About the Work

  • stairs Nancy offers:

    • Her services as a “thinking partner” to help you come to clarity and peace about the important decisions in your life, whether at work or at home.
    • Energy inventories that help you insure you are spending your time and energy on the stuff that truly matters and can yield the greatest returns.
    • Help making those tough “people” calls and having the necessary conversations that result from the decision. Nancy does this in ways that are about “fit” not fault.  Much easier to talk an employee’s value as a person and acknowledge the contribution they can make to an organization that “fits” them and their particular talents and temperament.
    •  The latest research based findings especially in the exploding field of neuroscience and human behavior research.  She has been a student of this field for 30 years so she knows what is worth pursuing and what is just a fad or the latest cool idea.  Her background and expertise results in you achieving your desires and making a wise investment.
    • 21st century leadership development.  This form of leadership includes capacity development that was far less important in the 20th century.  Capacities like complexity and design thinking.  She can help you learn how manage polarity and conflict and leverage them for the opportunities it holds.   21st century leadership must be grounded, vision (meaning and purpose) centered leadership because this is what leads to accountability and wholehearted engagement by your staff.
    • Growth in learning how to sense and shape the future.  This is important because if we can learn to work WITH the emergent field that physicists speak, of our lives can be freer, lighter and easier.  We can accomplish more with less effort and more joy.
    • Development in learning how to turn difficult/stuck or challenging conversations into brainstorms and possibility conversations that end up with everyone on the same page and moving forward.
    • The opportunity to discover and outsmart your Immunity to Change.   That built in part each of us, and our organization that resists change and growth.  Once that is discovered she will work without you create a road map to successful change that bypasses the Immunity to Change
    • All of the above is applicable to individuals and personal situations as well as the professional environment.

    The Design Bar:

    Nancy’s office includes a “design bar” where clients have a chance to reinvent how they see themselves and their organizations.  This restructuring results in discovering what is “fresh, new and alive”.  And this, in turn, prompts profound change on the inside and through interactions with others.

    Design Thinking:

    This is a unique combination of empathy, collaboration, visualization and systems thinking especially in high-stakes or “stuck” situations/relationships.  This thinking fully embraces limits, constraints and problems as opportunities to create something more viable and useful.  They are allies, not enemies.  The ability to recognize and make some important shift in perspective ~ in yourself, in your relationships, in the way you think and do business ~ is the key to unlocking the vitality and energy necessary to flourish and thrive in these competitive and challenging times.  Nancy helps clients create a life and a business that is vibrant and compelling.

    The Process:

    Nancy teaches clients to respond to business and life challenges the way a designer does: with curiosity, positive expectancy and creativity.  These three things result in a strong shift in the “emotional atmosphere” of the individual/group, AND result in highly original solutions to challenges.    Nancy’s clients learn how to shift from problem solving to possibility creating.  And from working hard to working smart. These insights and fresh approaches give clients a competitive edge, positive energy and resolve in the face of setbacks.  Nancy’s work facilitates her clients’ ability to meet and wholeheartedly engage the complexity and competitiveness of our world.

    More About Nancy

    Nancy is an Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator and a certified Strozzi Embodied Leadership and Somatic Coach and a certified Power of TED* practitioner. She created and taught a 21st Century Leadership course for University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). She also served as a founding faculty member for the Leadership Certificate Program offered by Southern Methodist University and The Center for Non-profit Management.

    Nancy has a M.S. in Counseling Psychology and a B.B.A. in Accounting. Her business background includes experience with Arthur Andersen, a financial accounting software company, a variety of Fortune 500 companies, as well as healthcare systems and hospitals. She is a trained facilitator in the following methodologies:; Dialogue and Dynamic Dialogue; VISIONS (a personal approach to multiculturalism), The Immunity to Change discovery process of Robert Kegan, Chair of Adult Development at Harvard University and Lisa Lahey.  She draws extensively from the work of James Hillman, psychologist and philosopher; and David Whyte, poet, philosopher, business consultant and many others. Her solid results with overcoming “stuck conversations” have been guided by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s work and that of the Public Conversations Project of Cambridge, Ma.  She has been applying the work of neuroscientists for over a decade; particularly, Daniel Siegel and Antonio Damasio.