A poor internet connection interrupted our call but that didn’t stop me from tuning into Erica’s Uniquely Compelling Quality. She naturally creates a safe base within a highly charged dynamic. Despite the poor sound quality and fluctuating image, Erica's energy flowed so naturally that it stopped me in my tracks (twice!).
The first time it happened was when we were speaking about her somatic work. I asked what coming into the body yielded for her. As soon as I’d posed the question I could feel the answer as a wave of peacefulness passed through me.
If there was to be a reward for our time together that feeling was it. It’s also what I call a cosmic carrot.
More on both in a moment.
Before embarking on her journey as a coach and healer Erica had been in the tech world for a decade. I wanted to find out what inspired the shift from the corporate world to the life she now had. She told me that she'd been part of the team at WeWork and loved that new world-making tech vibe. At the customer service end, she was the interface with the client experience. She thrived in the vibrant dynamism of the place. Of course, WeWork was not only seeking to conquer the world but also letting out space to entrepreneurs trying to do the same.
It was a veritable volcano of potential.
BUT. And it was a big ‘but’. You can’t just go all out and not focus on the detail. It’s wonderful having the visionary vibe and being a fountain of ideas and creativity but that doesn’t mean you can go easy on the execution. As Erica put it, “There was a lot that was broken at the back end and a lot that on a foundational level was not tended to. It was always more and bigger and better but a negligence of the basics. It became clear that it wasn’t actually sustainable.”
What WeWork needed is what Erica has naturally, a love of the dynamic but anchored by a secure space at the core.
So she moved on and trained for something where she could have more impact. She now helps people out of balance to regain it. Her main tool is awareness, the curiosity to discover how alignment was lost.
I asked Erica about our natural gifts, a subject close to my heart. Did she think most people are aware of what their gifts are?
I got a resounding, “No!”.
We mulled over the reason for this. My view is that our gifts are easily lost in childhood and today we are so expectant of immediate gratification that it’s hard to find the time and space to rediscover and then nurture them. She agreed before adding that the burden of “the collective psyche of consumption and convenience” is a big part of the problem when what we need is “a place of creativity, craft, and care.”
We closed on the general challenges of building a business around coaching and spirituality. On coaching, Erica revealed how she didn’t want to compete in an overcrowded market that she felt was, in many ways, predatory. That’s a pretty brutal word but on reflection, I have to agree, at least in part. At one end of the spectrum, there are those with a big voice, who promise incredible results. They are experts at pressing people’s buttons, triggering their insecurities, but deliver only occasionally. They tout their best results as if they were the norm. However, at the other end, and I include all those I have interviewed so far, like Erica, there are some really beautiful people with big hearts doing wonderful work.
Following our call, I took a step back and considered whether the threads of our conversation, the need to attend to the details, to be ‘in balance’, and to know our gifts, were relevant to how coaching can best be delivered.
A recent conversation about Human Design yielded the philosophy that we are all predisposed to certain ways of making our way through life. Some are natural generators of ideas, while others are evolved to see a project through. When you dive into the detail our design is highly nuanced. In my experience, that holds true. However, I would add that we are also, by nature, evolved to work not only in harmony with our design but also with each other. When we don’t, we get out of alignment and conflicts start to rear their head.
Coaches who exploit those who have fallen out of alignment tend to promise paint-by-number solve-all-woes solutions. By the law of averages, they will work for some of the time. However, no masterpiece was ever created by just filling in the colours of someone else’s design. Success, however you define it, is not a by-product of better problem-solving it’s a result of being aligned to the most powerful version of who we are. Success is not an algorithm, it’s individual. So, we need to be clear about our gifts because that's what we can leverage for the maximum impact.
Great coaching recognises this.
And here’s another thing about helping people to move. French philosopher, Alain Forget, called it ‘firing a golden bullet’. It’s the art form of spontaneously saying the right thing at the right time so that it gets in and we hear it at a deep level.
For Erica, this is clearly one of her gifts and she stopped me in my tracks for a second time.
We were talking about the challenges of the spiritual journey. My experience is that you get a cosmic carrot now and again. A moment that tantalizingly dangles the promise of the divine. An experience that gives you a glimpse of what is possible. It brings us into the now, an internal firework display exploding to a celestial tune before disappearing like a slippery fish that wriggles out of our fingers and back into the water.
It always leaves us wanting more and the challenge is finding that moment with some consistency.
I was about to launch into my next sentence (my excuse is that we were chatting at this point rather than having an interview!) and then Erica just said: “Gratitude.”
It took the wind out of my sails and stopped me from adding another word because she had reminded me, at just the right time, that the power of gratitude is boundless.
Thank you, Erica.
For more information on Erica you can find her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericaleib/
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