Lynn McMullen
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RESULTS EDUCATIONAL FUND

Tell us about your organization.
Results is a grassroots network of concerned citizens in the United States dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty in this country and around the world. The volunteers mainly do a lot of community organizing. They work with elected government officials and with the media to make this a higher national priority.

How long have you been with your present employer and what are your primary responsibilities?
I set the overall visionary direction of the organization. I and make a lot of decisions about working with public schools and working on international financial institution policy. I also do a lot of recruiting, training, and managing of the staff. I began Life Coaching prior to being in this job. I was the development director, which is a euphemism for being the fund-raiser. And, I began doing Life Coaching six years ago.

When and how did you first become aware of Life Coaching and how long have you been a Brande Foundation Life Coaching client?
Dave Ellis is one of the people who has been involved in our organization as a volunteer and a donor. When he came out for a conference with The World Bank, he and I had dinner together. He began talking about what he does professionally, which is to coach the principles of both businesses and non-profits to be more effective in every area of life. I was very intrigued by that and I started doing Life Coaching with him six years ago.

You are obviously a very successful, accomplished person who has more than found your calling. What prompted you to use Life Coaching?
I have a belief that people who are really good at anything actually use a lot of mentors in their lives. If you look at extraordinary professional athletes, they listen to a lot of coaches and take in a lot of advice. Part of being a successful person involves on-going learning and new challenges. Even though I was very successful at what I was doing, having a commitment like creating the political will to end hunger looks almost impossible to do. So I constantly looked for people who have a lot to offer, who do a lot of organizing, or people who’ve done a lot of fund-raising. Dave has talked to a lot of other successful executives about how they manage their lives. The other thing is that we might be very good in certain areas of our lives and more challenged in others. For example, if things are going really well at home, it actually allows you to be much more effective at work. And if things are going really well at work, you can be much more successful at what you’re doing at home. Life Coaching doesn’t compartmentalize your life. You actually deal with any of the issues that are of concern to you and any of the commitments you may have that you have not yet fully realized. Tackling the area of my life where I was struggling actually gave energy and vitality to everything that I was working on.

In what ways has Life Coaching been useful to you in your personal life?
One of the things I really like about Life Coaching is that the goals of the coaching relationship are established by the client. Anytime that I’ve had anything of concern to me, it’s always been my decision about where we were going to focus energy in our discussions. It might have been my concern about my teenage daughter and things she was going through, or my concern about the morale of my staff and what to do about it. I’ve gone through a major transition in my life, divorce and relocation. I’ve dealt with the problems of an adolescent youth and having her be empowered in her own life. I have a really fabulous relationship with her. I’ve also turned around a morale drift of discouragement in my staff. I’ve accomplished all of this with help from my Life Coach.

Have your personal relationships been affected and, if so, how?
Well, I’ll stick with my daughter since I brought that up. She’s 18, and I’ve been doing Life Coaching since she was 12. All the way through the adolescent process, I felt our relationship was strained. I’d have problems with her and she would do things I didn’t understand. I’d be upset and come into a situation with a lot of emotional charge. With my Life Coach, I could rehearse what I wanted to say in order to achieve an outcome I really wanted. What is really useful in the process is clarifying what I want in a particular area and then systematically going about doing the things to make it turn out that way. I established boundaries and expectations. I had the kind of conversations that build alignment as opposed to setting it up so that I won and she lost. So, my relationship with my daughter is much closer. And I feel like I’m much closer to my staff. When people really throw themselves passionately into a mission, they need to actually feel like they’re working on a team and that other people are going to be there for them and support them in their work. So I needed to establish a much deeper bond amongst my staff. I think that’s in a large part achieved. Certainly there’s always more work to do, but I’m really quite happy with what’s been happening.

How about professionally? How has Life Coaching affected your performance and productivity?
I’ve been in Washington, DC for four years. I literally have twice the staff and I’ve more than doubled our budget. We’ve moved into a new office space and designed a new logo. We have a 50% increase in volunteer participation nationwide, and we have many new allies on Capital Hill. I’ve worked with my Life Coach to take the organization to a new level. I didn’t see how I could get there. Part of the Life Coaching process is to help you clarify your vision for any area of your life and then to establish a plan on how to get there. All of the accomplishments I just mentioned were achieved during the time I was working with my Life Coach. One other thing I’ll just throw in is that politics, by its very nature, is adversarial. On Capital Hill people easily become quite polarized. But Life Coaching is really about empowerment and win-win. What I really want to get at here is that I have learned about how to be even more impactful in the political area by adopting a policy of not functioning in an adversarial mode. It kind of sticks out in this particular milieu. We are willing to stand for something that’s big enough so that everyone can see their way to participate. I think that many of our congressional victories over the last few years have occurred because we work with conservatives and liberals and middle of the road politicians for something that really serves all people.

The coach/client relationship in Life Coaching sometimes involves very open, candid, and honest communication about very sensitive subjects. How comfortable are you with divulging confidential information to your coach?
Early on, my coach was obviously very determined to establish parameters of confidentiality, and I am absolutely certain that he has never spoken anything about the content of our conversations. This gives me free reign to talk about whatever concerns me. Gradually I have learned to talk to him about everything from how to improve my sex life to how to improve intimacy in my communication. I’ve pretty much told him anything and everything and I feel extremely safe doing that. It is very useful to talk to somebody about very personal concerns, especially when it is someone who isn’t directly involved. When I was considering getting a divorce, I could talk to him about it better than anyone because he wasn’t trying to get me to do one thing or the other. He was helping me get clear about what I wanted and how I was going to get there. I really feel like I can talk to him about anything.

Is there one experience or change in your life that stands out that you feel is directly attributable to Life Coaching?
We did a lot of work in the area of my life plan. I began looking at a much bigger arena than I had up until that time. We talked about what kind of impact or what kind of legacy I wanted to leave. My coach is very good at getting me to think way outside the traditional parameters of what I thought was possible. I began to describe some of the things that I could see our organization achieving. It included bringing together people from all over the world in a summit on Micro Credit and establishing economic opportunity for people with very low income so that they could build their own businesses, create self employment, and even create employment for other people. When I first came up with that vision, it looked impossible. But we actually did a summit like that four years ago. We had several thousand people from nearly 200 countries and it was a smashing success. That’s a sample of the kind of thing that I’ve been able to achieve. My coach actually kept really close to me during the whole process. When we first had the vision, we had no idea how we were going to come up with the money. At that time our total budget was less than a million dollars and now our budget is over $3 million. All of that has been achieved in the last five years. So, I would say that, all in all, it’s enormous to have somebody who is your ally in establishing a bold vision. It’s the kind of vision that wakes you up in the morning and makes you want to really go for it.

If I were a close friend of yours, contemplating Life Coaching, what would you say to me to convince me of its merits?
I would just ask you if there are things that you can dream of and that would be worth pursuing that you don’t know how you could achieve. You might want a more meaningful family life or a better vacation schedule or more money or a more satisfying sexual relationship. If you can dream of something and you actually don’t know how to achieve it, then Life Coaching would be really useful for you. And, it is actually useful for people who are already successful. It isn’t for people who are not able to function very well in society. It’s really designed for successful people to realize even more powerfully that their dreams can be achieved with a coach. I have a number of friends that I’ve shared Life Coaching with and who are now doing it. I am still a very regular person and people are surprised to see what I am able to accomplish. They say, “How do you do it?” and then I say “I use a Life Coach.”