Hi, I'm Graham.
I've worn a lot of hats in my life: student, physicist, engineer, medic, tour guide, yogi, meditator, chimney sweep (yes, really), men's work leader, and now leadership coach. My mission is to connect people to new ways of thinking and more flexible and resilient relationships with this ever-more unpredictable world.
I started this work by sitting in men's circles where we came together consistently, week after week, to keep ourselves accountable for taking action that would move each of us towards a better future. And it works... there's a deep sense of trust in self that comes from diligently creating and meeting small goals. For me, and for a lot of men that I've sat with, the mirror of taking accountability every week has been and continues to be powerful medicine.
The medicine of accountability to ourselves builds self-trust, and trust means we can experiment and gather new data, try new things, figure out what's working. The weekly reflections in the group setting means that we're not figuring life out on our own any more, and others are seeing things in us that we might miss.
I started leading men's circles in 2022 as a way to give back and create more spaces for men to do their work. A few years later I found the Institute for Coaching Mastery, and leaned in because I wanted to be as effective as I could for as many people as possible.
I tend to be a communication nerd, because I can feel the truth of the idea that "our words create our thoughts, and our thoughts create our reality." I also tend to be a stickler for precision, in a gentle way, because honing in on the specifics of our intentions makes them more real, more tangible, more achievable. I believe that small wins compounded over time add up to massive change, and that the twin qualities of clarity and courage will carry us through SO. MANY. OBSTACLES.
Why "Conscious"?
The "Conscious" part of "Conscious Leadership" means to expand what we think of as our consciousness. Many of us live in our thinking minds most of the time; you've likely gotten used to thinking of emotions and body sensations as inputs to your conscious state (or worse, impediments to your thinking consciousness!). But they are and can be true collaborators and advisors in our decision making process, so by expanding our definition of consciousness to include emotions, intuition, and body sensations, we can be guided by more than just logic and so make decisions that align with our highest intentions.