Long before there were cell phones and dating apps, I ghosted people. I didn’t do it to be cruel, get even, or as some twisted power play. I simply lacked the skill to understand and express my own emotions when I needed to resolve the inevitable twists and turns of human relationships. Rather than addressing issues, I silently walked away. I was doing my best, as painfully inadequate as that was for everyone involved.

The pivot that put my life on a new trajectory began in Houston in August of 1994 when I opened the local newspaper and read one of the first articles about a new thing called professional coaching. I was deeply intrigued.

You see, even though I was not great at reading and articulating my own emotions, my earlier career as a change management consultant revealed that I was highly skilled at discerning other peoples’ perspectives and the underlying patterns informing human interactions. Essentially, I could see for others what I could not see for myself. Senior project leaders regularly asked for my thoughts on high stakes conversations, client challenges and the like. In hindsight, I was coaching people before coaching was a thing, although the focus was often more strategic than interpersonal.

The Beginning of the Beginning

I began my training to become a coach as soon as I could. In the phone-based classes, I listened in awe as more experienced students unraveled emotionally charged situations with courageous compassion and eloquent grace. The authenticity of the conversations seemed to spring as much from who the coaches were, as from what they said. Inspired, I dove deep into my own being and began to unearth the misconceptions that rendered me mute and confront the fears that kept me in a cage of my own making.

I was blessed to have Cheryl Richardson—who would go on to work extensively with Oprah—as my first coach. Through our work together, I discovered elements of myself I didn’t know were there and I learned how to use them to become a better, wiser and more empowered expression of myself. My true inner coach began to make herself known.

On the last call before I graduated from the coaching training program, I volunteered to coach someone as a demonstration for the class. I deftly employed the skills that had awed me many months before to ignite genuine insights for my coaching partner. In the debrief that followed, a couple of my classmates commented that they aspired to gain the skills I had just demonstrated. With a grateful heart, I assured them that if I could learn those skills, they could too—and so could anyone else.

Change Happens in Conversations

Since that time, I’ve coached hundreds of people. Thousands of people around the world have learned how to step into the conversations they previously avoided using the Untying the Knot® approach to “in the moment”conversations that I created to scale a coaching based approach to leadership, as the foundation of coaching cultures.

Now, I am turning my attention to offering Untying the Knot to the world, as a shared language for inspiring people to create positive change, together. Because if you can’t talk about something you can’t change it.

The challenges that are holding people, organizations and the world back from realizing our greatest potential are shared, complex, and often brand-spankin’ new. Our best hope in addressing them meaningfully is to co-create together.

That is why I am writing the book We-Wired and I’m building an online We-Wired learning community. Untying the Knot has the potential to be a universal language that unites people in taking a more balanced, appreciative and creative approach to making change happen.

That could look like a team finally digging into an issue they’ve zigged and zagged around for months, or even years. It could also be two peers who don’t see eye to eye finding a shared intention they can work towards together. Or an organization finding their way through a sticky challenge, knot by knot, learning, growing and evolving along the way. However this unfolds, I know that learning how to unravel complex challenges together holds the promise of our shared future.

My intention is to find and support the intrepid souls—and organizations—who believe that positive change is possible and are willing to learn and evolve together as their answer to this precious and precarious moment we find ourselves standing in. Does that sound like you?

If you feel drawn to learning how to co-create with others through meaningful conversations, please join the We-Wired community by subscribing to the We-Wired Newsletter to stay connected to this evolving movement. (Click the link and sign up at the bottom of the page.)

You can reach out to me directly with your questions, comments and inquiries by emailing askdianna@cylient.com. I will respond to questions I receive in the We-Wired Newsletter.

I look forward to learning with and from you!

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In gratitude,

Dianna

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