Coaching
I specialize in somatic coaching using the Enneagram system. As a client, this powerful combination accelerates your process of discovery, awareness, and designing action for the purpose of helping you grow and realize your full potential – to emerge from bud to blossom.
It’s a lot to navigate alone, and a trusted coach can help you to get and stay on track
“And the day came when the energy to remain tight in a bud became more than the energy to blossom.”
— Anais Nin
As your coach, I will help you deepen your self-awareness, unlock your self-knowing, and live your life with more intention. Through somatic coaching, I support you to access the intelligence of your body and heart, as well as your clear, quiet mind. This enables my clients to see their default patterns and assumptions more quickly, identify underlying motivations, and meet themselves with curiosity and self-compassion.
I trust that my clients are experts in their own lives and that each of them is creative, resourceful, and whole. I am honored to provide a safe, compassionate place for my clients to explore what is significant and meaningful, as well as what is getting in the way of leading the life they desire.
I offer both personal and leadership coaching packages, as well as Enneagram typing sessions. Are you curious about working together? Schedule a complimentary call for us to get to know each other. Already a client? Feel free to book your next appointment here.
Why the Enneagram?
Throughout my career I have worked with many personality assessments and systems. The Enneagram is by far the most complete and robust system of personality I have encountered.
The Enneagram provides a map of the nine underlying personality temperaments of human nature, or nine orientations for encountering and moving through the world. Working with the Enneagram, we begin to see ourselves and others with more clarity and compassion. We begin to recognize where we have choice and to move forward with intention.
In what can be a radical shift, the Enneagram helps us see that we are not our personalities. It provides a guide for each of us to catch ourselves in the trance of our personality and to wake up. With practice, we recognize subconscious patterns playing out in our lives and awaken to what is unfolding in the present moment.
The teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff are foundational to my work with the Enneagram. Gurdjieff taught that there are multiple centers of intelligence, and that there is abundant potential for transformation when we access the wisdom of these three centers – body, heart, and mind. Through somatic, Enneagram-informed coaching, I partner with my clients to become familiar with and proficient in accessing all three centers.
Discovering your Enneagram Type
Correctly identifying your dominant type is essential to experiencing real personal transformation using the Enneagram system. Often, finding your type is not as simple as taking an online test. Behaviors are not a reliable indicator of type, and the ego can trick us into attaching to or rejecting types. What’s more, the expression of type is not universal – it is shaped by many factors, including our unique combination of life experiences and identities.
It is important to take your time with this kind of exploration. I offer 90-minute typing sessions where I can help you understand the Enneagram system, including the finer distinctions between types, and start to identify the patterns that make up your unique system of self.
Words from clients ...
“I've been coached by Elke off and on for the past two and a half years and could not recommend her more! She has taught me ways to increase my self-awareness, identify and observe patterns and behaviors that I want to change, and provided guidance and structure to help hold me accountable. Elke also possesses a deep knowledge of the enneagram and helped to navigate my initial enneagram results and identify my core type. We then incorporated the enneagram as a tool in our coaching sessions. If you are looking for a method to gain self-insight and grow (personally and/or professionally) Coaching with Elke is a smart option!”
Andrew D
“What makes Elke a fantastic coach is the special combination of attributes she brings to her client relationships. She’s easy to talk to, she listens to what you’re communicating that goes to the heart of the matter, and she’s able to connect the dots between real life, tools like the Enneagram, and her own corporate experience. She’s an ideal balance of empathy, reflection, encouragement, and pragmatism.”
Matt F
“Coaching with Elke was a unique and impactful experience for me, both professionally and personally. This style of coaching is not "executive". It is not limited to work scenarios. It's about mind, body and spirit. It's about your experience as a human who wants to learn how to deal with conflict, how to handle tricky situations with compassion, how to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and grow.
Elke's way of asking questions empowers you to investigate not just the source of the disconnect at work, but how our professional lives are not divorced from our personal ones. I had so many "aha" moments with Elke that just 8 weeks of coaching helped me pivot toward new ways of doing things. Thank you for the invitation to be thoughtful and process through to new and better ways of being!”
Laura C
“Working with Elke has been so valuable in growing as a leader and identifying strengths and areas of growth in myself and our agency. She created a safe space and encouraged personal reflection which increased awareness of my role on a team and as a leader.”
Lainie W
“Safety is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of connection.”
— Gabor Maté