Welcome to the first edition of Notes from the In Between, a monthly collection of what I’m noticing, learning, and carrying forward.
At the beginning of something
Last week, I traveled to Denver to spend time with a longtime client who is considering a new business venture. It is a privilege to be invited into the earliest stage of something new—when possibility is present, but the path has not yet revealed itself.
In these moments, I find myself listening for the deeper questions:
What are you truly seeking to create?
Why does this matter now?
What conditions will allow this idea—and you—to thrive?
What do you already know that you may not yet trust?
The conversation in Denver reflected something I witnessed throughout August: clients recognizing the patterns around them and seeing how those patterns were shaping their results.
Those patterns can be found in the clarity of roles and decision authority, the expectations people hold, the conversations they are willing to have, and the habits that reinforce how work gets done. Once leaders can see these patterns, they can begin to change them intentionally.
Seeing more clearly does not make the work easy. Change still takes commitment, a willingness to stay with the questions, and deep faith that something can be taking root before we have evidence that it is working. But awareness gives us another choice. Once we recognize how our choices, assumptions, or avoidance may be sustaining a pattern, we can respond differently.
I don’t believe my role is to arrive with the answer. My role is to listen, notice, and ask questions that may reveal something new—to stay in the conversation long enough for the next step to become visible. A conversation can reveal what reflection alone cannot. Many of those conversations are now finding their way into a book I am co-authoring with a colleague.
Right now, I’m focused on writing and trusting the inspiration that continues to emerge through my work with clients, past and present.
Writing, exploring, and asking deeper questions
Their experiences are helping my co-author and me explore leadership in a different way: not simply as a role, title, or set of behaviors, but as something that emerges between people through the conditions they create, the conversations they enter, and the possibilities they generate together.
We are exploring what we call the generative way. It is both a philosophy and an emerging approach to leadership, one that helps people see more, trust what they know, and create what none of them could have produced alone.
The book is still taking shape, and I am learning to enjoy not knowing exactly where it will lead. We aren’t rushing toward a finished answer. We are listening for what our experiences are asking us to reconsider about leadership.
The work keeps reminding me that leadership is not declared. It is revealed—in our presence, our relationships, and the space we create for others to recognize and trust their own capacity.
For now, I am allowing the work to unfold and paying attention to what it is teaching me along the way.
Also this month
This month, I also received my ICF Mentor Coaching Specialization for MCC coaches. It represents my ongoing commitment to this work, to developing as a coach, and to supporting other experienced coaches as they deepen their own practice.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve also contributed to the broader conversation about leadership through the Forbes Coaches Council. In “Coaches Share Simple Leadership Actions They’ve Seen Build Trust,” I reflected on the power of showing up—being visible and accessible, being willing to give and receive feedback, and continuing to hold what is possible even when the path is still unfolding.
I was also featured in “Meaningful Ways Coaches Give Back Through Their Professional Expertise,” where I shared something deeply personal to me. For the past five years, I have provided quarterly pro bono coaching to the executive team of a statewide agency serving children and families. Together, we have surfaced overlooked patterns in structure, roles, and decision authority—strengthening clarity and relationships across the team. I grew up in a community where resources like these were deeply needed. Offering this support now feels like one way of giving back to the places and people who shaped me.
Just before August began, I also published “The Leadership Advantage We Rarely Make Time For.” Each opportunity allowed me to share a different dimension of the work—and the questions behind it are continuing to shape what comes next.
On the horizon
September is already beginning to take shape.
My new website will be launching, and I’ll begin sharing more of what I have learned by questioning how we lead, what shapes our choices, and what becomes possible when we see ourselves more clearly. Creating the site has given me an opportunity to reflect on how my work has evolved, what remains at its heart, and what I feel called to explore next.
I’m deeply grateful to Carlisle & Co. for the partnership, inspiration, and encouragement they have offered throughout this nine-month journey. I’m excited to share what we have created.
During the final two weeks of September, I’ll be back with clients in person for two executive offsites—full-day working sessions with senior leadership teams where I will serve as their team coach. I’m looking forward to helping both teams name what is getting in their way and decide how they want to move forward together.
In October, I’ll speak and lead a think-tank discussion at the Fierce & Fearless Leadership Conference in Sarasota, a gathering that challenges and elevates women leaders in hospitality and beyond. I’m also preparing for a mid-October speaking engagement with the Junior League Training Collaborative. I look forward to sharing more about both experiences.
Worth sharing
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
One of the questions staying with me this month came from an unexpected place: Dan Brown’s newest Robert Langdon novel, The Secret of Secrets. I highly recommend it. It has everything we have come to expect from Brown: a fast-moving story, layered mysteries, and ideas that challenge what we think we know. What held my attention, though, was the book’s exploration of consciousness.
The story moves between science and mysticism, exploring ideas about consciousness that remain outside—or at the edges of—mainstream scientific consensus. It asks whether consciousness might be more expansive than the frameworks we have traditionally used to understand it.
This connects deeply with my own beliefs. I have long believed that what we can see in any given moment is only part of what may be possible and that expanding our awareness changes how we experience ourselves, one another, and the world around us.
I didn’t need to accept every idea in the book to find its questions compelling. It invited me to consider where the boundaries of our current understanding may be limiting what we are able—or willing—to see. Curiosity asks us to remain open to what we cannot yet see. Life often asks the same of us.
Life in the in between
Our family is experiencing several transitions of its own. I’m preparing to move into a new home here in Orlando; my daughter is returning to Richmond for a new opportunity; and my husband has begun a new role.
There are moments when many parts of life seem to move at once. This is one of those moments for me. It is exciting, a little overwhelming, and a wonderful reminder that the in between is not simply a place we pass through. It is where much of life is actually lived.
A question I’m carrying forward
As we move into September, this is the question I am carrying with me:
What might become possible if you changed not the goal, but the conditions surrounding it?
Perhaps the answer begins with seeing something you couldn’t see before.
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