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About Doug
Doug Silsbee is a pioneer in the field of presence-based leadership development. He is an executive coach, trainer of coaches, presenter at conferences and retreats, and author in Asheville, NC. He combines deep experience in organization and leader development with a number of eclectic influences.
Doug specializes in coaching self-generative leaders in major corporations, small business, and education. His unique Presence-Based Coaching encourages clients to enter into strong commitments and to take meaningful and skillful action to produce results they care about. Along the way, clients cultivate leadership presence, resilience, and aliveness.
Formerly a uranium geologist and Director of Corporate Programs at North Carolina Outward Bound, Doug has worked as an independent consultant and coach since 1986. Doug has coached Fortune 100 executives, business school faculty, leaders of non-profits, entrepreneurs, and ministers of the Cabinet of Nicaragua. As a sole practitioner, he focuses on flexible, responsive, and committed service to a small number of clients interested in substantive change. Doug has taught coaching skills at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, Federal Executive Institute, University of Virginia, the American Red Cross, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, among many others.
Doug is certified as an Integral Coach by New Ventures West, and as a Somatic Coach by Strozzi Institute. He is an ICF-accredited Professional Certified, an affiliate of Pyramid Resource Group, and adjunct faculty at Emory University and the Institute for Life Coach Training.
Doug’s professional experience has included:
- Coaching executives, managers, and entrepreneurs from all walks of life.
- Teaching and facilitating in 11 countries on four continents.
- Consulting and training in corporations, non-profits, and government. Doug’s consulting focused primarily on team and leadership development, employee involvement, diversity, and balanced scorecard implementation.
- Teaching his unique coaching methodology in retreat settings and major conferences, including International Association of Facilitators and International Coach Federation.
- Writing The Mindful Coach, a well-received 2004 book on coaching methodology, and Presence-Based Coaching, a 2008 offer from Jossey-Bass taking this work to a new depth.
Doug’s personal explorations have included outdoors adventures (a geology research expedition to West Greenland, the second canoe descent of a river in Labrador, swimming with dolphins in New Zealand, and soloing an unnamed 18,000 foot peak in the Andes) and cultural adventures (treks with his family to remote hill tribe villages in Thailand, teaching overseas, a Quechua goddaughter in Peru.) Doug has also explored a large number of spiritual and personal growth traditions. He has created four successful businesses, and knows the process of change from the inside out. He lives fully, and brings all of this experience to bear in his coaching.
With his wife Walker, Doug is the owner of Bend of Ivy Lodge, a retreat center on 63 acres of beautiful mountain land north of Asheville, North Carolina. The Lodge is environmentally friendly, with a commitment to carbon neutrality, and an organic farm that grows fresh produce on the property. Doug and Walker have three grown children, and one grandchild.
