(interview blurb)
Vernice: So let’s say in this case, it was the opportunity for a little bit of bonding, there’s an informal place, there was a doorway to intimacy between the two of us, like chaos is a real opportunity and so is being at the growth edge of your own meaning making and the symbols that can come from there, the language, language is a kind of symbol that comes from there, all of the possibilities that just can fit through that doorway, when you’re able to be in awareness and like that edge of your meaning making at the same time so now you’re at a new place each time and not relying on this old neural pathway that’s been playing over for the last whatever, quarter of a century.
(intro)
Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal. I’m the CEO of coaching.com and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today has over 15 years of experience working with global Fortune 500 companies and large nonprofits. She creates experiential leadership programs and solutions that connect and drive business results. As a master certified executive and professional coach, she has worked with clients all over the world, including the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia. She is the director of Adult Development at Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. She is a coach, a facilitator, and a consultant at Cultivating Leadership. Please welcome, Vernice Jones.
(interview)
Vernice: Hello. Thank you for having me, Alex.
Alex: It’s a pleasure. It’s great having you. Thank you for coming. So, Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, it doesn’t have to be coffee, and today — we basically asked you what do you want to drink together so you had a really unique and interesting smoothie you called out for so you want to tell our audience a little more about what we’re drinking?
Vernice: And I’m so curious, were you afraid when you saw what I requested?
Alex: No, because I usually have those ingredients separate so I was like, okay, putting them all together is kind of interesting.
Vernice: Yeah, yeah, okay. So I’m a big tea drinker and I like a matcha green tea, yes. So what do you think?
Alex: Yeah, I love matcha green tea. I have it almost every day. I plug the brands that I like so Traditional Medicinals, it’s fantastic, so, yeah, that’s fantastic.
Vernice: Okay, okay. So it’s a matcha green tea with a little bit of pomegranate juice and pineapple blended in and so pineapple makes it sweet and also pineapple gives it a little bit of froth, which is fun to drink, just with the texture, it makes it fun, but also those sweet, and the pomegranate gives it antioxidants but it also gives it a bit of the sour sweet taste together. It’s delicious. And I’m a tea drinker so it’s delicious.
Alex: No, it’s delicious. A little —
Vernice: Cheers.
Alex: Cheers. A little sugar, a little of caffeine, many antioxidants. Yeah, I went to the supermarket, I went to Bristol Farms this morning and they were looking at me like there’s people buying tons of things and I just have like pineapple and pomegranate seeds and, yeah, just blended it. I realized I’m not really great at making smoothies so struggled a little bit but I think —
Vernice: But this was easy, right?
Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was easy. I have a mess going over there but it was easy, yeah. Nice. Well, thank you for being here today.
Vernice: Yes, my pleasure.
Alex: So, I usually like to start by getting to know our guests a little bit more and the coaching profession, it’s nascent, what? We’re 30, 40 years in so it’s not a young profession, but in comparison to a lot of other professionals, it is, and it’s always fascinating to learn more about how people got into the journey of becoming a coach and making out their professions so we’d love to hear how that journey was for you.
Vernice: Yes. So, my story is I think not so exciting. I’ve been in learning and development, leadership development for a long time and someone had recommended as part of my own sort of development this sort of coaching program and it was CTI, so the Coaches Training Institute, and what made it a good fit for me is it’s very experiential. I’m sort of that’s my style in the classroom, so it seemed like a good fit for me. Day one, you coach in that program and so it was a lot of fun for me and I just sort of continued. I also began with an adult development program at the same time. So one person suggested some general coaching, another person suggested this adult development sort of coaching program. I started both and then just kept going with it. It was a really good fit for me. I think, in the beginning, I think like a lot of coaches, I was trying to do all the things. I was trying to be a good coach, asked good questions, and now it’s sort of become a way of being with other humans and being within a context and we can talk about that later.
Alex: Absolutely, thank you. And your journey to become an MCC coach happened, looks like pretty quickly, so you went from ACC to PCC to MCC in about 10 years or so.
Vernice: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: So you’ve been busy at work doing a lot of work…
Vernice: I’m doing busy. I’m coaching, I’m coaching one on one, I’m coaching in the classroom, and I was counting all the hours, like everyone else. And, actually, when I got to be an MCC, you could count hours before your coaching program began so that’s part of the reason why probably is easier for me to get those hours than someone who had to start from their coaching program was just a few years back, even though they’ve been coaching for a long time, yeah.
Alex: Yeah. It’s interesting, there’s only, I think, somewhere around 1,000, maybe 1,000 to 2,000, I believe, last time I checked, MCC coaches in the world, which is a very powerful designation. It comes with a lot of very rigorous work so it’s always nice to connect with MCC coaches.
Vernice: Thank you for saying that. And there are a lot of very powerful coaches who are not MCCs.
Alex: Definitely.
Vernice: There’s a lot of wonderful ways to get support, coaching wise and not, and I just happened to get it and I have many wonderful colleagues of all sorts, all kinds of credentials so I’m happy to talk about that too.
Alex: Yes, we’re not just endorsing the ICF here but they do a great job at creating certification pathways and they’ve really helped elevate the coaching profession and there’s so many other great organizations, the MCC, and I know so many coaches that are great coaches that don’t have any certification —
Vernice: That’s right —
Alex: — it does seem like in the marketplace, like years ago, I think there was a lot of almost drama in the profession where the US government was requiring ICF credentialing for government coaching work and I haven’t kept up with that to see if it’s still a requirement but, back then, I remember it was a whole thing, but certification is important and, in the marketplace, as coaching becomes more available, it’s an easy way for consumers to get a sense of an understanding of different levels of experience. But some coaches, like you said, they have a lot of experience, they work with clients, at the end of the day, I think the best thing you can do as a coach is have great endorsements from your clients. There’s nothing better than that. Just doing the work and getting good recognition and testimonials from that.
Vernice: Yeah.
Alex: Do you agree with —
Vernice: And having a conversation with that person ahead of time, there’s a lot that you can find out even in the initial chemistry call so it’s just an opportunity that people can take advantage of, not just to interview but to really see the chemistry, the fit that you have, and what you want for yourself.
Alex: Absolutely.
Vernice: How this person can support you there.
Alex: Absolutely. So, we have lots of talk about today. I know you have an interest in complexity, complexity theory, which I also share. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is important to you and your work. So let’s talk about the work that you do. So, do you attract a particular kind of client? Like what does your coaching clientele, your portfolio of clients look like and how has that changed over time?
Vernice: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say my portfolio of clients has always been sort of diverse. When I started my coaching practice, probably many people will have heard me say before that all of my coaching clients, my first like 20 coaching clients, were all from Southeast Asia, mostly men, and so that’s where I got my start. And it was a really important start because everyone was local so some people’s English is better than others, the cultural context was very different. Some people, I wouldn’t say never, but not often been outside the country and some people had traveled a lot. But what I had to do, because there were like four or five different countries, so it was Southeast Asia and China —
Alex: How did you start specializing there? Like what led to an influx of clients from that region?
Vernice: Yeah, I had an interest in China so I had been doing a lot of work in China and so I have my own — there’s a whole journey that I had around my relationship with China prior to that so I really wanted to do work specifically with leaders in China and then this opportunity came up and what this allowed for me, because I couldn’t rely on the language in the way I can in the United States, obviously, and even like cultural cues the way I could in the United States because I feel comfortable in China.
Alex: So you spent a lot of time there, it sounds like.
Vernice: Because I — so I have a sense of the cultural cues but some of the other countries, Malaysia, Korea, I mean, I just didn’t have as much, so I had to really attune my listening in ways that I hadn’t before so I couldn’t rely on the language so sometimes I was like, it’s 70 percent, 75. I couldn’t lead because my leading would be sometimes taking someone in a different direction and sometimes even felt offensive. So I really became a good listener. So, listening to words but also listening to silence and that became so helpful and supportive and informed where I went from there as a coach.
Alex: Listening to silence, that is such a powerful attribute for a coach to be aware of. Silence speaks so much. When you listen to a great comedian, it’s all about timing, and timing is all about your interplay of silence, but we don’t think about silence sometimes. I find that a lot of coaches are in tune with that because a coach is an expert conversationalist, like you ask great questions and you set a certain cadence for those conversations and introspection that’s derived from that silence. So, yeah, I love how you framed that. Where did they interest in China come from?
Vernice: Yeah, when I was in — I’m trying to think. Just before I started graduate school, a friend recommended a book to me, it was Spring Moon by Bette Bao Lord, and it was a time when I was reading a lot of books around generations of women and I read this book and it was gorgeous and subtle and bold and I finished the book thinking that it was about me and, yet, it was about a place that I had never been, a history that I didn’t know much about, and I was completely perplexed, confused, and in a state of — it was almost like I was in love after reading this book with sort of Chinese culture but also the strength of women from generation to generation and how we pass a legacy of strength to each other. And so when I got to graduate school, I worked in this center and I had the opportunity to — one of the things I did was to arrange these international exchanges and the executive director said to me, “Oh, if you’d ever like to go on one of these, let me know,” and I said, in the moment, “Yes, I would, and I’d like to go to China.” And he said, “Okay, fine with me.” So that first time, that first visit to China —
Alex: What year was that?
Vernice: What year? See —
Alex: I’m trying to establish the chronological understanding —
Vernice: A few years ago, that’s what I’ll say.
Alex: Let’s say 2012.
Vernice: It was a couple of years ago, Alex —
Alex: As soon as I said, I was like you’re gonna appreciate my — yeah.
Vernice: Yeah, it was a couple of years ago, probably more than two, and I was — oh, it was one of these programs where you go to a bunch of different universities, you visit organizations, there’s no language study. And, at that time, China was very different so this was before, to me — I mean, there were still like zillions of bicycles on the road, you can have that. They had a whole serious part of the streets, even the highways, and, gosh, there was so much that I was confronted with around culture and race outside of myself and in myself, and it set me on this whole journey. You know better than I do, America can be very black and white and China just took me in a whole different direction, which is something of course I knew but I had a direct experience for it so this was sort of the real beginnings of phenomenology for me, which I’ve taken also throughout my career. And so I went that first time, learned so much, and I even was telling a friend that I was able to count to ten in Chinese and Mandarin, I was so excited. And on the bus ride back to the airport, I was telling the professor, I was telling him how much I appreciated the adventure and how important it was to me that I even was able to count to ten just in the short trip. He said, “Well, maybe you should study Mandarin,” and I said, “Oh my gosh, no. I couldn’t do that. That is way outside of the possibility frontier for Vernice Jones,” and I distinctly remember he said, he got very serious and he looked me in the eye in a cutting way and said to me, “Don’t do that. If you wanna study Mandarin, you study Mandarin. That’s that.”
Alex: Well, maybe you didn’t want to start Mandarin —
Vernice: What’s that? Yeah, maybe I didn’t want —
Alex: Maybe you didn’t want to —
Vernice: Yeah, that’s right, I didn’t want it —
Alex: Isn’t that a self-limiting belief, it was like, “That looks really hard,” yeah.
Vernice: That looks really hard. It was really hard. I was saying to him I feel like I can’t do it. That was part of the message. So I took that back and I thought about that a lot and I wanted to go deeper and then so I applied for this program at Princeton University, it was Princeton in Asia, I don’t know if they still have that program, and I did this immersive Mandarin program at Beijing Normal University and that was the beginning of a very long relationship with China.
Alex: Very interesting. And you still speak Mandarin?
Vernice: I wouldn’t say — I haven’t spoken in a long time but I still definitely have a love of the culture and I’ve lost a lot of my Chinese but what stayed with me is like beyond the language, that’s how I would put it.
Alex: So, China has the long history of empire, traditionally very insular, so how did you feel walking around China as an African American woman?
Vernice: Yeah, what would I say? It’s a really interesting question because it is sort of like — I often think about it or I thought about it at the time as sort of a treasure box. Like you got to open it but like when you get in there, there’s something really beautiful, special, and rich inside, but it like opens and it closes, it opens and it closes for me. So, my experience in China was an internal experience and an external experience. So a lot of people, you go there, had never seen a black person before, when I was there, so now there are a lot of Africans in China, still places where people haven’t seen, but when I was there, not a lot of black people and so a lot of people were totally surprised, sometimes horrified to see someone like me walk around. And sometimes I would meet people who would be so curious and so when I would form — so there’d be lots of people who — I’m a friendly person so I would meet lots of friends too and then sometimes I would develop some very intimate relationships with people, and I don’t mean like boyfriend-girlfriend but I just mean like friends, but there was an intimacy about them and because it crossed these two cultures, it seemed so different, like there was a real specialness about the intimacy. And there’s — I mean, there’s nothing like that. And so even when I would leave China, I would come back home and I would have like language partners and then you would talk to the language partner but you can’t, like when you’re learning a language, it’s been such a long time for some people, they don’t even remember, but when you’re first learning a language, it’s like, okay, I’ve used — like your first day, you go, “Okay, my name is Vernice, I have blah, blah, blah, I have this many siblings, my mother, I live here, I like this food, I like these colors,” and then that’s it, that’s all you know how to say. You’ve gone through the basics. And then, like if you’re going to practice the language and you want to speak three or four times a week, you have to say something that’s a little bit more intimate, like who you are, your hopes, your fears, the things you believe in, where you’re striving, where you’re relaxed, and so when you speak to someone three or four times a week, there’s a real intimacy that develops —
Alex: Absolutely.
Vernice: — and, again, this is like across cultures so it’s super special. And, again, direct experience and intimacy, that was a thread that I’ve taken from there forward for several years.
Alex: Interesting. For me, I had the opposite experience where I grew up in Mexico City and then I moved to the US and now — opposite in a way that my first language, my native tongue, like now, if I’m like, let’s say, I’ve had some — back when I used to do coaching, I don’t have time to do coaching anymore, unfortunately, I would work with clients, let’s say, from Mexico or Latin American countries and my Spanish, in terms of my business vocab, was not what I thought it would be because you just don’t have that frame of reference in that language. So English is definitely my first language. I read in English, I work, operate in English, but I have an accent so it’s like it’s not fully, like I don’t sound like I’m native but like my skills in terms of the language are better in English than they are in Spanish. So it’s like language is a fascinating thing because, at the end of the day, it’s almost like how you relate to yourself as well. Some people ask me, “Do you dream in Spanish?” I’m like, “I dream in imagery,” so I don’t know if what language is it on, but, yeah, language is a fascinating topic.
Vernice: Yeah. And what that brings up for me, Alex, is this sense of being in a liminal space, which is sort of this — it is on all of our journeys. When we’re in a liminal space where we’re not exactly this, we’re not exactly that, we’re growing, and what is it when you make sense of yourself in the liminal space. It’s really important and it super feels special and there’s a sort of intimacy but lots of confusion and bumbling too. I mean, that’s what makes it so important.
Alex: I mean, you’re tapping into the core of growth and development and how we move through different stages of development. When you’re growing, there’s always growing — we even call them growing pains. They’re not just physical when you’re physically growing up when you’re a child but also societies experience growing pains in terms of evolving, like look at the United States today, we’re going through a transition point and a lot of ideas don’t coalesce into one unified perspective of where are we taking our society? Where are we going? Like that polarity that we see is that growing pain around like the world’s better than it’s ever been in so many ways but we have some challenges, speaking of complexity, that are wicked problems that complexity makes more difficult to solve. So, how are things better than they’ve ever been when we’re experiencing some of the biggest, most difficult challenges that we’ve ever experienced is the paradox of development.
Vernice: Yes, it is a paradox. And sometimes the things that we want to label as complex are really more complicated than they need to be and so there’s this thread of simplicity that you can tug at. It could be your essence, it could be the character of this challenge that you can just toggle on, that you can pull on, and it really helps you, I don’t want to say navigate, but like be with the challenges that are in this complex realm.
Alex: Absolutely. That reminds me of that famous Steve Jobs quote, that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I mean, how you deal with complexity is by making things simple. And complicated, to your point, is very different than complex and there’s, I think, a lot of confusion around what is complicated and what is complex. Sounds like you have some thoughts about that that you brought it up so we’d like to unpack that a little bit more.
Vernice: Yeah, sure. I mean, so one of the things I would say is that one of the like, I would say, standard sticking points, a place where people are often confused, is the difference between the complicated domain and the complex domain. And so what we often do is create a complicated approach to like the landscape, a context that is actually complex. So in the complicated domain, this is a place where there is this clear relationship between the cause and effect.
Alex: Linear versus nonlinear.
Vernice: That’s right. So I don’t know a lot about cars. If anyone asked me to fix their car, you’re in big trouble. But here’s what I would say. This is like the place of experts. So, when I go to fix my car, I’m going to go to an expert and you let experts handle it, because an expert will know, let’s say, if something is missing in my car, they know what’s wrong because you can predict. You can predict exactly how your car is going to, say, misperform.
Alex: It’s complicated, that’s in the realm of the complicated —
Vernice: It’s complicated, you know what to do, they go back to the book, they know or they have this thing in their mind, they can replace the part and you can predict, okay, now the car is going to do this, you put this whatever ointment or whatever oil on and you do your thing, and then, all of a sudden, you’re going to get this, you can predict it that you’re going to get this result. With the complex, you don’t know. You may look after the fact and you say, “Oh, I can kind of see how this might have happened,” but you don’t quite know. The relationship between cause and effect is not linear in that way. And this is why safe to fail experiments are so important, because you don’t know, you want to create experiments that help you know how the environment organizes itself around individuals, around a leader, around a particular challenge or context, and this is where my work comes in because a lot of my clients, not all of my clients, but I have clients of all kinds of intersectionalities, folks all over the world, I have for profit, I have nonprofit, I have queer community, like all kinds of people, and people are senior leaders, they’re trying to do their thing, they’re acting in a particular way, maybe they’re sitting back, maybe they’re leaning forward in their boldness, maybe they’re using humor, maybe they’re in this, that, they’re charging — whatever the thing is, they don’t know how the organization, how their context is organized around them. So it feels sort of like a black box and there’s nothing to calibrate toward. And so, for me, because I have clients have all kinds of different intersectionalities and from all kinds of different cultures, one of the things that is really important in my work is to do some kind of assessment or conversation about the inner meaning making, the lens that they use to see and experience, interact with the world, but also to understand how their context is organized around them and how it sees them, how it perceives them. And so that’s where complexity — I mean, complexity is everywhere in my work, as it should be. Humans are complex.
Alex: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s definitely some patterns that emerge with people in their relationships with — people are complex. I think, to work with people, I often try to look at them through the lens of the complicated because that’s where you can try to understand them a little bit more. And then how the people interact with the world, then that becomes very complex, like human interactions, they’re almost like the weather. I mean, if they weren’t — here’s one of my favorite quotes. George Bernard Shaw, “If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.” So, the unexpected always happens but history repeats itself. It’s like, “Well, you know, if there was —” history is both linear and nonlinear, because in the long arc of history is like, you can see how things repeat themselves. When you’re going through them, it’s very hard to see them and there’s all these complex interactions, especially with the acceleration due to the technology, so it’s interesting, and I notice how outdated George Bernard Shaw is now because, it’s like, you say “man” but it’s like we don’t say that anymore.
Vernice: Yeah, no, I hear you.
Alex: That’s why I stumble when I was thinking about that quote, I was like, well, that’s just not very modern.
Vernice: I hear you. And the other thing I was thinking is just that when you’re working with humans, you’re working in the complex domain because humans are not predictable. But in adult development — yes, enjoy my matcha smoothie, Alex.
Alex: I’m loving this —
Vernice: It’s delicious.
Alex: If you’re watching still, I don’t make smoothies because I just — the cleanup, it’s like I guess it’s not that bad, but, I don’t know, every time I have to get the blender out, it’s like an experience for me, but, yeah, thank you for that. This is delicious.
Vernice: You’re so welcome. And just for your information, Alex, there are blenders that you just put water in after it and they clean themselves.
Alex: No, I have one of them but, yeah, still, it’s like I’m a single man, I’m a bachelor. It’s already very impressive my mom trained me to have all these veggies and fruits in my fridge so I’ll leave it at that. Yeah.
Vernice: That’s fantastic. I love how you tell me that you’re a bachelor twice as if I don’t even know what that might that be. I’ve been married so long. No, it has been a long time. I will be married 25 years in September so it’s been a minute and —
Alex: Amazing.
Vernice: — smoothies are the best. A good smoothie is the very best.
Alex: I’m going to start doing that. I moved to LA from San Diego a couple months ago and people told me, “You’re gonna love Erewhon but you can’t shop at Erewhon all the time. It’s this supermarket in LA that’s like an organic grocer. And I was like, “Yeah, why not shop at Erewhon?” Well, the first time I went there, I felt like I needed to apply for a mortgage to pay for the grocery bills. They have amazing smoothies but it’s the land of the $23 smoothie. It’s, is like no, no. So, yeah. Now, the good thing is it makes Whole Foods feel like Walmart.
Vernice: So this is a very sophisticated smoothie.
Alex: It’s very good. Yeah, it’s very, very good. But after going through Erewhon once, I feel I go to Whole Foods and I’m like, “The prices here are fantastic.”
Vernice: I like that. That’s very telling.
Alex: That kind of changes your schema and then — but, yeah, no, I went to Bristol Farms today and thank you, this was great. I am actually going to make it more often now. It does feel like it has a lot of antioxidants and the matcha green tea is very good. You know, it has 14 mg —
Vernice: It tastes fresh.
Alex: Very fresh. 14 mg of caffeine, which I used to never drink coffee, then three years ago started drinking coffee and I think I’ve gotten feedback that coffee and I don’t really go along really well, it’s like I get too intense, so a double espresso has 160 mg of caffeine. I find that with the matcha green tea at 14 mg per bag, I get all the caffeine I need —
Vernice: And you feel just as energized but without the aftershock.
Alex: Totally. And the during shock of people, being like, “I don’t feel like you’re listening to me,” and listening is important to me because of the nature of the work that we do. So, coffee and listening for me don’t go very well together.
Vernice: Don’t go together. Okay. It’s good to know. That’s good to know. And then I’ll just say, speaking of listening, so the China thing, my China experience really introduced me to the importance of nuanced listening, listening to silence, listening to words, listening to context. And then 2020, there’s something about paying attention to energetic listening because there was so much of an undercurrent of trauma, there was like a collective trauma around the world, and particularly in the United States, there’s George Floyd —
Alex: I think we still have it, yeah.
Vernice: Yeah, it’s tough, it was really tough, and so really having like creating a container that could hold whatever showed up and be able to listen from there but be able to hold it was something that I knew but really brought to a different level in 2020.
Alex: Yeah, 2020 was a year for slowing down and being more aware of nuance, as you’re saying. Last night, I couldn’t sleep last night. I usually sleep really well but last night, for some reason, I couldn’t sleep. So it’s 4 AM and I’m like, “I think I’m just gonna get up and work,” but I was tired so I’ve been getting back into my meditation practice, and I just meditated for an hour and a half and, at 5:30, I went back to bed after meditating for an hour and a half but it reminded me how important it is to start listening by listening to yourself, like there were so many things going through my brain and usually I just toss and turn when that happens, but just stepping into that moment and paying attention to your breathing. I mean, I had a great 90-minute meditation session. And listening to yourself is so important and I feel like, in today’s world, it’s so easy to not do that, and a lot of the meditations that I see a lot of people do too is like their guided meditations so it relaxes you but they don’t tap into what’s going on inside because if you do that, then you’re not listening to the meditation. So, for me, the power of meditation is tremendous. I know that you’ve done a lot of work in the East so do you practice meditation? What’s your relationship with it?
Vernice: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, when I was a teenager, actually, so now I have to sort of share, so when I was a teenager in the 80s —
Alex: You mean the 2000s.
Vernice: Oh, did I say 80s? I meant 2000s. Yeah, but it was the 80s and my father introduced me to meditation, which was so interesting. I mean, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say there wasn’t a lot of meditation in the African American community in the 80s, 70s and 80s.
Alex: That was honestly the first thing I thought when you said that. I was like, “Wow, your dad was really onto something.”
Vernice: Yeah, yeah, it was something. So I think it was because he had high blood pressure or something and he was looking for a holistic way of addressing that. And so he sent the whole family to Transcendental Meditation, but he wanted us to go separately so we could have our own experience. And so that was my first taste of meditation. But since then, I mean, there’s a lot to that, but since then, I found a letter, something that he wrote, an essay that he wrote when he was a teenager, talking about watching his father meditate so maybe there’s more to it than I realize, but I used Transcendental Meditation for a long time to get myself through some family tragedies that happened after that. And then my meditation practice has evolved, I’m going to say, so I love — Transcendental Meditation is wonderful. The kind of meditation that I’m now doing is more around like — because phenomenology is such an important part of my practice, my work, it’s like the direct experience so not leaving the body, not following something outside of yourself but being with your own being, being with your awareness has been a really important part of my practice and so once you have that sort of resonant sense of your own beingness, then throughout the day, you can go back to that sort of muscle memory, and we bring that to your clients, that’s energizing for you but it’s also energizing for the relationship and it can hold as a container that can hold quite a bit, which has been really important in the last couple of years.
Alex: Absolutely. There’s these precedents that people that meditate are thinking creative because when you’re present, people can feel that. It’s like an energetic kind of — it’s your presence, there’s this energy to you when you’re in the moment. And being in flow is so important, I think, for executives, for people that are busy. It’s like getting in flow is so vital and it’s so easy to get out of flow and the flow to get out of whack and the less tuned you are with what creates flow, I think the more you run into trouble. You mentioned phenomenology. So one of my favorite books is Hegel, German philosopher from the 1800s, Phenomenology of Spirit is like —
Vernice: Right.
Alex: So, sometimes, I just — Oh, no way. No way. That’s awesome.
Vernice: I just pulled it off of my bookshelf.
Alex: That is — oh, I can’t — this is like what a moment. It’s never happened ever. People are usually like, “Oh, Hegel,” but like tell me about your experience with the Hegelian dialectic.
Vernice: Yes. Well, so I would say like —
Alex: People are going to think we planned this because this is nuts, but, yeah.
Vernice: So I would say like — and this is so now we’re just using, I’m just like really going off the rails here, Alex, but like the love of my phenomenological life is Eugene Gendlin who uses Hegel’s work but it’s also like how you interpret meaning through direct experience. And so it is a sort of not spiritual so I think a lot of people, when they hear spirit, they’re thinking religion, they’re not thinking being, they’re not thinking of awareness, they’re not thinking of awareness of awareness, and so I think what is so important to sort of talk about is how there are lots of things that are sort of symbols of meaning and help us get to our direct experience, which is our sort of natural organic meaning making. Some of that is language. Some of that is our, which you were alluding to before, the archetypal sort of realm. Some of that is other kinds of symbols in our life. But this sense of being with their own being is really, really important and then integrating our mind into that. There’s a lot of — what a lot of clients are doing is trying to reason their way through and when you reason your way through, that means you’re following sort of the same path over and over and it’s more like a loop or more like a spiral but you’re following that same sort of spiral or entanglement over and over. But when you’re able to be in this sort of awareness, and now I’m trying to make it more — I’m trying to bring it to a larger audience, when you’re more with your awareness, your being, with your own being, what you’re able to do is when you’re in that sort of meaning making moment, so when we talk in adult development, sometimes complexity, we talk about being at your growth edge, when you’re in that meaning making place —
Alex: The edge of chaos.
Vernice: Edge of chaos, and I have my own sort of ideas about that, but, yes, when you’re on this edge of chaos —
Alex: Mine is creating a mess with a smoothie in the kitchen, that’s my edge of chaos —
Vernice: And there’s so many possibilities. So let’s take that, for example. So you spill a smoothie on the floor, this beautiful smoothie, that was the beginning —
Alex: I did spill it.
Vernice: — of our wonderful podcast relationship together, Alex.
Alex: I did spill it before we started recording, yeah.
Vernice: Yeah, so there, it felt like chaos and, like many people think, it’s time to settle the system, and maybe it is time to settle the system, if that’s the kind of chaos for you. And it’s an incredible opportunity for possibility. So let’s say in this case, it was the opportunity for a little bit of bonding, there’s an informal place, there was a doorway to intimacy between the two of us, like chaos is a real opportunity and so is being at the growth edge of your own meaning making and the kind of symbols that can come from there. The language, language is a kind of symbol that comes from there. All of the possibilities that just can fit through that doorway when you’re able to be in awareness and like that edge of your meaning making at the same time, so now you’re at a new place each time and not relying on this old neural pathway that’s been playing over for the last, whatever, quarter of a century.
Alex: Absolutely. I mean, as you were speaking, I was thinking, neural pathways so it’s interesting that we’re talking about this, we’re sharing the same drink and like you have these shared experiences. People talk about neurons, they’re so interesting. I guess you can transmit those through Zoom or Riverside. You mentioned spirit. I mean, there’s so much to unpack on what you just said.
Vernice: Yeah.
Alex: You mentioned spirit and I think our relationship with spirit is mediated through religion. But to your point, like spirit is —
Vernice: Maybe.
Alex: I mean, for a lot of people, it is.
Vernice: Yeah.
Alex: It doesn’t have to be. In fact, I think religion was a conduit for spirit at some point and I think some people still identify with that connection, with spirit through that. Some people do other things. There’s a whole new age movement. There’s a lot of people that are microdosing, there’s all sorts of things people do to connect with something that they feel transcends. But I can’t believe you pulled that book. It’s one of the most difficult books to ever read. So my thing with Phenomenology of Spirit is I just — when I feel like I need to read it a little bit, I just grab it and I just find a random page and usually I end up in the same page, for some reason, maybe just the way the book is built. It’s an old book, you and I are going to date the book, but it’s — my copy is pretty old. It’s probably 70 years old or something like that. It’s kind of cool, I love it. It like smells of old book. So my experience with Hegel is really an experiential component. It’s like so hard to read that and, rationally, I just don’t have that kind of mind where I can compare different philosophers and tell you about like the tenants and how they’re similar or different but I can grab Hegel’s book and I understand what he’s talking about when he talks about the absolute. The whole thing about that book is it’s their journey of spirit, knowing itself and creating everything else. I mean, it’s just the level of genius to create a book like that, to me, that is kind of like a Bible. It’s like the experience of what a lot of people call God, experiencing itself and coming up with these logical conclusions of existence based on these basic parameters of how it relates with itself. It’s like the level of genius that is just unbelievable. So that’s why it’s not a book that a lot of people have or are familiar with so I, honestly, am still shocked that you just whipped out your copy of Hegel, the Phenomenology of Spirit. When was the last time that you read it? Or played with it? I think most people play with it.
Vernice: Yeah. I mean, I would say, in general, phenomenology, it’s not easy for me so it’s like it’s a start and stop so I’m starting and stopping a lot of things but I do pull them out from time to time and I would say like this idea of knowing, like knowing your self concept, knowing like what is truth and what is falsity, so there’s a lot of, for example, like getting, grasping the good and bad, better and best, truth and falsity, which is the roadmap for adult development, getting on the balcony and being on the dance floor, even sort of being contextualized by your own context, which is sort of a socialized frame of adult development. A lot of these are like old wisdom tradition. They’re from old wisdom traditions or philosophical frames. They’re old teachings, and they’re just sort of packaged in a new way, but these are wise, words, insights, frames of being with your own self concept but your own being, and even your beingness of being. And so that’s, I mean, that’s when I’m with clients, I don’t want to take it so I want clients to know that I can be very concrete and objective. And there is a sort of beingness that I bring to that relationship, which is essential to like what makes it generative.
Alex: Absolutely. I mean, I think some of what I’m picking up from how you’re framing this is I think there’s that point of rationality. Rationality is like a course, like there’s — we’re both familiar with spiral dynamics, kind of like level of rationality is like a level of development where it’s based on science, it’s like, without getting into whole adult development theory and integral theory, which I love Ken Wilber’s work which keeps coming up in the podcast, I think it’s just fantastic work, being rational but being able to move through kind of different ways of looking at the world, tapping into your intuition, using contemplative practices to develop a sense of awareness, how to deal with silence, I mean, all those things are fantastic tools for coaches. But you meet people where they are. So how do you — I think for coaches, one of the things that’s very powerful is to develop yourself and to always continue to use language that unifies your experience with a client, and regardless of a lot — of the clients haven’t read Phenomenology of Spirit or haven’t read different adult development books, so being able to meet people where they are, I think it’s one of the things that probably makes coaches the most effective, like I think very effective coaches are able to meet clients where they are and are able to understand how to help them navigate where they want to go and it’s such an interesting thing for a coach. Sometimes, you’re navigating people through uncharted waters for you but being able to tap into — your client knows those waters better than you but, somehow, if you’re a really good coach, you’re able to navigate those with them. To me, a lot of it is like intuition and I do experience when I meet a lot of coaches like some, for example, love the Hogan. So the Hogan gives you so many pathways for understanding people based on assessment and I find that a lot of coaches that are super intuitive shy away from using assessments and I think there’s probably a middle ground where you can use some assessments to diagnose — maybe diagnose is not the right word, but not diagnose the person but diagnose the context and situation and then use that intuition, tap into it, and validate some of that with some of the assessment work, but I think there are oftentimes camps, the intuitive folks, they’re very rational folks and it sounds like you use an approach that blends both and kind of meets the client’s where they are.
Vernice: Yeah, it’s a good question. And I mean, I will use a different approach depending on the client. But to also answer your question about like the tools that I use, I am very intentional about how to begin an engagement. Because of the nature of my clientele, I do have client leaders that run the gamut, all kinds of different intersectionalities and contexts and I learned from the very beginning, not just in China but being in different cultures, you don’t know the context. Don’t make an assumption about what this person is going through or how to get from A to B when you don’t know them. And often, when you’re talking to a client, a client will tell you, you’ll say, “Okay, tell me more about this,” and they have this story that maybe they’ve been telling themselves for the last 10 to 15 years. It’s a thing that they say, but it may not necessarily be at the meaning making level. It may be at their narrative level. And so how do you get there in the complexity into the complexity of their meaning making? And, I mean, their context itself. So part of the work that I do is uncovering the context and the human in front of me, this leader in front of me, and so I’ll ask them about sort of the seeds of their leadership from personal stories, like those things that happened to them that really have led to the leader that they are today, that can be so helpful. Also, like being with clients, not just asking them questions, not just this one-way listening, witnessing, but actually like being with them so when something comes up, you’re riding it with them, you’re not just watching the drama. And then two assessments that I don’t always use but I often use, one is an adult development assessment, the Growth Edge Interview, and the way I use it is not to, at the end of the day, say you’re a 2 or 3 or 4 or 5, but to say, “Here’s what I’m hearing in terms of your meaning making,” and speak to it that way, and here’s some interesting things. Here’s some polarities that I see at play. Here are some values I noticed, but here’s some, whatever, conflicts, here’s some like themes around meaning making. Here’s some language that you use when you’re talking about this thing, and we talk about that, and then a 360 so I speak to people directly. Sometimes, I use a leadership circle. For a long time, I used to use that and now —
Alex: It’s a great assessment.
Vernice: — I’m doing more qualitative interviews because I can, when someone uses language that doesn’t feel clear to me, I can drill down and I can better understand the impact of this leader that I’m talking about for them personally and the work that they do. So that’s been super helpful. So now I get the context, a better sense of the context this leader is working within, and I also have a sense of who they are at this meaning making level. And once I do that, like the conversation goes in a different place because now there’s no room for telling me a story.
Alex: Stories, like nothing to activate a neural pathway like a story. And, oftentimes, thinking about your own story can be so powerful. I’m part of the Marshall Goldsmith MG100 and we have groups every Friday for certain periods of time over the year and then you get to meet other coaches in depth and you have to tell your story. And it’s been a while since I had to tell my story and it’s just so interesting to reframe who you are based on where you are in your life and thinking about the past and the future. It activates a lot of neural pathways and I think rewiring some old ways of thinking is powerful and I think that leads to that. Are you familiar — as I’m hearing you speak throughout our conversation today, I’m curious, like are you familiar with Joseph Campbell’s work, the hero’s journey?
Vernice: Of course.
Alex: Yeah, it sounds like it, because just the language that you use. So, I haven’t really thought too much about how can that play out in a coaching relationship, but if I were to ask you, how does the hero’s journey apply to a coach and relationship with clients now that we’re talking about stories?
Vernice: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question.
Alex: It’s good, it’s not easy but I just — whatever comes up to you being that you know that work and —
Vernice: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I like it. I like it a lot. I mean, I — so I want to answer it a couple of ways. So the first thing I’ll say is I always ask a client, “What are your objectives for engagement together?” and they’ll give me a set of objectives, one, two, maybe one, two, three, and here are the things that need to happen in order for that thing to take place or to take root. And so that’s very helpful and, folks, imagine that — most of the folks that I’ve worked with have not had a coach before, I don’t know, or haven’t done the developmental work before, but they’re imagining that the coach’s work is this linear pathway from A to B and they’re not imagining that it’s a hero’s journey. And so when you’re imagining that this is a hero’s journey, that someone has their own self concept, their own like context that they’re imagining for themselves, and they’re walking along and they think that they’re alone but they’re not really alone and there are all kinds of things that are there to support them, to resource them along the way, and that there are gremlins along the way too and that there’s an opportunity to really stumble, to bumble along the way, and so our conversations, if I’m looking from that point of view, then my conversation is not just to get you from A to B, my conversation is to meet you wherever you are in the journey. And if I’m willing to change in the very moment and meet you there, then I know that, for example, today, I’m going to be a soundboard and then, tomorrow, I’m going to be with this person who desperately needs, let’s say, a sabbatical or something, thinks that they can’t have it, and then, all of a sudden, okay, there’s something here, there’s an opportunity, or someone who has an opportunity to build something that they never thought was possible and they just need to talk that through, they need to be able to see something they hadn’t seen before and it’s right there but they’re so busy focused on this thing on the other side of the room that they’re trying to get to that they’re missing the resources that are there for them, the visioning, the different opportunities, creative ways to navigate the space, and then just know that falling down, the bumble, is part of the journey, like the internal shutdown is part of the journey, that the internal complexity is exactly the same as the external complexity and vice versa.
Alex: Well, it’s a beautiful way to talk about — to blend the hero’s journey with the journey of coaches working with clients so thank you. That was a little bit of a curveball, difficult question, but I like your take on it. So interesting. For those that are not as familiar with the hero’s journey, it’s the mythology, it’s the framework, the archetype for storytelling. You see it all over the place, like when we’re watching shows, there’s a hero, the hero goes far away from home and goes on this journey and there’s all these challenges and all these experiences, it’s almost at the brink of death or something awful and scary and their demons, however you want to characterize that, and then you come home after having learned all those experiences. So it’s really that structured storytelling.
Vernice: Yes, and there are all kinds of ways to bring the archetype into real practical usage so that’s kind of the work that I do. A lot of this stuff that seems far away is actually right at home so even archetype, like the archetype of the leadership problem solver, the archetype of the visionary, the archetype of the behind-the-scenes negotiator, these are archetypes, and so how do people perceive you but also how do you perceive yourself and do you want to play around with another archetype and see what’s there for you? This is all like a part of the journey and this is how these things can come together in work that people actually do when they think, “I’m just gonna take this sidewalk from A to B.” There’s some beautiful, creative ways to work with your own, being yourself to get there.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, over the last decade or so, it’s become even more of a prevalent topic in organizations and individuals, it’s everywhere, so tell us a little more about — I mean, I’m interested in your experience as a successful black coach, a female, African American, like your experience when you’re working with clients. So I would separate my question into two, so I want to learn more about your personal experience as a successful African American woman and as a coach and then we can talk a little bit more about how that work plays out in your practice.
Vernice: I think it’s, gosh, it’s all mixed in together as usual. I mean, one of the things that has been really important for me in, for example, my work around adult development, I teach adult development, is bringing together identity and culture and context into adult development, the conversation around adult development. And there’s a very specific thing that I talk about that I mentioned earlier before, which is being contextualized by the context, that has been so important for me. So, a particular — so a context is any sort of situation that you can imagine. It could be your relationship with your spouse, it could be my being an African American woman, it could be me being a woman, it could be my relationship with my father, it could be my relationship with my boss, like any situation is a particular context. And there’s also the identity piece. There’s also the cultural piece. There’s a particular cultural piece about being an 8th-generation African American person from the South. And there’s a way that I might be contextualized by that. And so what that feels like, I could give you an example, but what that feels like is I feel so boxed in, by my context. And in the language of coaching, that might mean my values are the values of that context, what that context dictates to me. It might look like my story is the story through the lens of my context. The things that I can do, the things that I can’t do so even possibilities are framed from that place of my context. And so when you are not contextualized by your context, then it looks initially more like so this is the adult development journey. It looks more like choice. I don’t have to choose these values. There’s some values that maybe even contradict this particular context but feel true to me and then the direct experience is I feel the truth of that and where do I feel the truth of that. There’s a lineage, a legacy that I feel, and there’s a somatic experience, not just in my belly or in my heart but the fullness of my being, there’s a truth that I feel to that. And so that’s like moving toward self-authorship, and even beyond that, like not being contextualized by the context but even knowing that — so now I’m going to take it, let’s take a corporate environment. I know that as a senior leader, I’m going to take my African American, there are certain things that are expected of me, there will be certain things that I expect of myself. I have responsibility not just for me but for generations before, maybe — there are all kinds of things. And so there may be a certain way that I show up that I know is within context that people can handle, but I’m not in the grip of it and I don’t feel confined by it. I’m just sort of doing the thing and then I feel my freedom outside of that to be the fullness of myself. And even as people are reacting to this context, this boxed-in idea of who I am, I understand that that’s their context and, yet, there’s so much more to me, I get that. I might meet them there, I might not and I can totally move on. How that works for my clients is this is really, really important because as I have clients that are all kinds of leaders of color, queer community, what that looks like is there’s so many expectations and there’s a lot of entanglements that people don’t even know how they’re perceived anymore, like I’m doing this job and I know that I can’t fail, I can’t not have everything handled, and so who really even am I in this role? I’m not sure. I’m discovering for myself but it’s really hard. And so this whole uncovering how this person is perceived as an organization, but even like who am I at my essence and bringing those two things together and having a conversation about those seminal experiences in my younger life, define it however you want, I don’t care, that’s the beginning of a conversation that we have together. And then I’m setting the container. I’m very informal to people, I’m very informal, you can say whatever you want, it’s okay. Then that becomes a beautiful relationship. When I’m being to being and that’s the beginning of our engagement, that’s a very powerful beginning. And that’s what I do.
Alex: Do you feel like there has been progress, let’s say, in your professional career, when you started working in these settings? Do you notice that there’s been progress in the diversity, equity and inclusion realm? Could we be doing more? Are we headed in the right direction? Like what are some of your thoughts around that?
Vernice: Yeah. I mean, I would say in my practice, these last two years have been hard in the sense that many people, particularly people of color, leaders of color have been overloaded, just beyond the beyond, but I’ll also notice outside of people of color, say, the queer community, there’s a lot of people being willing to stand in their meaning making, even confronting their own story. This is where America has been so people are willing to confront — and all kinds of people, confront their own meaning making, like what is true and how I can be wrong in ways that I have not seen before. So that’s true. And then I’m having all kinds of people, like in my particular practice, people will say, “I want a woman of color coach, and if you don’t have someone on the slate, you need to find me someone.” Some people don’t care and some people, like, for example, I have — this is like a new trend, Alex. This is a new trend, white men saying, “I want a woman of color coach,” I don’t know what’s there but I think there might be something there and I just want to explore and see what I might learn because I want to confront my own biases that I don’t know about and they don’t know what to expect but there’s — so there’s a lot of that, people not only being willing to stand at the meaning making level but like wanting to be at that uncomfortable, direct experience, edgy place.
Alex: I like that. And recently I read John McWhorter’s Woke Racism, I don’t know if you’re familiar with John’s work —
Vernice: I haven’t read that book but —
Alex: — but he’s a professor, I think, at Columbia, he’s an African American professor. I love the Bill Maher Show, he’s a frequent guest, and he’s so sharp, like I just really love John McWhorter’s perspective. And for him, he would not be thrilled about someone choosing him because he’s African American so he has that perspective that I’ve heard from other African Americans that you want to be seen for your accolades and you’re a great coach and you specialize in these areas but he wouldn’t be thrilled to be selected because he’s African American. How do you feel about that? I mean, from what I hear, you like that someone’s wanting to try something different and be a little edgy but, for you, personally, does that bother you like it does John? Are you not bothered by that? So tell me a little bit more about that.
Vernice: Yeah, great question. So one thing that is important to note is that no culture is monolithic from the start. But, secondly, I mean, I think it’s just important to put it into perspective. There may be someone who, for example, is the mother of small kids and is dealing with balance and may want like a woman who can appreciate that, who knows what it’s like to be there.
Alex: Absolutely.
Vernice: There are some leaders who are executive directors or CEOs, senior executives, and they want a coach who can have that experience just like them. There are some coaches, I mean, there’s some leaders maybe from, let’s say, who’ve lived in three different countries and speak a half a dozen languages and it’s really helpful for them to have this coach who has a similar understanding of the global environment and what it’s like to have comfort in those different cultures and so they want someone like that. Those things don’t bother me at all. If you are looking for a coach who is skilled, I mean, just because you’re looking for a skilled coach who has a particular background, it doesn’t bother me at all. I mean, I kind of say, “So what?” And everyone has their own point of view. So there’s some people who really want, for example, an African American woman coach or a woman of color coach, there’s some people who are like literally offended, so, for example, if there’s a woman of color senior executive and someone matches them up with me as the one and only chemistry call and they’re like, “Well, why did they match me up with you?” whatever, and they’re offended when they really want someone who has the exact same background as they do. That happens too. So I think this is like another example, not as a reflection of culture but more as a reflection of meeting the client where they are, which means you have to have some sense of where the client is so you can meet them and that doesn’t just start with the engagement itself.
Alex: Absolutely. Well, you’re so gracious. I really enjoyed our conversation. We talked about a lot of different really cool topics. I’m sure our listeners and the people watching the video version are going to really enjoy our conversation. Anything else you’d like — our audience is a lot of coaches, anything to close out that you want to mention given the context of our conversation today?
Vernice: You can always find me at vernice@theleadershipcompass.org or under Cultivating Leadership, which is a collective of coaches and consultants that focus on supporting leaders in complexity. But if you want to know more about my work, there is a program that I co-founded with at Akasha Saunders through Cultivating Leadership called the Leading Inclusively Lab. There’s also a program that we’re doing called Wisdom and Leadership. And, as always, I am teaching, directing cohorts, teaching adult development, and talking about identity and culture there as well in the Institute for Transformational Leadership so I would love to see you in any of those places and feel free to reach out to me.
Alex: Thank you. This was a fascinating conversation. Love identity, such an interesting time to think about identity and complexity and adult development. So really, really great to have you as a guest. Thank you so much, Vernice. It’s the first time we meet, it was a pleasure meeting you and I’m looking forward to further conversations.
Vernice: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a pleasure.