the Coaching Studio – Season 1 | episode 4 – Guest Cynthia Loy Darst, MFA, MCC

Hey, Lyssa here, thank you for checking into the Coaching Studio and I’m honored today to introduce my guest, Cynthia Lloyd Darst. Um, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about her before we get into it. So Cynthia has an MFA, which I’m really curious about for another conversation, a CPCC, an ORSCC, and her MCC.

In fact, Cynthia was one of the first eight people in the world to get the MCC designation. So woot, woot, woot. Um, Cynthia was named one of the top 10 most influential coaches in the United States. She has a playful and inspiring style, working with all kinds of people to move from past limitations and into action and fulfillment. Cynthia is passionate about the quality and excellence of the world of coaching and as a result of that has served on/as a founding member of the International Coaching Federation, as well as, served on the Board of Directors and has also been a member of the Professional Coaches and Mentor Association and is also the past President of the Association of Coach Training Organizations.

She’s also the author of Meet Your Inside Team: How to Turn Internal Conflict into Clarity and Move Forward with Your Life. Um, it’s pretty awesome, right? And she’s also done, and one more thing with this uh Ronco set of knives, and she’s also done a Ted Talk called Safe Inside Yourself. I’ll be putting links to all of these things in the information below.

I want to really quickly read a book review of her book, which I think is brilliant. Meet Your Inside Team: How to Turn Internal Conflict into Clarity and Move Forward with Your Life. The book review is: “What if your inner critic voices were actually wise messengers in disguise? Discover to, discover how to mine their voices for negative gold and how to make peace with their presence in your life. These voices probably aren’t going away, but now I have a new revolutionary tools to get my inside team working on my agenda, not theirs. Some steps were playful, others profound, and I could apply them immediately. “

And this was an amazon review that I thought was just so lovely. So congratulations on your book. Um, and also, you know, a great review. I am really curious. So Cynthia, thank you so much for being here today with me.

Yeah, fast forward a gew years, I was, I made my living as an actor, I decided to leave that because there was, there was something in my purpose that wasn’t quite aligned there and bit by bit, I made my way into being curious about what Henry was up to. And by this point in 1992, he and Laura Whitworth had started creating coach training.

Laura had worked with Thomas Leonard before that, he was considered one of the pioneers in the field of coaching and so I was like, what are you guys doing? Let me go do this class, I was just curious. And it was so, even then, even in the very second class that was ever delivered and coach training. I was like, oh there’s something here, this is interesting and it felt, it felt more in line with me then all of the different, I’ve been acting, I’ve been in sales, I’ve been, it was like, oh yeah, this is the path.

Well, it’s it’s kind of funny, it’s like, it’s like, um Mhm you know, it’s a great question, it’s what, so, so one of the things that I realized as I started getting coached myself was that what had drawn me to acting was that I was extremely curious about how people think.

And I loved having conversations where you’re creating and learning about characters and finding out about the dynamics of relationships. And all of these different things. Well, hello, if that like, no wonder I was like, no wonder coaching felt like a fit. I wanted to work with people that were everyday normal human beings, who knew they wanted change in life, knew they wanted something more, didn’t know quite what the piece of the puzzle was to, to support, you know, and so that’s what now I get to have these rich conversations with people, and sort of pull things apart, so that they can find their best ways forward, right? That to me is really fun.

Yeah. Now I you know, now it’s very clear to me like you get to be you, I get to be me, I’m responsible for my feelings, you’re responsible for yours. Let’s have a conversation here, you know? Yeah. I honestly think it’s one of the most important psychological evolutions we go through in life. Is this sense of not do you like me? But the transforming from do you like me to do I like myself, and then do I like you?

Right, so we’re making conscious choices not only about ourselves but about the people we choose to have around us. So thank you so much for sharing that, it’s beautiful. What do you think when you think about the work that you’re doing, what is really keeping your passion alive around coaching?

I appreciate, you know, I think it is a little bit of building off of what we’re saying. So one of the things that I often see coaches doing and they don’t mean to, but, but, and maybe I do it myself sometimes is that is the, is that we get attached to what the client says they want. And if, if our attention goes to, I’m I’m committed to getting a new job, right? This is what I want. This is what I’m coming to coaching for. My client was, you know, they want to make this career leap. That’s it.

If my attention goes there too much, I’m actually gonna miss what is, what’s, what’s going on with my client. So sometimes when I’m working with someone who has never been coached before, I actually, part of the design alliance is to say, I need to tell you I’m going to be more committed to you than what you say you want if we get here great. I don’t, I don’t really care. I’m interested in you, I’m interested in your development and I’m interested in you becoming the human that you want to become. That’s more important.

Right. Oh, I love where you’re pointing. It’s, it’s a very normal struggle for a new coach is to think that that like we, most of the world is so trained, that problem solving is of great value, right? And so if you’ve been in that world and you’ve been a problem solver, to to start to translate, how do I provide value here? It’s a really, it’s a really challenging question. Right?

So the, so part of what is in the way that we, that I trained coaches and primarily this is through the lens, through the lens of co-active training institute, is is that we’re, we actually train in our very first session. How do you, how you are listening? Are you listening for? The person says this thing and here’s my great idea, here’s how I relate to that. We call that level one listening self-focus. Or am I really listening? Level two, am I listening for, “What is this person saying one of their goals? What did they want? What’s important to them? ” And when, when I put my attention and awareness there, then level one can move back. It doesn’t mean I won’t have it. It just means, let me move that back. Let me self-manage to focus over here.

I just moved, so I’m still, I’m still in the process of like I’m setting up my new world and I’m not super quick with that I get so focused on my computer work that I often disregard what’s around me and that’s something I have to keep working with. Um But it’s it it’s an interesting thing. I think my, my primary focus these days is honestly with CTI.

And what I’m hoping to do, some years ago, back in around 2010, I can’t even believe it’s been that long, 2010, 2012, I was offering trainings on the, the first, the first way The Inside Team came into being was as a coach training. It was years later that I then found the way to write the book, and what I, what I want to do, what I’m focused on doing is by this fall starting to create coach training again using Inside Team. It’s really a lovely um process, and talk about, when you’re talking about like self-awareness. Um Let me just give you a basic.

Thought about it. All right. So when I think of self awareness, like what’s that even mean? Right? Well to me that means noticing how I’m thinking, noticing what’s going on, and if there’s something going on in my life that I’m a little worried about, or that I’m trying to do. Um There’s usually some kind of conversation that’s happening, you know. Now if I’m going to the grocery store this afternoon, the conversation is like okay what’s for dinner? That you know what, what do I need to? You know, we’ve got the chicken, you know, it’s like there’s a kind of like and that’s all fine and it works out and I know what to do.

But for some things in our life, um particularly the places where we keep saying I want this, I want this, I want this and then nothing happens. Or very little happens. That’s usually a place where there’s a bigger Inside Team conversation going on. And if we can honestly slow down, find out who’s talking, what are they saying? What’s the way they think this internal game is played?