Now for those of you who don't know anything about Bikram yoga, it is an extremely rigorous style of yoga. Each session contains 26 poses, each performed twice. Sessions are 90 minutes long and are practiced in a room heated to 100-110 degrees. It is like doing yoga in a sauna.

I attended the first class and I was one of four new people. The other three left before the 90 minutes as up. This is a demanding practice. As I practiced, I observed my reaction to the rigor. I noticed that I would loose focus and give up. I would pop out of the pose thinking "I hate this. I'm sweating like a pig and it hurts." Then I noticed that when I relax my mind and place my attention on my body that things were different. My body wasn't complaining. It was just kind of hanging out - just being there and doing yoga. Then I would think "This hurts" and find myself giving up and popping out of the postures early. I watched as I did this over and over. I began playing around, shifting my attention into what I was feeling in my body instead of what I was thinking. When I would start to think, I would shift my attention back to my body. In this way, I was learning that sticking with rigor is going with the flow in my body. When I was "going with the flow" before I was going with my flow of thoughts and that wasn't conducive to applying rigor.

My new knowledge about how I relate to rigor has been very useful in working with clients. I've become very aware of how I am going with the flow and what effect that is having on the relationship between me and the client. My effectiveness with clients has improved and I feel more grounded and relaxed overall. And I signed up for a six month membership at the yoga studio and practice regularly.

Q: How did you decide to become a coach?
SM: I never made a big career decision to be a coach. I didn't design it this way. As my personal and professional life became more integrated with the world, I discovered that I was doing coaching and being a coach. Of course, I didn't call it that until much later. Let me tell the longer version of the story of this discovery.

I began my professional career as a software developer and tester in the mid-1980s. I found lots of bugs and created my share as well. I realized that the cost of poor quality to customers, companies, and society is huge - even loss of life in some cases. I was frustrated by this discovery. I began to search for ways of developing higher quality software believing that this would help alleviate these terrible costs. I read tons of books, attended quality conferences, took university courses, befriended and apprenticed experts in the field, and participated in quality improvement initiatives. However, knowing and teaching these methods for developing high-quality software didn't help. These methods have to actually be used by software developers and managers. So I realized that the problem I was working on wasn't strictly a technological challenge but was more fundamentally a people challenge. And I realized that the focus had always been on people - quality of life - disguised as a technology focus - poor quality software.

Just about the time I realized that my professional life was taking a turn from technology to people focus, I also started practicing Zen meditation. I was attracted to the freedom spoken about by the Eastern philosophy of the Buddhists, Taoists, and Yogis. Like many westerners, my first foray into this foreign worldview was through Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" which was casually given to me by a friend. It sat on my bookshelf for about six months before I even opened it. I eventually read it. Looking back, I can say that I understood almost none of Suzuki's meaning although my claim was quite the opposite at the time.

I joined a Zen reading group and they were just starting the book "A Brief History of Everything" by Ken Wilber. I had previously seen the book in stores but was turned off by the boasting title and stoic picture of Wilber on the cover. What I discovered by reading it was an amazing and different way of looking at pretty much everything. Wilber's project was the synthesis of wisdom and truth from all available sources - philosophy, psychology, natural history, cultural history, the evolution of consciousness and more. The book actually lived up to its title. This massive project was the description of what he called an integral theory.

Through reading Wilber I learned of the limitations of systems theory which I had used extensively during my software quality days. Systems theory cannot model consciousness itself - a critical piece of the human challenges - either in the individual or the collective. In Wilber's language, systems theory primarily a lower right-hand quadrant paradigm. So I learned that I needed to include the development of consciousness both individually and collectively to be effective.

A few job transitions led to becoming the Manager of Organizational Development for a medium-sized industry-leading software company. Focusing on helping the leaders and the organization become more effective provided an opportunity to experiment, to learn, and to practice nurturing development. This was challenging and I learned a lot about myself and the human condition along the way. During this time my understanding of how people develop was refined.

Over the course of several years I synthesized much of the existing understanding of leading and organizing into a theory of leadership and organizational development, using integral theory as a guide. One of the things that I learned is that you can't separate leadership development from organizational development. They are not two changes but one despite the many books and experts who treat one but not the other. I also learned that there are at least eight distinct ways of leading and organizing - each attuned to different challenges, each with their own gifts, each with their own pitfalls.

The question to ask isn't "which is the best overall way of leading and organizing?" Instead, the question is "which way are we using now" followed closely by "is it working" following closely by "which way must we use next?" Having a theory that describes and integrates the many ways of leading and organizing is a big help in answering these questions. Ultimately, a leader must embody these questions in their way of being. In other words, you can't think your way to leading excellently. You'll never have the luxury to do so when it counts the most.

Emerging from this work is a practice of integral leading and organizing. Integral leadership is compassionate leadership and compassionate leadership is very effective, very efficient and it calls forth the best in people.

Q: What do you mean by compassionate leadership?
SM: Let's first understand the word compassion. It is composed of two root words "com" and "passion." One meaning of "-passion" is "suffering". In Latin "com-" means "together with" (or so I'm told - I don't speak Latin). From this we get the meaning of compassion as "suffering together." Now this seems useless - the leader who suffers with you. However, to really understand what is meant by compassionate leadership, we have to dig still deeper.

What is suffering? There are many ways to answer this question. I'm not intending to slight the question but let me give one simple answer. Suffering is enduring your present experience. But let's shift the tone into terms we can appreciate more readily. Suffering is being present. We now begin to see a glimmer of what a compassionate leader is - a leader who is present. At this point you may be asking, "What is the value of a leader who is present?" It may seem all too obvious to say it but the value of being present is that everything happens now, in the present. Change only happens now, in the present. Leading only happens now, in the present. Organizing only happens now, in the present.

Q: So being present is the foundation for leading and organizing. That isn't so hard, is it?
SM: Being present is no small task. We live in a society that continuously draws our attention to the past or the future - anything but the present. Our society is fixated on what the future will bring. This is especially true in high tech where I've spent most of my professional life. We are very achievement oriented. The flipside of this is that we are also very deadline oriented and we fear making the wrong choices. And it seems we're all waiting for the day when we can truly relax because we are finally there, wherever that is. In all these ways and many more we avoid being present to our own lives.

Q: And our attention is drawn to the past too? How is that?
SM: Memories surface. We justify our actions. We regret our choices. We are conditioned to escape our present experience - our suffering - by shifting our attention into the past or the future. Psychologists have a name for this conditioning. In a general sense they call it "ego" (which also includes superego).

Our ego is build on a foundation called the pleasure principle. This is the principle that we move away from pain and toward pleasure.

Q: Are you saying that our focus should be only on what's happening now exclusively?
SM: No. We need integration of past, present, and future for our lives to make sense and be fulfilling. The present is where the past and the future integrate. Without being present there is no integration. Compassionate leadership is a way of being intentional, strategic, empathetic, intelligent, effective, efficient, timely, and human. This is supported by the kind of integration we're talking about here. To find leaders with this integral way of being in the world is rare in my experience. We're just scratching the surface here. Being present has a deep and profound meaning. When we dig a little deeper we discover that there are qualities of attention. Exploring these qualities is exploring our true nature. This topic is vast and deep and probably best left for a future interview.

Q: Is that why you call your company "Compassionate Coaching?"
SM: Yes. My way of coaching is compassionate because that's what works. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher, made the useful distinction between true compassion and idiot compassion. Idiot compassion is being kind to people by helping them avoid and escape their suffering. Idiot compassion doesn't challenge you to really understand what is happening in your life. You gain no new knowledge about yourself and the world. You just keep acting the way you've always acted.

True compassion - to suffering together - actually engages life during the only instant anything can be discovered and done - the present moment. This can be very challenging and painful some days. Avoidance may feel good for an instant but it is a trap. You feel good for an instant but the trap is that you need to keep avoiding your life to keep feeling good. So you see, idiot compassion is actually very cruel without intending to be so.

Q: We're getting the cart ahead of the horse. Let's get back to how you discovered coaching as your vocation.
SM: Along the way I discovered and incorporated integral transformative practices into my life - practices that integrate body, mind, soul, and Spirit in ways that are transformative. Life became increasingly integrated. The distinction between personal and professional life became blurry. That's not to say that I became a workaholic which I guess also blurs that distinction. The integration I'm describing is more an experience of integrated identity. This primed me to discover the next wave of life - coaching.

Q: How did you discover this next wave?
SM: By this time, I had already been doing some coaching but I didn't know it. Since I was involved with the leadership and organizational development community, I had heard of coaching but didn't really know what it was. I asked a friend who is coach to recommend a good book on coaching. He recommended James Flaherty's book "Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others". As I read James' book I discovered that his brand of coaching was founded on the very same philosophy-in-action as my leadership and organizational development practice - Wilber's integral theory. I instantly resonated with James' approach and signed up for his coaching courses at New Ventures West. A year and a half later I graduated as a certified integral coach and started calling myself a coach.

At this point, calling myself a coach put my whole life into perspective and all the different experiences that seemed so disconnected sort of fell into place. As I said, it wasn't as much as design as it was a discovery that brought a new sense of meaning to life.

Q: What happened during the year and a half of training?
SM: This year and a half was an intense period of synthesizing experiences - both the triumphs and the tragedies - and all that I had been learning about philosophy and psychology - both Eastern and Western - through body practices, creativity exercises, more reading, a discipline of self-observation, and meditation. Slowly an expanding self-understanding shifted my way of being in the world toward coaching as a vocation.

During this period I discovered that the deep intention and gift of all of personal and professional life so far was to help people to learn about themselves - how wonderful and yet how mysterious they are. I also learned through my own experience that learning about oneself actually has a tremendous and positive impact on how one lives. The expansion of self-understanding came with more joy, more peace, more self-acceptance, and more self-compassion. I bring this into the work I do with clients.

Q: You're describing a lot of intensive self work. Are you continuing that today?
SM: Yes. There is a playful curiosity that maintains an intense engagement in expanding self-understanding. The curiosity seeks to deepen understanding. I continue to explore new practices and work with a spiritual teacher and several coaches. You can't get there by yourself. The coaches and teachers I work with fill a critically important role in fostering self-understanding. They provide the necessary context to deepen the understanding.

These days I'm intensely studying and integrating the wisdom of Hameed Ali's Diamond Approach (taught by the Ridhwan School) into my way of being and coaching practice.

Q: What is your approach to coaching? And how does it work?
SM: My coaching practice is founded on the philosophy that you are effective and fulfilled when your life is well integrated. So it follows that the central problem, if you could call it that, is lack of integration. The methodology I use is called Integral Coaching.

Q: What do you mean by "when your life is well integrated?"
SM: To answer that question we have to ask another question, "What are the parts of life that are integrated?" Of course, we don't experience life as a collection of parts but thinking of it this way is helpful when starting to describe living an integral life. We experience self, culture, and nature. Clearly these have to be integrated and working synergistically to experience effectiveness and fulfillment.

For example, say you only speak English and you get off the airplane in Frankfurt, Germany. You're in a different culture, they speak German not English, and you're likely to be less effective in getting around until you figure out how to integrate with the German culture. You might find someone who speaks both English and German for example and pay they to be your interpreter. Or you buy a book written in English on how to travel around Germany. The need for integration applies to national and ethnic cultures as well a corporate and professional cultures.

You also have to be integrated with your natural environment. For example, you might find yourself caught in the rain without an umbrella. This is a simple example of not being integrated with nature. Your natural environment is a source of possibilities, limitations, and resources. How well do you synergize with those? While these are trivially obvious examples they begin to show what is meant by integrating self, culture, and nature.

Q: This doesn't sound too hard. Is it more complex that you're making it seem?
SM: Well, yes. For example, what is the "self?" We experience the body, emotions, thoughts, and soul. In our western culture, many people are dissociated from their bodies in some fashion or another. This shows up as all sorts of addictions - from hard drugs, to nicotine, to alcohol, to sugar, television, video games, and so on. Some people just need to "get outta here" and "go somewhere." People repress or deny emotions all the time. We run from "bad" feelings toward "good" feelings. And our thoughts run wild raising everything from enlightening insights to harsh criticisms about ourselves and others. Now we're getting a more accurate picture of the challenge of integration.

Q: What about soul? First, what is the soul?
SM: There are many ways to answer this. Each spiritual tradition has an answer to this question but it isn't necessary to align yourself with one to answer the question. For me, the soul is what actually experiences or witnesses everything. It is your connection with everything you experience. Your soul is not your body, your emotions, or your thoughts. Realizing this can be profound for some people. You are not your body. You are not your emotions. You are not your thoughts. You are that which witnesses your body, your emotions, your mind, your cultural surroundings, and the natural environment around you. And when you integrate all of these parts of life, you are effective and fulfilled.

Q: You are framing integration as a path toward effectiveness and fulfillment.
SM: My framing in terms of effectiveness and fulfillment is a slight simplification. To deepen our understanding of what it is like to live an integral life we need to ask, "what is effectiveness?"

Effectiveness is self-correcting, self-generating and being capable of long-term excellence. A person who is self-correcting is capable of recognizing when they are off track and can correct their course without assistance. Furthermore, people can always improve. Someone who is self-generating is capable of discovering ways to improve on their own. Long-term excellence is achieved when a person meets the objective standards of the particular discipline in which the coaching and integration are occurring. All three aspects of effectiveness are experienced when living an integral life.

Q: Is this an all or nothing thing? Is a person either effective or ineffective?
SM: A person can be effective at project management but be ineffective in building the kinds of relationships necessary for promotion to vice president. There are many aspects of life, each with different challenges, and people will be effective in some aspects and ineffective in other aspects. People tend to be effect to the extend that they are integrated. So you can experience the integration of self, corporate culture, and environment at work in a way that enables you to be an effective project manager. However, you may need to expand your integration to include other aspects of worklife to become effective whatever way is necessary to become promoted to vice-president.

Q: What about fulfillment?
SM: To me being fulfilled is a state of compassionate acceptance and love of who you are right now. Fulfillment is resting in the recognition of the inherent value and meaningfulness of your life. It is a state of self-compassion and self-love. Contrast fulfillment with success. Success is something to be achieved in the future. Many people live their lives chasing success, or should I say, they live in a state of chasing success. Even when they achieve success, their state overwhelms that feeling and they are off on another chase. I call this the "success loop."

A truly integral life is a life that includes love, reverence, joy, serenity, peace, and occasional moments of bliss. How much more fulfilling can you get?

Q: What kinds of people hire you?
SM: So far my clients have mostly been professionals struggling to become more effective and fulfilled at work or in the midst of some sort of life transition - say from one career to another. I've also been helping leaders become more grounded and better able to survive and lead during these economically turbulent times. Several clients are coaches themselves and we work together to improve their effectiveness as coaches.

More broadly, the people that I work with tend to be bright, curious about life, interested in understanding themselves and in becoming more integrated, more effective, and more fulfilled. I'm always learning new things from clients. I value these relationships dearly and I'm very blessed to work with such gifted and wonderful people.

Q: If people are interested in working with you, what are the first steps?
SM: The first step is to give me a call or drop me an e-mail to arrange a phone conversation. First we try to get a general sense of how well we would partner. If all lights are green, then we schedule our first session. During the first session, we discuss the your issue and get to know each other better. Then I build a coaching program and propose along with a cost quote. If you accept the proposal, we begin the work and meet regularly to track development and work through difficulties. Along the way we make many discoveries and work to integrate new capabilities into our way of being. One of the wonders of coaching is that both the coach and the client develop as a result of the partnership.