choice Magazine

Send us Fan Mail Disruption doesn’t “settle down” anymore. It stacks, spreads, and speeds up until leaders start feeling like the only stable thing is the chaos itself. That’s why I sat down with leadership, team, and organizational coach Dorothy Seminovich to unpack a powerful concept gaining traction: meta-ruption, the relentless convergence of disruptions across technology, geopolitics, climate...

Send us Fan Mail Chaos doesn’t just interrupt our plans. It rewires our attention, shrinks our options, and convinces us we’re out of control. That’s why I’m thrilled to sit down again with Master Certified Coach Laura Berman Fortgang, author of “Coaching in Chaos: Navigating a Rapidly Changing World,” to unpack what actually works when clients feel overwhelmed, reactive, and stuck. We get practic...

Send us Fan Mail Your client’s “I can’t decide” might not be a mindset problem. It might be a nervous system problem. We sit down with cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Irena O’Brien, founder of the Neuroscience School, to unpack a deceptively simple idea with big implications for coaching: choices are shaped by nervous system state, not just logic. When the brain is under threat or running low on ener...

Send us Fan Mail Choice usually sounds like a simple decision, but the more we coach leaders in real life, the more we see how messy it gets under pressure, noise, and competing priorities. Garry Schleifer sits down with ICF Master Certified Coach Subash, author of “From Conditioning to Conscious Choice,” to make a bold claim feel practical: choice is not an action. Choice is a state of awareness,...

Send us Fan Mail Choice is easy to praise and surprisingly hard to access when stress, habit, and old stories take the wheel. We sit down with cognitive psychologist and ADHD coach Eliza Barach, author of “Designing for Agency: Coaching the Moment of Choice,” to get concrete about what agency really looks like inside real decisions, especially for high-performing people with ADHD who often feel tr...

Send us Fan Mail You can feel it when a coaching conversation reaches a crossroads: do we stay with what’s emerging, or do we introduce a tool, challenge an assumption, or name a pattern out loud? Garry Schleifer sits down with executive coach and coaching supervisor Jeremy Lewis to explore how we make those calls with intention, not habit, and why “choice” is a real professional competency in bot...

Send us Fan Mail The fastest way to change a coaching conversation isn’t a new tool it’s helping someone see they have options. I’m joined by executive coach, educator, and author Jenn Chloupek  to talk about the power of choice and the ABC framework she built to make transformation feel clear, human, and repeatable: Awareness, Behaviors, Connections. If you coach leaders, build a coaching culture...

Send us Fan Mail The moment someone says “I have no choice,” a coach has a doorway into what’s really happening beneath the words. We talk with leadership and executive coach Sanaz Kalantari about how agency gets lost in modern work, why the speed of change can push us into survival mode, and what it actually takes to design empowered conversations that bring choice back online. Sanaz draws on dee...

Send us Fan Mail Conflict can make smart people act out of character. When emotions spike and the stakes feel personal, our thinking narrows, our defenses go up, and “good communication” advice suddenly stops working. We sit down with Cherise Hairston, a veteran conflict resolution professional and transformative mediation practitioner, to unpack what’s really happening inside us during conflict a...

Send us Fan Mail Your body answers before your brain can finish the sentence, and that changes everything about how we coach decision making. We sit down with ICF Professional Certified Coach and licensed counselor Maria Connolly to explore somatic awareness and why “choice really lives” in the body. Maria shares what she looks for as a self-described “body detector,” from facial expression and br...

Send us Fan Mail A client says, “Nothing I do matters,” and suddenly the coaching work is no longer a checklist, it’s a turning point. We sit down with leadership coach and belonging advocate Jennifer Nielsen to unpack learned helplessness: how it develops, why it’s so common in today’s workplace, and what coaches and people leaders can do when motivation disappears and resignation takes over. We...

Send us Fan Mail “I don’t have a choice” sounds like a conclusion, but we hear it as a signal flare. When clients are stressed, overwhelmed, or worn down by decision fatigue, their options can collapse into a painful binary, and their confidence goes with it. I sit down with Social Leadership Coach, Gloria Custodio, to map what actually helps in those moments, not motivational talk, but clear coac...

Send us Fan Mail Your mind loves to act like the CEO of your life, but it’s often the last to know what’s true. Garry Schleifer sits down with Lisa Murrell, PCC, to explore embodied choice and why clients don’t actually make decisions with thoughts alone. We talk about somatic coaching in a way that’s practical, grounded, and immediately usable, whether you coach leaders in Fortune 500 environment...

Send us Fan Mail A single sentence can reveal more than a 60-minute coaching call if we know how to work with it: “I choose to…” That’s where our conversation with author and teacher Kim DeYoung begins, and it quickly turns into a practical masterclass on how coaches can stay present, curious, and connected to what’s true when a client feels stuck, conflicted, or overwhelmed by a decision. We unpa...

Send us Fan Mail Success can be the very thing that steals your joy, not because you’re doing it wrong, but because the world rewards results while quietly ignoring the cost. I sit down with coach and speaker Cindy Van Eeckhout, author of “Helping Clients Find Joy in a High Pressure World,” to unpack what “misaligned success” really looks like when your life shines on paper but feels heavy inside....

Send us Fan Mail Joy isn’t a lucky break or a fleeting mood; it’s a practice we can design. We sit down with executive and life coach Anika Wariebi to unpack what truly differentiates joy from happiness and how coaches help clients build a steadier, values-aligned foundation for daily life. Drawing from dictionary and psychological perspectives as well as responses from a diverse group of “real pe...

Send us Fan Mail What if joy isn’t the finish line but the fuel? We sit down with life coach and former crisis therapist Darlene Berry to reframe joy as a daily, practical practice that can live alongside pain without pretending everything is fine. Drawing from frontline experience, Darlene explains why suffering looks different for everyone and how gratitude becomes the bridge from “I’m hurting”...

Send us Fan Mail Want proof that coaching works beyond a feel-good survey? We dig into the neuroscience of immersion—how the brain’s one-second signals of attention plus emotion predict what people remember and do next—and translate it into a practical playbook for coaches and leaders. With Professor Paul Zak, we unpack why joy is the byproduct of investing energy, not avoiding stress, and how the...

Send us Fan Mail Joy isn’t a perk. It’s a competitive advantage. We sit down with executive and team coach Michelle Chambers to unpack how collective joy fuels psychological safety, deeper alignment, and reliable results—even when teams are under pressure. If “joy at work” sounds woo-woo, Michelle’s stories and tools will change your mind fast. We start by spotting the early signs that joy has gon...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when an AI coach is judged by the same yardstick as a human? We invited executive coach and researcher Jonathan Passmore and AI coaching innovator Rebecca Rutschmann to unpack their new study benchmarking an AI coach against ICF Core Competencies—and the results upend assumptions. The machine reliably demonstrated ACC-level performance and crossed more than half of th...

Send us Fan Mail Joy doesn’t have to wait for a perfect day or a perfect world. We sit down with social leadership coach Gloria Custodio (ICF PCC) to unpack why so many high achievers believe joy belongs to someone else—and how to reclaim it as a practical tool for better thinking, stronger leadership, and sustainable impact. From family scripts and grind culture to burnout and systemic barriers,...

Send us Fan Mail What if joy is the most practical leadership tool you have? We sit down with spiritual alignment coach and global ritual expert Barbara Biziou and ICF Master Certified Coach and pioneer DJ Mitsch to explore how simple rituals raise our personal frequency, strengthen teams, and transform coaching results. From a live grounding practice to vivid stories from corporate workshops and...

Send us Fan Mail What if your toughest feelings aren’t enemies to defeat but signals to decode? We sit down with behavioral scientist Charles Jones and executive coach Terry Hildebrandt to unpack Emotional Responsibility, a simple, powerful framework that turns anger, anxiety, frustration, and guilt into clear next steps—and uses joy as concrete proof that our needs are being met. We trace the ori...

Send us Fan Mail What if joy isn’t a perk but the operating system of high performance? We sit down with visionary leader and five-time entrepreneur Marissa Levin to unpack why joy—grounded in psychological safety and clear structure—creates cultures where people do their best work and stay longer. No fluff here: we connect joy to engagement, retention, and real business results, while sharing pra...

Send us Fan Mail What if joy isn’t a mood you wait for but a stance you cultivate—especially when the world feels chaotic? Executive and team coach Terrie Lupberger joins us to unpack why joy can be a radical act that disrupts scarcity, separation, and fear in the coaching room and the boardroom. We explore a clear distinction between joy and happiness, how to avoid toxic positivity, and why holdi...