What's the Difference Between the Pursue Whole Model and Therapy?

We don't operate in a vacuum. And I mean, that's such an easy thing to say, but it's so true that the way that we are individually ends up affecting every sphere of our life. Right? You think of having a really bad argument with someone that you care about and then trying to be productive the next day. It's almost impossible.

Welcome to the Pursue Whole podcast. I'm your host, Andy Maurer, and in this podcast I share my insights as a leadership coach and former therapist. I sit down with some of the highest level leaders in business, entertainment, and human performance to help you pursue wholeness in your work life and relationships. Thanks for joining me. Let's jump in.

Hey, everybody. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking with Kim Dioseggi and she is our new coach here at Pursue Whole. And one thing that we're really excited to share with you is her unique specialty around both individual coaching for leaders, but also her relational work that she can do with co founders, team members, or spouses. So stay tuned for that. In addition to that, we're going to have a really kind of robust conversation that I hear from a lot of clients this question of how is therapy different than Pursue Whole what you do at coaching, and how is Pursue Whole coaching different than what I typically understand in executive coaching? So stick around because we're going to address that issue and so much more on today's episode of the Pursue Whole podcast.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Pursue Whole podcast. We have a really exciting announcement today. We are bringing on a new leadership coach. Her name is Kim. Kim, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

The first thing I want to do is share a little bit on why we decided to bring you on in the first place and share that with some of our listeners and our leaders who seek out Pursue Whole for some of their growth and healing. And the reason why we wanted to bring on another coach in Pursue Whole was because I was really hitting my max capacity and how many clients I could take on. And there were still a lot of clients who were coming to me and saying we would love to take this journey and start this journey. And it's really important for me that I don't take on more than I can handle because I don't want to take on this huge load of clients. I want to take on a smaller load and really service those clients in the best way possible and add as much value to them as I can. So I was reaching my max. And I also realized with my unique specialty, I have some limitations around what I can offer to my clients. And I realized, you know, Kim, you have a completely different, different expertise in a lot of ways. Similar, but different. And especially from even a gender standpoint of your perspectives as a woman. And you know, some of our female and male leaders, I know that for me personally, work that I've done in the past with either coaches or therapists have been really beneficial when it is the opposite gender and not always the same gender. So we wanted to bring you on and I'd love for you to share a little bit of just your background in therapy and coaching.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I guess the short story or the long story, depending on how you look at it. My first intro into working with leaders was kind of an unexpected start. So in my early 20s, I worked as a mountaineering guide in British Columbia, Canada. And so my role was to take these group on week long trips. And apart from getting them safely up and down the mountain, my job was to really help them connect with themselves, their faith and the people on the group. So it's really a week long immersion to slowing down, connecting and just having an opportunity that's so outside of what our cultural norm is. And so while it's an early 20 something, I did this for three years. And while we had quite a few different type of groups that would come through, there was always these reoccurring groups of executive leaders that would take these week long trips with their team and it was an opportunity for them to just do something so different. At first I think they kind of viewed it as a team building opportunity. But over the years they started bringing parent child trips like they would all bring. It'd be father daughter trips, father son trips, spousal trips. And the first two or three days of these trips, these very high performing leaders would just be wound up, right? They'd be like, we're getting up this mountain as fast as we can and they're just running for it, performing. Like they're so used to having a really hard time disconnecting from email and slowing down enough. But then around day three, they would just kind of sink into this rhythm. And it was at that point that transformation started happening. And they would just start making these comments of being able to connect with their creativity and reconnecting with their purpose. Right. Whether that was at home or in their career. And it was on those trips that I really caught fire for what a unique population it is to work with leaders and what a valuable resource they are. But they're running so hard and really needing to Slow down.

Yeah.

And so that was my entrance where from there I started looking at doing wilderness therapy was kind of my next step. And then from there I moved into getting my master's degree, focusing on relationship counseling and group dynamics and really from the group perspective in the mountains, seeing how valuable that role is. And yeah, that's what kind of transitioned me into therapy where we met.

So we, for listeners who don't know this, Kim and I actually worked together at a counseling practice for three years before she came on as a coach. So we have a pretty extensive background together and that's why I felt so comfortable hiring you. This was one of the most difficult hires that I had, you know, in front of me because this is a very client facing individual. I care a lot about my clients and the experiences that they get that they're taking care of, that there's a lot of value that's added. And I know that I wanted a therapist to come over because of their clinical training and their background, someone who has a background in therapy to come over and actually operate as a coach with that skill set. That was important for me. I didn't just want to bring over an executive coach because they have some limitations there. And specifically what we do in pursue whole, we bring the best of the therapeutic world to coaching. And Kim, you fit that. I know that when we were at our old counseling practice, we did a lot of joint therapy together. We would work with couples. I'd work with the guy, you'd work with the gal, and then we'd do joint couple sessions together. So I've seen you work in that setting. I've also seen the way that you really desire to grow and develop as a person. And we have very similar modalities, we have very similar approaches and the way we kind of see and perceive people. So share with us a little bit of your background and some of your specialties and expertise and training that you're bringing to coaching.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, apart from the actual degree modality of focusing on groups and families, I've really taken a focus on. Attachment theory is kind of what the majority of all my work is founded in. And so the idea of attachment theory is that all of us have a unique attachment style that is rooted in our young relationships. Right. And those go on to develop into how we interact with our coworkers, with our spouse, with our children, and a lot of times end up creating quite a bit of distress in our life. And so that is the foundation of a lot of my work. And from there there's been focus on how that's ended up being perceived as trauma growing up, or, you know, I've worked with EMDR and AEDP and all these therapy modalities that really focus on reworking our attachment style to become more secure individuals so that we can be secure within our relationships. And so while that's the therapy world, it's transitioned a lot to leaders. Right. So many leaders have this really intense independence about them that is beautiful and strong and has made them very success, but has also prevented a lot of vulnerability within themselves or the relationships, or, you know, imposter syndrome that comes up or difficulty being humble enough to say, like, I don't know it, and not feeling like that's going to make them poor at their job.

Exactly. And attachment is extremely important. I've told multiple people, if you want to understand leaders, you need to read books on childhood trauma. It's just so prevalent in the work that we do with leaders. And we are not doing therapy in trauma. We're not doing deep therapeutic work, but we are using the, the information that we have around trauma and attachment to really inform the way we do our coaching. And we believe in very deep work, not just functional, behaving better, but actually changing as a person, structurally who you are as a person. And that's deep work. And we, we do deep work here at Pursu Whole. And that's why I wanted someone who was skilled enough to really not just jump in the water and not know what to do with it, but actually really skilled to help navigate in some of these really complex areas of relationships and emotion and connection with children and pressures and stress of leadership. And I felt like you would be an amazing fit. So I'm so happy you're on our team. So when I think about the clients that we serve and some of our unique similarities and differences, some of our similarities are that we're both former therapists, we have a background in therapy, we both have a background in trauma and attachment, and that really informs the way we do coaching. Some of the differences, though, are you have a unique opportunity to do what we're going to call relational coaching, which is this idea of when I work with leaders, it's a lot of individual work, self leadership, but they also have issues with co founders or team members or spouses and or partners, and that plays into how they're able to pursue wholeness. It's very difficult to pursue wholeness as an individual because we're part of a broader ecosystem. So, Kim, the work that you do on Relational coaching, really, being able to take co founders or team members or spouses and bring them together and help them pursue wholeness in their relationships is a really unique perspective. Can you share with us just a little bit of some of your philosophy around relational wholeness?

We don't operate in a vacuum, and I mean, that's such an easy thing to say, but it's so true that the way that we are individually ends up affecting every sphere of our life, right? We don't operate on our own, even if we try and try to a lot of the time. And to be whole as an individual also means to be whole in our relationships, right? In the therapy world, the number one thing we talk about with clients, whether that is an individual client that's coming in or a couple that's coming in, is, gosh, this relationship has been really hard, right? You hear all the time of somebody individually struggling with a spouse, where spouses coming in struggling with their children or, you know, a really bad argument with a coworker or a difficult personality, right. That they're working with. And so to be whole individually automatically means that we're whole in a relationship, right? It's so hard to be healthy and authentic and striving in the world when our relationships are struggling, right? You think of having a really bad argument with someone that you care about and then trying to be productive the next day, it's almost impossible. Like there's a fog over your mind. And so I just think it's so important that in order to have healthy health as an individual, you also have to have health in other areas as well. And we've talked a lot about that. Like, wholeness goes beyond even relationships, right? It goes into physical health, mental health, everything. And relationships are just something we can't go through the world without.

Absolutely. If you, if listeners would have caught that podcast we did a couple months ago on how tribes shape who you are, we looked at some research that showed really those close proximity circles, especially spouses and friends, their attitudes and beliefs absolutely highly shape our behaviors and our attitudes. And that's the same, you know, when I talk about exercise, really, if a spouse is not on board with, with another spouse's exercise program, their capacity to be successful in that is actually very low. So what we're trying to do around wholeness is not just look at the individual, but what ecosystems are they a part of and how to support them. Beyond relational coaching, you do a lot of leadership coaching, you do a lot of one on one with leaders, and you have a background on working a lot, one on one with individuals. What is a little bit of your philosophy? One on one with leaders?

Yeah. So working individually, I view it through a relational lens still. Right. I approach these individuals with the mindset that they are struggling outside of what I see in the room with them. And so my goal is to help them really identify what some of the blocking beliefs are. What are the limiting aspects of their relationships outside of the room that are really preventing them from being able to show up 100% in. In the work that they do at work, at home, their connections with their kids, their families.

That's great. And I think we need to specify too. So what's interesting is at Pursuit Whole, we're doing something that not a lot of companies have done. A lot of. A lot of leaders understand the coaching world, and some of them understand the therapy world. Before we discuss the distinction between therapy and what we do at Pursuit Whole in our coaching model, I think it's important to distinguish this world of executive coaching and how that's different than what we're doing at Pursuit Whole. So I think it's extremely helpful and beneficial for my clients to do executive coaching, whether that's a YPO group or a VISTA group or eo, to have a community around them or to have an executive coach helping them build their business, build their business work through strategic, functional issues that are occurring in the workplace or around how they are leading. As a leader, I think that's extremely helpful. But you reach a point where some of those executive leaders are not skilled at addressing issues below the line. We kind of talk about above the line issues and below the line issues. And below the line issues are really going to be those subconscious drives that emotional inhibitions and emotional barriers that are really driving behavior, which we believe is a huge culprit to external behavior, is really emotional issues underneath that are driving that around attachment or around trauma or around insecurity or around fear. And one thing that we do at pursu whole really well is we're really skilled at navigating below the line issues. So if you're chronically burned out or if you're feeling anxious or you don't know how to find your sense of empowerment or you carry a sense of fear and you find yourself operating out of this control role to perform, we're really good at helping identify what is the emotional barrier there and the drive and cleaning that out so that you can be more whole. And executive coaches are not going to have the capacity to drop down at some of those depths And I think generally we have this dichotomy or this dualistic view that, okay, I have an issue as a leader and what I'm going to do is I'm either going to go to executive coaching or I'm going to go to therapy. And those are very far apart. And we wanted at Pursu hold to bridge a gap and provide a third option, which is really this middle ground where we can speak into some of these therapeutic and emotional issues and lead and guide in some of these leadership issues. There's a lot of conversations I have with leaders around conflict, around team dynamics, around how they run their business. Not because I have an extensive background in business, but because I know this client well. So my advice to them around leadership and around difficult conversations and around how they run their team, it doesn't come out of generally what I know about necessarily running a 500 person company, but it comes out of looking at this person in front of me and saying, hey, David, hey Alex, I know you and I don't think that fits for who you are. So my advice on leadership, my advice on running teams, my advice on conflict resolution comes out of this deep knowledge of understanding this person more than really anyone in their life. And that's really valuable because for leaders, not a lot of people know who they are at a very deep level. And one of the things that pursue whole that we do as well is we bring a lot of compassion to the room, but we also bring a lot of candor. And I think this is a distinction with therapy because therapy provides a ton of candor, kind of this blank slate in order to let someone process. But there's only so much you can talk about. You really need someone to step in and offer that candor and say, hey, this is what I'm noticing and seeing. This is what I suggest to really offer suggestions, to offer advice, to offer clarity and to point things out that maybe a therapist isn't going to do. They're going to sit back and just let things happen. We at pursue whole as coaches, we're going to step in and we're going to lead and we're going to create accountability and we're going to have candor with you and compassion at the same time. So within pursue whole we know that therapy is a benefit. And as coaches we will actually refer out to a therapist in conjunction with their or work with clients frequently if there are issues going on. So Kim, what would be some of those issues within coaching that pursue whole we'd refer out for.

Yeah, I mean Therapy is very important in order to address a lot of the crisis in life. Right. As you said, it's important for everybody to go to therapy at some point. And a lot of those things, when we see it in clients of suicide, suicidal thoughts, self harm that comes up, any intense addiction that is preventing a leader's ability to go to work, to be present with family, those emotional blocks, while there's something that we can talk about that is not our role. Right.

To that requires a deep level of work of going down and down and down and down.

Right. That's not something that we can just, just dip down and then bring back up to present day. It's really needing to peel back those layers, which we think is best for a therapist to do.

Absolutely. And although we have a background as therapy and we are skilled in trauma, we really are focused on growth and development and we're not specialists in crisis management. And therapists are kind of best suited for those moments. So it doesn't mean that you can't work with us as a coach, but I've had clients, clients before where I've said, hey, in order to continue our working coaching and your growth and development as a leader, I would like you to work jointly with a therapist to deal a little bit deeper on some of these issues. And that is kind of the best combination of both worlds is to be able to have someone taking you down at a really deep level in that crisis, in that major depression or that suicidal thoughts. And a coach is able to allow you to kind of help you function as a leader and grow and develop continually in your life. So this is an exciting year for Pursue whole as we have brought on Kim full time now and she's starting to see clients. And this is a unique opportunity for even some of my current clients or people who are interested in maybe they don't want coaching, but they have a team member who they desire to level up both in their emotional intelligence or their relational intelligence that they see that that's inhibiting their work, work performance. Kim, you would be a fantastic support for them through that process. For leaders to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Yes, the best way would be reaching out just through our Pursue Whole website. You can find out more about me with the bio there and then you can also reach out through my email, which is just my first name. Kim. Pursue whole.com.

Awesome, Kim, thank you for being on the show with us and listeners. You will hear from Kim in the future and see her around.

I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks so much for listening. For more resources, links and show notes, visit pursue whole.com and click podcast. Before we go, it would be extremely helpful if you would please leave a review on itunes or wherever you find this podcast. This helps me understand my audience better and serve more leaders such as yourself. That's it for me this week. Feel free free to connect with me on LinkedIn or other social platforms and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Pursue Whole Podcast.