and put on slippers but it just felt like I found my tribe. And I love dietitians but I have to be honest I always like a little bit of a round peg in a square hole.

When I came home to helping others be better leaders it was right around the time that coaching was just developing. And so eventually I was laid off from health care and I worked in another industry and I took coach training at that time. So that was 1999 when I took CTI training and then I took another coach training. I’m a serial coach training person. I took another training in about 2003 that was called Coaching for Authentic Leadership.

I’ve coached individuals as well along the way. I can’t even say why leadership has always called me. It’s not about necessarily being in the C Suite it’s really how do I help people develop and be resilient as leaders because it’s really quite demanding nowadays.

Since I’ve been there and since I’ve kind of walked along with people for almost 20 years I just think people can barely find the time for coaching. I had a client recently tell me that she would go to a meeting and come back to 75 new e-mails. The outside bombards people. Although we know there’s another dynamic going on.

And so along the road, because I know you’re interested in my exploration. I’m really curious and I’ve always really observed people and wondered. In leadership development training you have this room of people and they’re all different disciplines within health care.

I would be drawn to the people. There’s something about the brain here that I’m seeing there that the finance people are one way and even within nursing. Different people are wired differently.

I just could see there was something and I think there is and the interaction between the brain and how we think. I know that because within my house we are definitely scientists and it’s great because he does this masterful job of grocery shopping and I would go and be just impulsive and random and we wouldn’t have a meal but with him we got meals and we save money. So I know there’s differences in the thinking process.

That me into learning about the brain and taking classes on the brain and I also studied the anagram in depth.

I’m short, so before they had petite sizes I’d always have to hem my pants by about this much. And so you’d have to take out the hem of the store stitching and it’s all crazy but if you find the one string, the whole him comes out. You can just pull it out. I think I’ve always been looking for the one string that would sort of be the way to untie the misery or the struggle or to help people to realize who they really are from the inside out.

So I’ve always had an inside out orientation of helping people know their strengths and know what they value and be aware of their own inside process. And like you said, I read Joseph Bailey’s book. I read this little book and it’s really early on and there were some things that really impacted me like the speed of life.

I just came to know I was going to travel at a different speed than other people in the thinking, creating, feeling and yet there wasn’t a big community. I looked into training and it was not in my area. I had two small children and it just it seemed more oriented towards therapists at that time. And so I feel like half of my being embraced the principles but it wasn’t until later and I think I read Michael Neill’s book and then I read for a while I was reading every book out there I know since it’s not a new phenomenon I’m describing.

And then I’d studied with a bunch of different teachers and so I think that where I’m at now is that over the last five years I’ve just immersed myself in the Principles and I’m sort of coming back out, partly because I need to renew my certification through ICF (the International Coach Federation). And I’m now re-embracing the coaching part of it because my clients and organizations some of them have had coaches before and they don’t expect to hear me talking a lot about me or my stories as examples to share the principles.

So how I’m combining those is to know that coaching as a premise has always said people are creative, resourceful and whole. That’s one of the five competencies of the ICF core competencies. And just to really remember that and not have a problem-solving approach but to really use inquiry and to ask questions as if they already now.

Alexandra: Speaking of questions, I love that you said that you’re not really consciously aware of why you were drawn to working with leaders and leadership. I think that’s really interesting.

Can you say a bit more about that?

Nikki: I don’t even know. It just seemed like when I became a leader there was a lot of growth and development that happened because what I knew at that point was it was just as easy to bring my strengths as it was to bring my dysfunctions for lack of a better word.

It was challenging to be an effective leader but also to me leadership is about the people you lead. We all lead ourselves right. We’re self leaders all the time. I was really passionate about the people I led and about doing my best to have them have a good experience at work.

I know more and more through the Principles that we create our experience and we can create environments where people feel safe where people feel whole. Environments where people have someone that supports them to grow and develop and be matched in their role with their strengths.

I led in health care. I worked with physicians who are highly trained and highly educated and a lot of people in health care are highly educated and very conscientious, despite what the public thinks about health care. They are very committed to what they do. And I also led people who maybe had a GED. I worked in an inner-city hospital. It was very racially integrated so it was a slice of life.

And I saw that art in leadership and there’s obviously more. There’s science. Even the amount of leadership books now versus back then. There’s so many messages about what kind of leader you should be and the five best steps or whatever.

I think if I would say why did leadership call to me, it was for the people that the leaders lead. I just thought if I can make a difference with the leader and their well-being in their balance in life and their health. There’s always been a key priority for me.

I would really be the ripple in the pond to all those people, because I’ve had some really wonderful leaders in my life and I’ve had some leaders that I wish I knew the Principles when they were leading me. I would have been able to see it a lot differently.

But I would fall into being a victim of a certain kind of leadership style because I was innocent. I didn’t really know any better. But gradually as I came to know better then I knew then I really wanted to help other people understand themselves and understand the people they need. And that’s probably why I said communication to. Because I was a clinical dietician and I made this career change.

It evolved into doing leadership training across a six system hospital and staff. And I thought as I’m teaching leaders and the underpinning of everything I’m teaching them is about communication. So versus being in an MBA, which wouldn’t have played to my strengths. I would’ve had to have my husband take golf courses. But in this case I would’ve done that.

Leadership is an act of communication. So that’s how I got to the communication piece and I’m trying to think of what that was actually before I finished that, before I was laid off from health care. And then eventually a few years later went into coaching.

Alexandra: I love what you say about being the ripple in the pond or starting the ripples. And I feel like there’s this great parallel. It seems like sometimes people have an idea of leadership as though it’s about the leader and what you’re saying is it’s actually not. It’s about the people.

And so there’s this amazing parallel. We think life is about the outside experiences coming in. Actually, it’s not. It’s about the inside-out experience and so I just love that. love that in both those places we’re flipping these things on their head; the assumptions that we’ve made about the way that life works and the way that leadership works too.

What do you think the advantages are for a leader who understands where our experience come from comes from?

Nikki: The image I have is that they stop feeling like they’re… if you’ve ever seen one of those tennis ball machines that just throws the tennis balls out. I think a lot of leaders that I’m working with or have worked with feel like there’s no options about how they’re experiencing things.

The shift is, if I realize I’m experiencing my thinking about my boss or about a change in responsibilities or the reports I have to do, if I realize that the filter is my own that’s creating the experience for me, then I have so many more choices.

One of my wake-ups in the Principles understanding was that I used to have a mental model and I know this would color my coaching. That there’s like a normal way to respond to certain things and certain kinds of experiences.

Oh yes that would be normal. That you’re considering leaving your job because you’ve got a new boss who’s a micromanager. Well, that’s normal.

And then through the Principles I had come to realize and to help others see or point towards this situation doesn’t have an inherent experience that’s coming at you. There’s really no one way of looking at or experiencing this.

Some people see that very easily and others don’t. All the normal things we’ve all gone through in the journey. No, really. This is hard. And so I think it’s kind of a delicate balance of their readiness to hear this message, because early on with one of my mentors the two of us kind of had this realization; people go to this person for coaching or for practitioner or training or whatever it has been, they’re known for being a 3P coach and so there’s already awareness.

People don’t come to me necessarily because I’m 3P trained. They’re coming to me because of my experience with the organization. My background. They get a bio of me and they pick me from other coaches or they’ve met me or whatever.

So there’s this dance of readiness and in my serving them. Now, we could all say in the principal’s understanding, of course, everybody would be served by this. There’s a level where I truly hold that is true. And at the same time, I’m there to support their coaching agenda.

I had a recent client tell me they’re an atheist and yet every one of our conversations and around the topic of mindfulness and consciousness. So sometimes I’m a secret agent.

I actually prefer to be explicit in my coaching work to really just be able to say what I’m pointing towards is this as opposed to trying to knead the dough in and hope they get it.

But probably I would lose some people. A lot of the benefit I found, in that I had so many diverse things I’ve explored, is that they can point to the Principles from a number of different pathways that might be more accessible to some people. Like even the brain.

I have an author whose work on the brain I really like. Jeffrey Schwartz. And he has a new book called something about your inner advocate. He wrote You Are Not Your Brain. He points towards the spiritual and towards neuroplasticity and towards we can shape our brain and he’s working with reframing thinking, which we don’t really do that.

But then again, to me, the fundamental things are you’re pointing each person back towards their own inner wisdom. You’re pointing towards wholeness. You’re pointing towards the nature of thought to create experience and the flexibility to see that our thought is not necessarily the truth. It’s very random what shows up.

Even humor. I’ve come to see lately, I’ve been painting myself as black or white and I thought gosh, you think you’re funny. And then I realized, I didn’t create the funny thoughts. I don’t know where they come from, but I can enjoy them when they come.

So more and more I’m looking at how are we supporting people and my supporting people to see that they can create whatever kind of experience they want from the inside out. We all know people who create some great outside thing and then don’t enjoy it.

Alexandra: Yes. Before you started coaching from the Principles point of view, you mentioned the thread the thread metaphor with the hem of your pants and I just love that. Do you notice a little more ease with your coaching when you’re working with a client because you understand more now about the Principles?

Was there a shift from the way you coached before it the way you coach now?

Nikki: I think there’s been ways. I think when I started having a mindset that oh my god I found the thread. It’s the Principles. Then I was working really hard not just in coaching. I don’t know if I was there but outside of coaching to figure out how I’m going to bring this in. What books am I recommending? And I was creating handouts.

I was really doing a lot of thinking about it and then I was also thinking I’ve got to throw out everything else I ever did because you know it’s supposedly all outside in.

So there’s been a few years process going on. I hate to admit it, even up until recently. And I think as what I’m finding now is I’m keeping it really simple in my own being that the coaching doesn’t need to get washed away. I don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s really about the person I’m serving; what they want, what they’re ready to hear. It’s about the space that’s created for exploration and growth. And it’s getting easier and easier. In the end if I remember that we can’t go off course. I think it’s a dance. Even in the last three months I’d say I’ve really come to see that I if I work too hard I go wrong direction. And so again and again I’m having them work too hard.

Alexandra: I took coach training in back in 2012 with a certain practitioner. I don’t actively coach people but what I noticed about the two the different approaches – the approach of that coach paradigm and what I’m coming to learn to understand about the principles is with the previous coaching paradigm I felt like I was layering techniques and strategies on top of techniques and strategies. And feeling like I had to manage everything. Manage all my thoughts, manage all my feelings.

For me that has fallen away now with an understanding of the Principles and there’s a simplicity about it that I really appreciate and a lack of having to get in there and fix everything. For lack of a better way to say it.

So I can really understand what you’re saying about taking some time to integrate the two approaches. Especially because, as you say, your clients aren’t coming to you necessarily because they know about you as a three principles coach.

They know about you maybe as a leadership coach. Those might be the words they use to describe what you do.

Nikki: Yes. It’s funny because I’m reflecting on all the things that we’ve talked about. Yes, it’s been my professional career journey, but it’s also been my journey.

I was seeing recently seeing I try so hard. Why do I work so hard? Why do I try to get it right and earn it. And seeing that’s just what I’ve always done. That’s the thinking I got from my parents. My dad was always like, “You’ve got to earn things,” and my mom was like there’s a right way to do things. And those schools of thought have been in me and I can see like they’ve brought me along.

And now that I’m seeing them, I’m going maybe not. Maybe that’s just some thinking I’ve had and I’m grateful for it. It’s begun to feel like a burden. It’s going to feel like I don’t have to think that way. I don’t have to approach things that way other people do and I don’t need to approach things the way my thinking says. It’s very freeing.

And then what that has allowed me to do is coming back to who is it that I serve. What do I need to know and what do they need to know about me? And it just gets simpler and simpler that way.

What I’m trying to say is, if we’re awake to it all, we’re always seeing ourselves, we’re always seeing others. It’s kind of like a slow pulling out of the string on the hem.

I’ve always wanted, in my life, to find that string and pull it out and then I’d be enlightened or something or I would know what to do in life and realizing, oh, sometimes it’s a gentle journey.

Alexandra: I love what you say about working with your clients but it’s your journey too. As you’re exploring what you understand and what you see. I love hearing that.

Since this show is called Stop Suffering About what would you say causes suffering in leaders. We’ve touched on that a little bit already but maybe you could say a bit more about that.

Nikki: I think it’s the kind of thinking that says I need to be a certain way all the time. They need to be a certain way all the time. The organization needs to do things a certain way.

It’s like these mental requirements. Even how leaders suffering about their staff not being positive and wanting to know why. Because this is a very positive person. This is a really high functioning leader and so it really can be whatever we think things should be a certain way and they’re not.

That’s what I would say is the crux of a leader suffering. Or their career isn’t moving fast enough. Until you come to understand that tennis ball machine coming at you and not being able to get masterful, because most of leaders I coach, they’re achievers. They’re not resting until that next achievement has happened.

And I’m not trying to shift that. My place is not to shift that but to question what they think will happen if they get that thing or to shine light on it.

Alexandra: Yes. And again, a couple of things occurred to me.

I’ve mostly been self-employed but I worked briefly in a corporate environment. And I do remember that feeling of drinking from the fire hose or the tennis ball machine. You step away from your desk for half an hour and you come back and, like you said, there are forty five emails waiting for you.

With an understanding of the Principles, are you able to help leaders with that kind of stress? Because they can’t change the number of e-mails that are coming in or voicemail messages.

Nikki: I think the only insight in that is that the e-mails can’t create their response. Even the last-minute deadline or a lot of times there’s a lot of change of direction in organizations. Even when I was in one it felt like oh I just completed this and now we’ve changed direction.

It’s just the letting go more and being in the moment. Coming into their bodies a lot, which I know sounds kind of woo woo but I think a lot of times people are even hardly in the room. To be just slowing. It’s like slowing down at the speed of life.

I’m coaching the leader or I’m coaching his boss and this person has designed a whole program to manage and now she teaches that to everybody else.

People still have strategies. You still have a process you’re using for this interview. So it’s not about just because we’re consciousness and mind living in a thought created world. We don’t need to know how to create things. We’re still dancing with form.

Alexandra: Well said. Yes. It’s a lot of paradox. Spiritual beings having a human experience. There is just a paradox about that.

This has been amazing Nikki. It’s been so great chatting with you. Maybe you could share with us just something that you’re seeing recently about your experience.

I always like to ask is there anything you’re seeing that’s new for you these days.

Nikki: Well, yeah. This is a new big thing.

I’ve always been in a helping profession. I’ve been a helping professional and what I’ve come to see through really looking at wholeness is that I can hold that lightly.

I still want to serve people and I really took a lot of responsibility for how I do things. For being confident and conscientious and all that stuff. But it’s almost the wrong driver for me now.

I’m just seeing I don’t have to be such a serious helper. And maybe that’s why I’m having humor show up because that sort of thing about I’ve got to know what I’m doing and how I’m doing it and do the best job that every moment has lightened up.

And then there’s a lot of play and sense of humor and I bring that into coaching. There’s a  theory out there, the polyvagel theory and being safe and we create safety with others through how we communicate, our vocal tone and stuff like that creates safety but also humor in play.

If my clients can have a little bit of lightness with me. Now, I’m not inappropriately joking or whatever, but if humor shows up and then there’s a little bit more energy, you can see that there’s more energy for them when they leave coaching or after we’re done. And so that’s what I was saying is, I’m not taking my helping this so seriously anymore.

Alexandra: I love hearing that. I tend to be a bit serious about everything as well so I can really relate. I do imagine that lightheartedness, that if that you’re bringing to the coaching would affect the coachee as well.

Nikki: Absolutely. And then they can walk away and maybe not have to be such a serious leader. A little bit of levity I think can go a long way. Without minimizing people’s experience.

Alexandra: This has been great, Nikki, thank you so much.

Why don’t you share with our audience where they can find out more about you and your work?

Nikki: I am in a website shift so my domain name may be changing but right now it’s createabilityleaders.com.

And it may change but really if they just Google my name, Nikki Carpenter. I wasn’t on MacGyver, let me just tell you that much.

Alexandra: I saw that when I Googled your name. I will put a link in the show notes and then if your website address changes just let me know and I’ll update the show notes as well.

Nikki: OK. That’s great.

Alexandra: Thanks again for chatting with me.

Nikki: Thank you. Bye bye.

[Ripples image courtesy Linus Nylund and Unsplash.]