the Coaching Studio – Season 1 | episode 6 – Guest Lauri Smith, MCC

Mm, I came to coaching through teaching first. I have a background in theater, and I was teaching acting and voice at a community college, and at the end of class one day, a student about my age, a couple of years younger came up to me and said, you’re different than the other instructors, I think you might be a coach. And I had never heard of coaching at that point, and I could tell intuitively she wasn’t talking about basketball.

It was actually one of those moments when time almost seemed to slow down, and her face almost looked like it was in a fun mirror, and time was moving really slowly behind her and I got curious and I asked her more and um one of the things that she said coming from theatre, is theater people think it’s all a community.

And yet she said the other instructors are still more of the professor type. Their, their, her words were: more like up on a pedestal or up on the podium, professing their knowledge down, okay. And she said, your style intuitively, when you listen to it is to be kind of at our level, getting curious asking questions and it’s like you’re in it with us.

Uh and she said, when you follow your intuitive style, you look like you’re reading people’s minds. And the performances that you are drawing out of my classmates are the strongest ones, when however, you do not follow your intuitive style and you try to do it the way everybody has done it that you’ve worked with, um it’s really not working for you. And she told me about the Coaches Training Institute (CTI).

So, I immediately signed up for the first class and once I was there, for about 15 minutes actually, I remember about 15 minutes into that first class having this feeling that that was the final piece of the puzzle of what I was going to do in the world. Though, I could not have explained what that meant with any kind of left-brained awareness. It felt like I was coming home to something that fit, fit with theater, I didn’t know what I would do with it and then learned to coach, and had a favorite boss of mine, right before the coaching exam, I coached him because I wanted to make myself nervous before our, at least at that point CTI, The Coaches Training Institute, did their exams where you coached live, and when I was done, being the entrepreneur that he was, he gave me feedback. And it included feedback on the coaching and it also included, here’s some feedback for making this a business.

And he said, what’s your niche, what’s your thing, that you bring to it? And I didn’t know at first, and then he said, what about something with, you know, theater? And then I went for a walk with a friend, and that was when the, oh it’s bringing all of the gems from the theater, and voice for theater, and coaching together. And that was, I didn’t name it that for a while and that was when Voice Matters was born.

Mm, I feel like, it’s been 13 years of a journey, and I feel like I have a life that is beyond what my wildest dreams were for the most part before I had ever discovered coaching. Um, I didn’t know what values were. Uh, I didn’t always know how to listen to my intuition. I was decent at listening to intuition as a teacher, and really being curious and listening to intuition expanded my coaching, my teaching. And it also helps me through having my own coach to listen and be following my intuition and unleashing my own creativity in my life.

Um, there was even a moment in an acting class, way before I ever discovered coaching, I don’t remember all of the details, but I feel like he asked me: like if you were your own alter ego, what kind of a life would you have?

And my life at that point was working as an executive assistant during the day in the Silicon Valley and doing theater at night and I was getting very tired. I think I was probably 30 or close to it at that point, and you can do that for a while, and then eventually you run out of energy. And I just kind of went, I don’t know, I think, you know, maybe I would be piecing together a life of you know, acting part of the time and maybe teaching part of the time, and kind of described the life that I now have, where I basically do only things that I want to do that bring me joy or challenge me to transform and grow everywhere in my life.

That’s this life that I intuitive, intuitively described as my alter ego, If my alter ego, we’re doing the scene, what would she be like? And in a lot of ways that is the life that I now have, and it didn’t seem possible at that point.

I think the first leap was a big one actually walking away from that corporate job to go, I was going to get a degree in theater, thinking I would teach theater during the day and I would do theater at night.

And I honestly thought at the time that I would, I would be in, you know, kind of starvation mode, the starving artist and I was just going to go ahead and choose it anyway. And having the support of coaches and the universe kind of there, you know, I didn’t get a full-time teaching job the few times that I tried. I was being led toward part-time teaching jobs, and I even said at one point early on, I’m going to make a gesture that not everyone will be able to see, but my teaching was up here.

I was working as a personal assistant part-time, I was teaching part-time, I was coaching part-time, and I think around the time I let the personal assistant thing go, I said, well, what I’d like to have happened is that my teaching and my coaching, over time, sort of switch places in the amount of time I do them. And the last time I taught theater was four years ago, it completely switched even, even more than I’d thought.

And that was like a moment where I said, I kind of wanted that, and it, my memory is that it was, it was a powerful moment because it was while talking to a coach or talking to someone who is holding space for that intention, and kind of helping to pull that intention out of you.

Yeah. You know, I really, I can’t even overstate the power of intention in what it is that we’re choosing and not that it needs, not that it has to be a job, or that it could be anything. I live up in the Pacific Northwest now and honestly, I came up here during graduate school and thought to myself, I want to live up here. I married somebody who’s like, I’m never living in the Pacific Northwest ever. And then yet, here we are, right, like, so, so I really think that we can, like, I think it’s the, maybe the intersection between our intentions and what the universe knows we need, I think may also be a piece of it also. And that all of a sudden the flow moves in the direction of the intention that is going to be uh you know, it’s going to be a stretch, but it’s also going to take you where you want to go. And so I met you at an interesting time in your journey where you were moving into MCC coaching from PCC to MCC.

And I’m really curious because I know you, congratulations, got your MCC this year 2021. So, yay! And what was that journey like for you, as you, kind of in a way similar, right? Let go of one way of being in order to be in another way of being like when you left your assistant job, you know, executive assistant job and moved into something different, right?

Yeah. Um, I love learning experiences and I absolutely love them. It came in right at the right time, so I have a pattern of learning and then kind of integrating for a while, and then I’ll get hungry for more learning again. I was hungry when I went into it. And then for learning experiences, and at moments in my business, and when cast in a role, part of my creative process is to go through a phase of resistance, which happened like, you know, this is why I’m here and yet my inner teenager is kind of coming out and resisting and wanting to be independent and wanting to do it differently.

Which someone that I work with actually was the first person to say, let me tell you how you work and pointed that resistant phase out. And then my fiance at one point said, let me tell you about your creative process. This is like you’re in this resistance. I can’t do it. You know, sometimes they all get together.

And then since we were just talking about intention, I set the intention to make the best of everything.
The way I like let go of anything that was old from the way I had been doing it, and take the best forward, and take the best of the new that I was learning, and come up with a way of integrating them that felt like me. Which is different from resisting and wanting to just be me and do it my way.

It’s like well in the end you do end up with your way. Um, that’s, that’s what I, it’s a lot of what I remember about the journey and I remember, you know, going through phases of I can’t do this, I don’t understand it. And then feeling like it’s starting to kick in and it’s opening something up, and coaching feels even more magical. It’s like, it’s new again with the depth and the experience of many years. And I love that place, which is part of why I go back for more learning, to be in beginner’s mind and 13 years of experience,

Which you know, I’m smiling and we’re laughing because that I don’t always remember that in the beginning. I want to get it and have it integrated on day one, or a part of me wants to get it and have it integrated on day one.

Part of the beauty of it is being in the “not knowing” in the beginning, trusting that the integration will come later on down the road. And I believe it comes even more fully the more that we kind of surrender and steep in the new. Um, I even just flashed on another moment with students in theater, some of whom were resistant against my classes, and some of whom were resistant against other teachers classes, and in a total intuitive blurt one day I looked at one of the students and said, well your job right now is to fully be in each class that you are in, like 100% committed all in, and only if you’ve really done that, can you then truly decide which of what I’m teaching you, what Tom is teaching you, what Janice is teaching you, after you have fully done it, you then decide what of each thing works for you.

And then I also said, and you keep in mind you’re young, when I was 19 years old, there were things that I let go that did not work for me at 19. Fast forward, you know, 20-30 years and I’m having my struggle moment, and I can’t do this moment, with a role or with a client and all of a sudden this tool that didn’t used to work for you, pops into your head,

Yeah, that is beautiful because I mean it’s so true, fill your toolbox with tools, you never know when you will need that tool. And to have had it and to really anchor it in your toolbox means you have access to it when it shows up.

And just kind of rolling back to something you said before. I just, I can’t even, I can’t even overemphasize this because this was really a part of my own MCC journey which is this process of letting go, um in order to be fully present with another human being.

Letting go of my ideas about what it is they need to be doing, letting go of my ideas of attachment to their outcome, letting go of the idea that I need to be the perfect coach, I have to know everything. Um and I mean I think what I see a lot with coaches is a transformation from wanting to be of value to their clients. So they want to give to their clients versus holding that space. And I mean I think that, that piece is that part of that letting go really so that you can be with to create that space that you’re talking about.

Um, so it’s a deeper level of that, which is part of what I love about coaching and it is part of what what people have said they like about me as a coach. Um, and I even did a session with someone, not even a session, we were, we were just connecting to see if we might want to work together. Um, and he, he said, I feel very safe and comfortable with you. And I was like, wow, it really done nothing today except be curious, asked some questions, answer some questions and I was a little surprised because it wasn’t, it was a connection conversation, not an actual coaching conversation. I was a little surprised and yet I know that the surrender and let go, it’s, it’s rippling out into other circumstances.

You know, and I think that that is really interesting, Lauri because I think there was something that happened for me, and I don’t know that something like this happened for you also, but when I got my MCC. I wasn’t, I mean I didn’t get my MCC because I thought oh if I got my MCC I’d be like like I would be completely great then.

Um And I see it much more as a mile marker on a long journey that I could be continuing to drive along the many varied paths, and take you, no exits, and explore and all that sort of thing. But I think there was something about having this sense that I knew what I was doing enough.

It wasn’t perfect maybe, but I knew enough about how to hold that container and how to hold that space that I felt something really similar, which was I just sort of let go of a lot of my trying to do a little dance, sing a little song, you know, see if this fits or not, and really much more confident in that, that choice making that I was doing as to whether or not this would be a good fit for me. And I’m kind of hearing that and what you’re talking about also.

Uh going back and learning things every once in a while, um on that rhythm of when I start to feel hungry, as soon as I start to have less passion, and even before that, I will usually get the, the feeling of it’s time to go take some continuing education.

Um and it’s not always in coaching, sometimes it’s like working with a different coach to kind of shake it up um or changing, changing how things are kind of organized in my business. Um, going toward what I really love to do and how I really love to work, and who I really love to work with. Every time there’s a little notch more of, oh, it’s this now, this is where I really want to be doing it and who I want to work with. That will take things up a notch because then all of a sudden every single session with every single client feels like it’s a magical match.

Yeah, yeah. And the kind of the continual self-evolution, right? That sense of just uh in it to play and to explore and to learn and to grow and that this is all just part of it. I really appreciate that mindset because I think that’s how we grow anyway, right? Like and I think it keeps us alive.

I don’t know, you were making me think, I remember at one point when I was a therapist, I had gotten really kind of burned out in the work that I was doing. This was many years ago when I was working for the military and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Like I was like, I need to do something though that just outside of this and I ended up taking like a cake decorating class, not because I was all that interested in cake or any of that, but I was just much more like I just want to learn something outside of the arena that I was playing in. Um just to give my brain something completely clearly different to nosh on, you know?

Ah uh, my my my my baby, my love is uh I have a program called Compelling Speaker: Master the Art of Presence. And I’m now running it three or four times a year. I don’t know when this will air for people. Um I have one coming up, starting a week from today and I know I’m going to do one in the fall and there may actually be one because I have a little bit of a waiting list of people, that happens in between June and the fall. Um, I love that program.

It’s a, it’s a beautiful experience. Um, Part group, part 1 on 1, and the group part is my favorite part because people get to come together and their bodies, minds, hearts, and souls get to know, oh, I can show up that way in a group. And then their body remembers that they can and have done it when they go to speak out on a stage or a Facebook live or a video.

Yeah, brilliant. And I mean with this many coaches who are moving towards platforms where they’re doing Facebook lives, you’re doing YouTube videos. I mean these are skill sets that coaching schools aren’t probably going to teach you. They’re really working on the competencies and helping you learn how to hold the container of a conversation. But there’s absolute value in that place of learning these others.

So instead of cake decorating, learn how to confidently or both, why not? Or both? Or do a cake while you’re confidently communicating on your Facebook live.

Lauri, thank you so much for being with me today and having this conversation. I really, I just really enjoyed it and thank you so much for sharing your MCC journey. I really think it will be a benefit to many, many people.