Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn I'm Claire Pedrick, your host, and today I'm in conversation with Lyssa de Hart, who I've known all about. Well, not all about, I've known a little bit about Lyssa for a long time, and it's high time that we had a conversation. Welcome, Lyssa. High time. And thank you so much for having me here, Claire. I'm really excited because you're somebody I've known. a little bit about for a long time as well.
And so I'm really looking forward to getting to know you. So listeners, just know this is absolutely real and in real time and we haven't had a pre -conversation. So Lyssa, tell me about you and your coaching journey. Oh, goodness. It is been sort of a, it's sort of a, it's a funny thing. I'm gonna just share a very early story. I... got my undergraduate degree in fine arts. And as a result of that, I was a waitress through most of college. And after college, I was still a waitress.
And I think there was a moment in time that I was probably about, I don't know, 26 years old. And I had actually finally gotten another job where I wasn't a waitress, but the waitress job really led me to think, I want to ask a more important question. Right? And it was like, you know, how would you like that cook? Do you need more dressing? What kind of tea? Whatever, right?
Like it was those kinds of questions, but I was just really driven at that point to want to ask a more important question. And that was the thing that spurred me into going into social work, which is where I got my master's work. And I started asking more important questions as a result of that. Fast forward, I... I worked for the state and then for the military, for the Air Force here in the states for about 10 years.
And then I left that and went into private practice and I spent about 10 years in private practice working as a therapist who specialized in complex trauma, PTSD and dissociative disorders and relationship issues because none of those other things seem to happen without a relationship of some sort. And so they seemed very interconnected to me. And then my husband had an opportunity to move to the Pacific Northwest with his job. And we had taken a coach training in about 2007, 2008 timeframe.
And I was like, I'm a therapist. I don't need that coaching thing. It's, you know, how great is it anyway? I don't know. When we get up here and I'm like, it's really clear that I'm burned out. Like I hadn't known that I was burned out, but I knew I was burned out when I was up here and had a moment to be silent for a little bit and not have a bunch of pressure on me.
And I thought, well, I could go do something completely different and go back to school, or maybe instead of throwing the baby with the bath water, I could reevaluate this whole coaching thing. And so in 2014, I went to my my first ICF event up in the Pacific Northwest. Back in 2008, I had been a part of the ICF down in the New Mexico chapter. So I was familiar with ICF.
I had been a member of ICF, but I went to an event up in the Pacific Northwest and it was like, you know, I like these people and you know, I think there's probably something here for me to learn and I don't wanna go back to school for another graduate degree. So. Um, let me check out this coaching thing. And that's sort of the long convoluted story of how I ended up in coaching. How interesting.
So a journey from waitress, sorry, that did make me think of a song, but we'll leave our listeners to do with that song. No, no, no, no, no, no, Yeah. And then therapy and then into coaching. So you've moved quite fast in coaching, haven't you? Well, I mean, if you consider fast 20 odd years, given the fact that, I mean, in 95, I had finished my graduate work and I was doing what was effectively solution focus, goal oriented therapy, which is not so dissimilar from coaching.
And I, You know, I mean, I had run groups and I had been talking to groups of people and doing that work from 1995. So, yeah, it was really quick. I went really quickly. But I went quickly through the the levels and credentials from because I got my ACC in 2014. Now, I could have gotten my ACC earlier. I had the hours. I just didn't see the relevance at that point. And so thankfully, I kept. my hours organized. So I had them. And so I was able to apply for my ACC.
I actually had almost 1000 hours at that point. But I didn't feel confident that I understood what coaching was. And so I really just was like, I'll get my ACC, I'll really dive into coach development, and I will. see if this is really something I'm interested in.
And as I got into the coach development and was taking classes, and so a shout out to Janet Harvey, because she was instrumental in my journey into coaching, I was able then to go with a bigger vision and a broader understanding of what coaching was capable of, and also how it was different than therapy. And it started to really excite me. And so at that point, I got my PCC in 2016 and then my MCC in 2018.
And it was because I had all this other training beforehand, but I'd finally been able to, I'm not sure what the word is I'm looking for right this second, but there was an integration that happened between what I knew as a therapist and what I understood now as a coach. and that intersection between the two of them was so enlivening. And I was like, I love this. And so that made it really easy to move into MCC.
I think the other thing that made it really easy to move into MCC was I was teaching at a coaching school. And so I was really learning about coaching. I also took the PCC marker training back in 2010. I don't know, I wanna say 2017, might've been 2018. I can't remember, I think it was 2017. And I, no, it was 2018. Sorry, as I try and figure out my dates. 2018, and I was like, understanding again, the next deeper level of what coaching could be.
And so that development really led to the MCC being achievable in a short amount of time. It wasn't a short amount. Yeah, the kind of the 20 years prior. So I love there's something there in what you're saying about the formation of you and making some intentional choices. But the formation of you felt like it was the most important thread there. You know, I think I remember, you know, this was sort of more about who I was as a human being, but I remember at 18, I made a decision.
I had grown up in one area of the country and I had this sense of I didn't really like the kind of person I was turning into. My friends were the friends that I had grown up with and were going to high school with. And there was something, and they were all lovely people, but I was kind of in a rut that I felt like was gonna be really hard to get out of. And I wasn't sure that I liked the trajectory that that rut was taking me as far as the kind of person I wanted to be.
And so I remember saying to my dad, You know, I want to leave the state and go to another school because I think I need to figure out who I really am going to be as a human being. And I have this vision of myself, like when I'm old, you know, 30, that I'll be able to like, if I could be that kind of person when I get there, that's what I want to be. And that's the direction I want to go. And I think I felt like there was a really, I think at 18, you have these ideas about how hard things are.
And I think at that time, I thought it would be so hard to become that kind of person in the environment that I was in. And because of that mindset, I think I'm accurate. I think in hindsight, from my perspective, 30, 40 -odd years later, I I, it would have absolutely been possible to make those, those shifts wherever I found myself, but I didn't know that at that time. And so I did leave and I went to a different school in a different state.
And for me, it was that sense of I wanted to become a certain kind of person. And I think the same thing really applies in the work that I've done. I've always sort of had a vision of this sort of value I wanted to bring to people. And I've strove very hard, strived, stroved very hard to do the work that I needed to do in order to be able to do the work that I do. And so I did the work so that I could do the work if that makes any sense. Yeah, yeah.
So you now do all sorts of things, including your enormous service to students who are going for the ICF exam. Yes. Oh my gosh. And what an accident that was for me also. I am very dyslexic. And it was sort of the thing that as a kid was really limiting because you're told all the time, you're such a bright kid. You just need to try harder. And I don't know, for all those people out there with neurodiverse brains, I think there's all these messages that we get about.
trying harder, doing it better. Like you're so smart, why can't you? Why is this so hard? You're just not trying hard enough. And I certainly was given that message quite a bit as a kid. I will say my mom spent a tremendous amount of time reading with me. So I loved, I finally got to the place where I loved reading and books, but I just, I knew what words meant, but like if you asked me to spell one, good luck.
And I go in June of 2022 when that test is finally, they put the sample scenarios up on the ICF website and I go, I'm gonna check out this new exam. I'm gonna do these scenarios. I'm an MCC. I should be able to ace this thing. And I was like, holy moly cow. I wouldn't pass this exam. And I think from the position of, how my brain works and how this exam was structured, I was like, I gotta break this down. And so I really started from a place of like, this is a puzzle, I'm gonna figure it out.
And there's no hack for this exam. People ask me all the time, like, is there a hack for this exam? Yes, the hack is study and really integrate your understanding of the competencies and code of ethics. But there's no like easy hack for like how to figure out the right, question or the right answer best or worst just based on a verb. Like I hear this all the time, you know, there's a verb.
And in fact, in August of 2022, when I did my first training on like August 2nd of 2022, it might've been August 1st, that was the thing that came up. Somebody told me if I just look for the verb, then it would give me the answer for the best. And... And I was like, huh, maybe there's something to that.
But what I've discovered since August of 2022 is that there's an answer set that will be coach asks, asks, asks, asks, or offers, offers, offers, offers, or inquires, inquires, inquires, inquires, right? Like you cannot stop at the verb. You really have to go past the verb. And so it might be an indicator, but it's not the only indicator.
And I think for me, it was this recognition that if I were having this kind of trouble and I had been in coach education, I had been trained in the markers, I was assessing coaching calls, I was an MCC, theoretically, I understand the competencies at some level, one would assume based on all of my training at that point. And I didn't feel confident that I would pass this exam. I felt like I cannot possibly be the only one. And that was really the impetus.
And then people were like, do you have more? Do you have more? Do you have more? And that was the sort of the building of this, the support system that I started to create around this, this exam. Well, we're very grateful. The neurodivergent community is very grateful and everyone else, but there are a lot of coaches aren't there who are neurodivergent.
I would say if, if there's a hundred percent of people on the planet, I would say probably it would, I don't know, I'll go with the Pareto principle, right? 80 % of them are neurodiverse in some way. And it doesn't all show up like my, I mean, and that's the thing. Like if you have an anxiety that shows up around exam taking, it doesn't show up anywhere else in your life. It's a neurodiversity issue because, you have a response, your brain is having a response to a stimulus.
And then there's just the way our wiring is. And if what happens, like for me, I mean, one of the things I had to learn how to do was just memorize words. And so I have a big vocabulary now because I spent a lot of time memorizing words, but I don't like look like. if you just spelled something for me, I wouldn't know what the word was necessarily, unless it was really simple or something that I see all the time.
But I mean, like I would be terrible at a spelling bee just saying, but I have memorized so many things. And I think there's all these workarounds that we do in with whatever are the way that our brain works. And it was so interesting. And I hope you don't mind me sharing this story, but I had one of this, participants in my prep program come have a one -on -one with me. And she started off with such shame, just like an epic amount of shame.
And she was talking and she was like, I can't even tell you like what it is that's going on with me. It's just so, I'm just so ashamed and I'm really struggling with this exam. I'm struggling with your scenarios. I don't understand these answer options. They're so nuanced. I can't figure it out. And I said, And as she's talking, she's like, and nobody understands and da da da da da da. And she just, all of this shame is just like all over her face. And I said, may I stop you? And she said, sure.
And I said, and she was probably my age and they didn't do assessments in the seventies for kids. I don't even know if they did them in the eighties, you know, but they certainly didn't do them when I was in grade school.
So I didn't know I was dyslexic until I thought I was when it finally became a word that was bandied about, but it wasn't until I was like, I don't know, 40 when I got an actual assessment done so that I could take an exam that was really, really hard that I discovered not only am I dyslexic, but I'm also ADHD. And I didn't even realize that based on all of these little, you know, it's a pretty extensive assessment you go through with a lot of.
testing they do to kind of see how your mind and memory works, right? And I pulled mine up because I had found mine because in case I need to take the exam, I need to be ready because I do have the paperwork now. But I said, this is my educational diagnosis of like how my brain works. And you could just see like this relief wash through that like, yes. I have, you know, I believe I'm dyslexic, but I don't have any paperwork. And I'm like, not a surprise.
But I think there's just such shame involved in it also for people in the neurodiverse community that we should, you know, try a little harder and then we'd be able to get it versus how do we need to be taking this exam or any exam for that matter that will give us the best option. or opportunity to take this exam well.
And so I talked a lot about that with people in my program because I mean, I would get it from my back because I need to have a standup, sit down desk, forget about my need for time just so I can read fully what it is I'm reading. So anyway, I'll stop here, but I think it's just a lot of, there's a lot of shame for people around this. Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of people in our community who are neurodiverse.
In fact, it's the next book, you and I need to have a different conversation about that at a different time. Is it fair for the ICF to be assessing coaches using this exam? So I have two thoughts on that. One, This exam, when you integrate the understanding, even as a neurodiverse person, when you integrate your understanding of the competencies and code of ethics, this exam demonstrates that you have that in your bones in a way that I have never seen another exam do.
I mean, situational judgment means you're making judgments in a situation sort of on the spot. The thing that... And I mean, ICF has not asked me and I hope they don't come after me for saying this, but at what point do you need, how many scenarios do you really need? What is the purpose of this three hours for 81 scenarios where a person has roughly two minutes, 22 seconds to assess best and worst because we are not talking.
I mean, this is something that like military systems teach is situational judgment testing where they have like, person in a bag, the bag comes up, bad things are happening or nothing is happening. They have to make an instant life or death decision, bag comes down, bag comes up, new scenario. But that's not what we're doing here in coaching. We're not in that kind of life or death situation typically. If we are, please call whatever your version of 911 is.
But... But I think, so I think there's a cognitive load that happens with 81 scenarios in three hours that I think is, regardless of whether you have a neurodiversity issue or not, it's still a cognitive load to try and navigate that much words, that many words, that many choices. So like, where did the number 81 come from? Why not 50? Why not 41? Right? And, And then the timeframe, I mean, I think just from a cognitive perspective, it doesn't take much to throw a brain into fear, right?
So on that sort of threat safety spectrum, and I talked a lot about that in my work also, but if your brain perceives a threat, even if it's a completely existential threat, like I have three hours to take 81 scenarios, which nobody's gonna die, but. The existential threat still, your brain doesn't know the difference. It's still a piece of how your brain is responding to the constraint. And so from my perspective, it's like, why not give everybody four hours?
Why not give some people five hours if they need it? Like it doesn't matter. If the point is that what you're assessing is that they understand conceptually and in their bones, the competencies and code of ethics. How many do we really need and why do we have a time limit? I don't know. Other than maybe that's something with the testing facility that they don't want somebody sitting there for five hours. I don't know. Then half, like half the number of scenarios. I think the scenarios are good.
I think they're important. I think being able to assess best and worst is incredibly... useful. It's a useful exercise and really learning how to calibrate yourself to what the competencies are. And I have heard from so many people, and I think I had put out on LinkedIn, you know, I've touched over 5 ,000 people at this point on with this exam. And I have consistently heard from people, regardless of whether they liked the exam or not, that this is coach education.
Yeah. And so and so I think there's a real value to the exam. I just think there are some things that would make it more accessible for more people to do better on it. Yeah. Well, thank you. And I know that people find it really valuable because what you've just described, I just did a little sum on my piece of paper. You've described 243 switches. So scenario, best, worst, scenario, best, worst. So you're talking about 243 different ways of looking at a thing.
But that's probably a different conversation that needs to happen in a different place. But team, some real wisdom in Lyssa's stuff. And I'll put a link to all of her things in the show notes so that you could follow that up. And. I hope you didn't miss that amazing tip she dropped in really early on about keep your hours organized if credentialing is on your horizon. And even if it's not, because you never know when you go, you know what? Now it is.
Yeah. How am I going to find all those people? I remember sitting in a friend's home, a colleague's home office 10 years ago. And if you're listening, you know exactly who you are. They were going for the PCC and we had to go through all their diaries. It was horrendous. Yeah, no, it's so much easier. Even if you don't think you're ever going to need it to just do it.
If you're ever thinking that you might, because at some point, I mean, and I don't know what's going to happen with, with countries and governments and state requirements for being a coach, but I do. have a vision in my mind that if my hairdresser needs a license to cut my hair, that at some point coaches are going to need to have some sort of state or governmental credentials that say they can call themselves a professional executive or life coach kind of thing.
And at that point, you may never have thought you were ever going to do it. But if you have those hours set aside and you have your original and you've kept your CEUs and documents and things like that, you can at least go and get a credential, an ACC credential, even if nothing else. Yeah. Yes. We say that to all of our students. It doesn't matter if you don't need to do anything else. Just go be a great coach and document your hours. And document your hours.
Forget that you don't need to do anything else. Just that. Those two very crucial things. Well, thank you, because I know that lots of our listeners, you know, not all of our listeners are in the ICF tribe, but those who are will have found that a really interesting and useful thing. And I'm and I love the stance from which you've you've come to that.
And I think that there'll be somebody going immediately now into the show notes who will press pause on listening to this and will sign up for one of your classes. Yeah. And hopefully I can then support them in starting to really look at how these scenarios and answer sets are structured so that they have some ways of thinking about them, not just being afraid of them. Yeah. Thank you. So let's leave the ICF. All right. Tell me about your new book. Let's do a switch.
Having talked about switches. Just warning, here comes a switch. Here comes the switch. So I had my little notes in it because I did a presentation in New Orleans, but Light Up, The Science of Coaching with Metaphors is my new book. And this really, it's sort of interesting as a therapist, you know, I mean, we all know what metaphors are. I wasn't like oblivious to a metaphor back when I was doing therapy, but I didn't really think of them with the importance that I now see them.
And there is, So what happened was in probably around 2017, I'm starting to notice these metaphors that just are flowing through these conversations. And I'm also noticing that I'm kind of having fun with them. And I am very much of a person, as you can probably tell with the whole, this is a puzzle. I kind of did the same thing with metaphors. This is a puzzle. I want to try and understand, like these things are showing up so much.
And they seemed to me far more important than just a linguistic, It wasn't just pretty. And so this led me into really starting to observe them in my own coaching. And to that end, I do record a lot of my coaching sessions. And even if I'm not using it for mentor coaching, like, or for when I was going for different credentials, I would at least look at them for my own learning and for a review of what the client offered and what my question was back to the client.
And I started noticing how many metaphors were showing up. And if I were able to sort of test the hypotheses with one, it might actually create the container of the coaching conversation in such a way that it made it easier to discuss something very difficult, sort of going back to that idea of cognitive load. If we're talking about all the things you're not doing well, there's a cognitive load and threat safety.
there's the existential threat of not being good enough, not being perfect, not doing it right, being a failure, whatever that is. And all of those things work against creativity and metaphors are fun. And so I started doing research and at that point, Lakoff and Johnson's work really had shown up and... somehow, you know, you look for stuff on the internet and then miraculously, all kinds of stuff pops up that is right along what you're interested in.
And so I started reading about more about metaphors and I started reading research papers on metaphors and mostly through the lens of linguistics. And then I saw a study that said that therapists saw metaphors but didn't really use them very much. They didn't think about them in therapy. And then I was looking at how coaches were being trained about metaphors, because I was working for a school. And what I was hearing was bring metaphors to help explain things to clients, right?
Like, so the coach might use the metaphor. You know, it seems to me that you seem to be like wrestling with something here, or you're really, like, it's almost like you've got like Atlas, like the weight of the world on your shoulders, right? And so the coaches were bringing the metaphors.
And the more I started looking at these issues around metaphors, and then there was more and more research, and it's all in my book, so I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail, but there were these conceptual metaphors that were really important. And then there were this idea of target and source. And so the source might be something like a full plate, but the target of that would really be overwhelm. Right. And so or vice versa, I'm dyslexic.
So I may have just screwed up my own explanation of the theory. But there's this idea that you've got this one idea container, a full plate, but what it's really representing is another thing. And so the full plate could mean anything to any different person that you're talking to. But it often, and if you're going to test the hypothesis, it's probably around. too many choices or overwhelm or I have too much on my plate.
And so I was also starting to notice that there was a difference between metaphors that we said out into the world, like life is like a bowl of cherries, kind of an analogy, kind of a simile, but then there were owned metaphors. I'm wrestling with this. My plate is too full. And so this issue of the owned conceptual metaphor became something I started to really look at in my own work.
And as a result of that, and then all the different research that I started doing as a result of it, it really became clear that this was an avenue into how brains conceive and make meaning of their experiences. And so while people may not use metaphors consciously, like I'm not thinking when I'm talking to you, you know, it's like, I've been trying to figure something out, but my plate has been so full and I just don't know what to do.
I'm not using the plate metaphor consciously, but I am using it intentionally. My brain has woken up to that particular experience as a way to communicate this idea to you. And if as coaches, we for, not that you should never offer a metaphor, but if as coaches, we actually listen to the words that our clients are saying. Yeah. Their brain is already there. You don't have to explain a full plate to them. They have a somatic embodied experience of the full plate.
And we can resonate with that in partnership because we too have probably had a full plate once or twice in our own lives, right? We may have eaten the whole plate and been like, why did I do that? So we have these sort of somatic embodied experiences that go along with the metaphors. So when you start to think about ways that you're engaging the brain, you're not just engaging the head brain, you're engaging the entire system of the person that you're working with.
And so to that end, I just, I was like, I've got, I started doing the training on coaching with the power of metaphors in 2018. And then I was like, I've got to get this book written because I then created a course. And then it was like, all the first participants are like, Liz, do not make us read any more research papers. Please don't do that to us.
And so that was the impetus really for the book because I was like all excited about the research and they were like, well, does it look like that's right. Just make it easier. So I made it more digestible and I wrote a book about it. Yeah, that's amazing. Isn't it? And because I often use metaphor and encourage people to do the thing that they're talking about. you know, it's all experimentation, isn't it? Trying stuff out.
Yes. You know, and it's so funny, I had a conversation with a client who was trying to make a big decision and he was like, you know, this is just not comfortable. I don't know how to make the decision. And I said, you know, is there any place in your life where you've been able to make, you know, to change your mind or make decisions with more ease?
And he said something, I'm not exactly sure how it all came out, but it was something about, you know, yeah, like shopping for clothes, you can return stuff. And I'm like, huh, interesting. And if you were to think of this big business decision about selling your company or not selling your company as an outfit you're trying on, how would you respond to it differently? And he's like, yeah, like I could just take it home. I could try it on.
I could wear, you know, and so that became the entire conversation. And by the end of it, we're sort of laughing in the States. We have this, And then, and then the outfit that really resonates for you after you've played with it, to your point, you know, just sort of experimented and played with it, then that's the outfit maybe you want to wear for a while. I love that. I had somebody that, who said, who said the weight of this is so heavy.
So I just said, I said, how about you stand up what's heavy. And they picked up something really heavy. And they looked at me on video and they were like, I can't hold this. I said, so what are you going to do with it then? Exactly. Cause their body experienced what they were describing. It's amazing, isn't it? Cause you don't have to do very much to have really, I mean, that's coaching though, isn't it? You don't have to do very much to have real deep impact and deep change.
Yeah, and honestly, if you had gone into problem solving about this heaviness, then the person may or may not have gotten what they needed, but to have that experience of holding something really heavy and setting it down and what did you notice is required. The client is a choice then. I get to carry this heavy thing or I can set it down or maybe I can share the load with somebody else. Like who knows what resolution they'll come up with.
but it's a way of talking about really important deep work in the context of something not so scary, reducing that cognitive load. Cognitive load, which has been a theme through our whole conversation, hasn't it? It really has because it shows up everywhere. We need to have another conversation, Lissa. Absolutely for sure. Meanwhile, how do people find out about you and about your book? Well, I'm available at all bookstores, I understand. And I'm also available on Amazon.
And I have a Kindle version and a paperback version right now. But I'm working on an audible version. But that's going to take me a little bit of time because I've sort of had my hands full. And I've been juggling a lot lately. And so I've got to let something go so that I can get the audible version recorded. Good, good. So I'll put all of that in the show notes along with information about your ICF exam prep. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Thank you. So, Lyssa DeHart, thank you so much for coming to The Coaching In and we hope to see you here again soon. I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for the invitation. I love coming to The Coaching In. And thank you everyone for listening. Bye bye.