Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching is for you if you want to unlearn what is not working for you and learn ways to be more effective, learn more life-giving patterns of communication, and deepen and build on your strengths.

Below you will find more details about the process and coaching areas I offer –

Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Courage & Renewal work
Grief & Bereavement
Restorative Conversations for repair
Intercultural Development Inventory & Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory
Social and Racial Justice
Mentorship in Courage & Renewal work and NVC
Well-beingness practices & wellness plans for individuals or groups
- Yoga and Mindfulness
- Forest Bathing walks & therapy and Walk & Talks
- Healing use of storytelling and our own stories

When you find yourself in a disagreement or a conflict, it’s time to step back from what’s not working. That means taking a risk and trying something new. We can work on developing specific skills and patterns that led to this conflict, and create a list of restorative options for repair.

On a larger scale, conflicts can become embedded in your family, friendship circle, work setting, congregational or organizational culture. Apart from addressing the specific conflict, you can also learn specific skills to deal with the conflict, and understand and change patterns that are no longer useful.

Coaching can be helpful for you on different levels. You may want individual sessions or combine several levels, to create meaningful change:

Individual
Couple
- to create more care and tend to the relationship or address specific conflict
- court-ordered or voluntary support for parents in conflict
Family – parents as well as members of blood or chosen family
Relational – friendship, neighborhood, professional, etc.
Leadership development
Organizational culture for the whole organization, teams, and/or leadership
Communal settings of congregational or community groups – team or leadership development
Your personal and/or collective work in social & racial justice

What my style of coaching is:

Based on what matters to you – what you want to work with to learn, grow, build, change, repair, restore, grieve, heal, and/or inspire others.
Drawing upon a holistic model of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and planetary health levels.
Developing an awareness of what is working and not working for you – learn new skills, practices, and a map to help you move forward.
Taking time and space to try new skills and practices. In between sessions you will be applying and practicing what we work on in each session. This supports you in both unlearning ineffective habits and learning new patterns.
Meeting on a schedule that works for us both, integrating what’s realistic and doable.
Exploring what is more life-giving and reducing what is life-altering.
Drawing upon one specific body of work or integrating different works:
- Nonviolent Communication® skills, key distinctions, and practices:
  - self-empathy and empathetic listening & speaking
  - greater authenticity
  - compassionate presence
  - more effective communication patterns and habits
  - reducing judgment and reactivity
  - making requests that work
  - Communication as a Spiritual Practice
  - Grief and bereavement support
  - higher quality of connection
  - power over/power under to power with
  - working across differences in life-giving ways
  - applying skills and practices change communication cultures
  - support leadership and team development
- Restorative Conversations for Family, Work, Congregations, or Community groups:
  - Using Nonviolent Communication to repair, restore, and renew a specific situation or address destructive unhealthy communication habits and patterns that are creating separation and conflict
  - Learning and practicing more effective and healthy communication skills, habits, and patterns
  - Creating effective agreements and working to refine what is working and what is not working
  - Develop a menu for your organization to transform conflict
  - Parents who have been court-ordered or voluntarily are seeking support for disengaging from confrontational and conflictual patterns
- Courage & Renewal principles and practices:
  - Conversational Guidelines for greater inclusion and authenticity
  - Open & Honest Questions®
  - Learning to hold tensions in life-giving ways
  - Standing in the Tragic Gap
  - Wisdom Circle – Modified Clearness Committee
  - Leading Together – for leadership, organizations, and congregations who want to use and integrate CR principles and practices into your culture
  - listening to and accessing your hidden wholeness
- Grief and Bereavement
  - Nonviolent Communication skills and Practices to understand your grief
  - How to talk with others and receive others
  - Courage & Renewal discernment practices – finding a sense of wholeness when you feel shattered
  - Accompaniment of your grief so that you are moving with instead of against the pain, confusion and rebuilding a new life
- Intercultural Competence and Social & Racial Justice Work
  - As an IDI Administrator® and ICS Facilitator®, I support Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)® individual and group debriefing for Profile, Development Plan, and coaching for Orientation
  - Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory (ICS)® debrief for individuals and groups, tied to IDI and coaching to move through conflict in new ways
  - Leadership and team support
  - Creating a Culture of Care – JEDI – NVC and Racial & Social Justice
  - White to White Conversations about race (and other Identity groups)
  - Accountability Groups support Beloved Community through a focus on learning, caring, and listening to those who have not had space to share their voices. Caucus gatherings examples: ably-different & able-bodied; BIPOC, People of Color, White, I don’t know how to label myself, Multiracial; generational groups.
- Walk & Talks
  - Walking & Talking in a place of local beauty reduces stress
  - Moving at a pace that works for you
  - Exploring metaphors & interconnectedness with nature
  - Creating relaxation and renewal
  - If you can’t walk, we can Sit & Talk in a place of local beauty, i.e. Botanic Gardens, local park, State park.
- Forest Bathing Walks – Health and Well-Being Practices
  - Guided walks to reduce individual stress & support reflection, renewal, and relaxation
  - Wellness Plans for individuals, families, communities, organizations
  - The interconnectedness between our individual/social lives and planetary health
  - Can be local urban parks, Botanic Gardens, Hudson Gardens, National Forest, waterways, greenways, or other places of beautiful nature
- Storytelling & Story Listening
  - Using story to heal, renew, and inspire
  - The Third Side of Peace – using stories to foster peacemaking
  - Discover the storyteller Inside!
  - Family storytelling
  - Understanding where you are in your bigger narrative story – beginning, middle, or end?
- Mentoring
  - Supporting you in learning and facilitating Nonviolent Communication skills, key distinctions, and practices
  - Supporting Courage & Renewal Facilitators in Preparation or Practitioners
  - Story work
  - Art of Hosting work – Pro-action Café, World Café, Chaordic Stepping Stones Planning, Circle work

What my style of coaching is not:

Traditional goal-oriented life coaching sessions, where you will be given a specific goal to achieve before the next session. No pressure with a formal goal focus. Coaching is not therapy, although it will feel therapeutic at times.

Location

We can meet in person, on zoom, Walk & Talk, Forest Bathing Walk, or in a place of local beauty, i.e. Botanic Gardens or Hudson Gardens.

Are we a good match?

One free 30-minute session that gives us an opportunity to:

share why you are seeking coaching
hear about the body of works I offer
get a sense of my style
share fee and timing
discern if we are a good match

Fee

My fee is based on the Hebrew word, “chai”, which means the essence or fullness of life.

Gematria is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a word, so that “chai” = 18. Thus my fee is based on multiples of 18.

We will talk about what works for you and what works for me, coming to a mutual agreement to support both of our needs.

For Restorative Conversations, expanding series, training, facilitation with coaching support, and Organizational or congregational work, we will develop a package of services and discuss fees based on this larger scale of work.

Timing

Coaching is a personal and intimate process that depends on how fast you want to move. We will set up a mutually agreed-upon schedule that reflects what you want to do, check in regularly if this is working for you, and adjust as needed.

Testimonials

I have worked with many people over the years and Susan is by far one of the best. I grew up in an era of ‘suck it up and drive on,’ and that coupled with personal and work trauma caused me to live in a constant state of fight or flight. Susan is highly adept at sifting through the ‘story’ to get to the heart of what really matters, whether the topic was work, marriage, parenting, aging parents or just everyday life. She patiently and skillfully helped me move away from anxious living towards a more peaceful and calm existence. Susan’s approach using Non-Violent Communication was instrumental in helping me to not only better understand myself but also communicate more effectively with others. I walked away from every single session feeling deeply seen and understood. This was life changing and immensely healing. I am forever grateful for Susan’s wisdom and kind, nurturing presence that helped me during one of the most difficult times of my life. I don’t know where I would be without her.

If I had to choose one word to describe Susan Kaplan it would be earnest. Her care for people and the well-being of the planet is on display at every training I have taken from her. The diverse traditions and approaches she draws from provide a nourishing richness to her presentations. I have greatly benefited from the insights and techniques I have learned from her.

I have worked in child welfare for 18 years. I met Susan when my agency brought her in to help us build a culture of care. She compassionately helped us navigate having brave and courageous conversations to help build a more equitable and inclusive culture in our workplace. When I mentioned to my clinical supervisor that I was looking to do some of my own work individually and preferred to work with someone who was skilled at helping the helper, I was thrilled when she mentioned Susan! I have worked one on one with Susan for over a year now, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity. She helps me slow down when I'm spinning and chasing my own thoughts, grounds me, and helps me connect with my often very neglected emotions. I love that she is well trained in nonviolent communication, mindful self-compassion, and nature therapy, as I appreciate these practices as well.

Susan supported me through a difficult season of mourning and considering the unfamiliar, with tenderness and strength. Her ability to bring straightforward input gently, and offer fluidly from a wide variety of tools, met me where I was at while encouraging me forward. And I also appreciate her natural way of bringing herself transparently, bringing in deeper connection and modeling into a “professional” relationship.