For Immediate Release:

Colman & Company’s work in executive coaching and leadership development is “going gangbusters,” particularly in the Denver community and within the banking, M&A and healthcare sectors. Most of Colman & Company’s work is done at the individual (CEO) or small group (executive team) level.

Ms. Colman is seeking to maximize her reputation as a coach and to expand her brand and her audience by becoming better recognized as a leading motivational speaker. She has been selected to address banking executives,  healthcare executives, Colorado Bar Association as well as other audiences. Ms. Colman wants to focus her initial speaking efforts on a topic about which she is particularly passionate: Wired to Win: Maximizing Human Performance at Home and Work. Her narrative will weave in biographical information, interactive exercises from her coaching practice and subject matter expertise.

Ms. Colman has engaged dovetail solutions (http://www.dovetailsolutions.com/) to assist in her public speaking and rebranding efforts. Specifically, dovetail solutions will provide rebranding, speech writing and coaching assistance  to Ms. Colman. dovetail solutions will also provide targeted public relations services.

Comments (0) Aug 29 2010

I often hear people complain about homelessness, how it is worse, economy bad, gross, dirty. Complain, gripe, complain…

But I understand! I see it every day as I am riding around Denver on my bike, and I don’t like it anymore than the next person.

But do I use that complaint to affect me? Or inform me? The choice is always mine. Problem vs. Solution.

So, a few years ago, the issue of homelessness became a passion of mine. I decided to turn the frustration into a request within my family. I said to my daughter, “what if while we are making your lunch, we make an extra lunch and when I am driving to my clients all day around town I can give it out to someone in need?”

She gave me the “oh mom” look and begrudgingly got on board.

And so a tradition began. Much to people’s surprise, I have never been refused, never been spit on, never been scared. Never.

Now, one caveat is that I use exceptionally good judgment before I approach anyone homeless in my Lexus Hybrid SUV, to make sure my gut says go. You can see it in their bodies, their eyes.

So, recently my daughter and I were at our favorite burrito restaurant, Chipotle, and they were having a drawing for six burritos. She grabbed my business card and threw it in. I said, oh sweetie, I never win at those things. She gave me the, are you walking your talk or what? look. I acquiesced, always happy to be put back on my prosperity track by my daughter.

Of course, you know what happened.

I won!

Not being able to eat one quarter of one burrito, much less six we knew exactly what to do: time for a homeless run. That was the best after school event yet. The pure joy of seeing someone enjoy what we easily take for granted.

Probably won’t change the homeless problem per se, or will it?

Regardless, what would the fabric of our lives look like if we leaned into our complaints and took action from there, even tiny action?

Loving and in gratitude for my ability to choose, Kendall

Comments (0) Aug 25 2010

Come join us for these upcoming Speaker Events

ACG Denver is among the largest and most active of all organizations focused on M&A and Corporate Growth. ACG is an organization that helps Corporate Executives navigate the M&A and corporate growth business community through valuable content, connections and best of class resources.

UPCOMING EVENTS
September 14, 2010
ACG ACG Monthly Luncheon – Speaker: Ray Schiavone, CEO Quark
October 05, 2010
ACG Monthly Luncheon – Speaker: George Heinrichs, CEO Intrado
October 20, 2010
5th Annual Investment & Finance Cross-Networking Event

to register:

http://www.acg.org/denver/default.aspx

Comments (0) Aug 25 2010

Recently I was on a mountain bike ride from Vail to Copper Mountain and was in deep thought. I remembered the quote by Sir Isaac Newton, (when asked how he discovered the theory of gravity.) “You would have discovered it too if that’s all you had thought about every day.”

I thought about the work I had done with my own coach, Steve Chandler and told him that I really WANTED something but still hadn’t figured out HOW TO get it. (The want was to fill a new program of mine, www.safariwoman.net in record time with an already full client schedule).

He asked me to open my calendar and show me how much time in the past four weeks I had booked for calling people, for taking any action. Any tiny action.

He would see almost no time booked. I asked myself – how can you discover gravity, or anything else you want to discover (like how to be happy, or how to make a great living) without absolute, total focus? Without time set aside for thinking about it?

And then as a reminder, on my mountain bike I rode past this sign in a store window in Copper Mountain:

I stopped dead in my mountain tracks. Fear. That’s always the culprit – the voice that takes us far far away from the plan we said we were committed to.

So, now the calendar is filled with time booked for filling my program. Lots of time. Way more than I may need, spacious time, luxurious time, and it’s filling as we speak.

Comments (0) Aug 21 2010

Colman & Company Completes Year One of Leadership FirstBank

“Kendall Colman brings a refreshing energy to the executive coaching and leadership development field, plus a wealth of experience in the financial services industry,” said John Ikard, CEO of FirstBank. “She is a great resource for us as we look to build on our success as Colorado’s largest locally owned bank with almost $10 Billion in assets and over 130 locations in Colorado.”

Comments (0) Aug 21 2010

Worry is the opposite of action.  It keeps us mentally spinning in our own worst-case future when we could
have been taking action in the present moment.

How will you use your imagination today?

P.S. if you need help, just ask a child.

Comments (0) Aug 21 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tTkp0poCX8&feature=player_embedded – !

Always love to see Colman & Company’s two top leadership coaches, Todd Musselman and Mark Musselman singing their hearts out.  They sang There is a Place in the World for a Gambler for us as we wrapped up our coaching prosperity program in Phoenix.  What song moves you to let your Light shine?

Kendall

Comments (0) Aug 21 2010

5 years ago, I had the privilege to sit across from a CEO in what began as a very unlikely and yet powerful conversation. The conversation was not an easy one, as he articulated what he wanted most for his organization – the culture and for his staff . He was caught in a paradox that many in positions of executive leadership are when things are pretty good. Is it better just to keep things the same? Status quo isn’t bad. How do I dare dream for more? Ask for more? Do I deserve more? What if as a result of looking under the rocks it becomes worse, not better?

But he and I explored that, and he got very clear about what he was giving up — personally and for the good of this entire organization by not envisioning more, at least once with his team. And so we began with a three day offsite with his senior team. It wasn’t an easy first day – kind of like going to the doctor and getting the diagnosis and plan for your recovery all in one. We looked under every rock and put it all out on the table.  Then the heavy lifting began.

Very quickly, as hard as it was, things began to change. Just by asking different questions – a simple set of questions – instead of the usual why is this happening again? Whose fault is it? All resulting in a pattern in which people were skittish about pointing fingers, and the high performers just taking more work home. Before my eyes, the conversations began to shift amongst the team in a powerful way towards openness, accountability and responsibility.

And so we began and continued, and over the course of five years, with a strategy retreat at the beginning of the fiscal year, we have consciously and intentionally improved the culture…to one of being rooted in core values, skilled at courageous conversations, respectful of inherent personality differences, and grounded in team norms, understandings, guiding principles, — what they now call their Team Agreements.

As a result, every person on that teams says, “things are different here. Employee engagement is higher, net income is higher, customers are staying longer, and we are having FUN doing it.”

That’s how I am going to spend my day today…beginning year six facilitating the vision for the year with now 60 people – a high performing, fully functioning and electrified team.

Kendall

p.s. If you’d like to know how much blame is within your team, contact me, and I’ll send you our assessment, complimentary, just for asking.

Comments (0) Aug 19 2010

I worked recently with an amazing man who is up to big things. Bigger than he even sees right now because he has a pattern of guilt that keeps him being just – “semi amazing”.

Some of my clients are people that come to me after trying to create their life by looking deeply into their the past. Sometimes this means they go to therapy.

Shallow, flatland reductionist psychology lets you study your childhood and adolescent history of wounds and negative beliefs, but that’s all. They don’t realize that although we can’t change the past, we can change our relationship to the past.

In my opinion, one of the reasons that skillful coaches sometimes succeed where psychologists have failed is because of a coach’s effectively enthusiastic approach to creating his client’s future. This is why I left the mental health counseling field long ago to become a coach.

I say, let’s create a surge in your life!

But our mind still thinks spirit lives beyond the mind and the body.

That we have to call on it. Or pray for it. Or earn it. Or feel guilty about it. Be good enough for it.

We desperately “call on the light” or ask that prayers be “answered” not knowing we are made of light.

Isn’t spirit already always infusing both mind and body with the life force? But we “reach out,” calling for better fortune, for more light, as Steve Chandler (www.clubfearless.com) says, “like the sun asking to borrow light from a candle”.

Fearless creativity is already in us, waiting. Just waiting. It’s waiting for us to take action, because that’s how it gets released. Steven Pressfield, in his masterpiece The War of Art asks, “How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing, that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to?”

Loving, Kendall

Comments (0) Aug 18 2010

I was leading a speech class the other day and we began with a wonderful exercise called Relational Presence, a way of being with the audience not often experienced and taught.

Reason being, it causes anxiety in people because perhaps for the first time in their life  they are actually “being with” another person with no words, just maintaining eye contact.

How was that? I asked them. “weird, uncomfortable, always told never to stare, awkward.”

But after the second time through, they were more comfortable.

It’s the same idea the Tao Te Ching had: “The slow overcomes the fast.”

The mind entertains one thought at a time, and only one.

The greatest cause of feeling “nervous” and “dread” in speaking is caused by not knowing this.

The greatest source of stress in public speaking is the mind’s attempt to carry many thoughts, many tasks, many facts and figures, many observations, many worries, many concerns at once.

The mind can’t do that.

No mind can, not even Einstein’s mind could.

One thing. Slow down to one thing and your speech will be golden.

Comments (1) May 12 2010