Dragon Tail

In this work, we sometimes visualize that we have a massive, green, thick, scaly dragon tail extending back behind us, following us wherever we go. Sounds silly, but this tail contains every experience we've ever had. It's a representation of our history as it lives in us.

We can learn to experience our own history as a felt sense of fundamental sufficiency. We can embody the sense that our whole life has contributed to make us ready for whatever we face now. In our leadership presence work, clients learn to access this, not as an intellectual idea, but as a felt reality, thus becoming more resourceful in high stakes situations.

The following is a sampling of the range of life experiences that have shaped me and which influence the possibilities that I see for myself and others. They are my dragon tail. (You have yours.... what's in yours? How has your history perfectly prepared you for what's next?)

I offer this list because a coach's life experience directly enriches what he has to offer to others. It also serves as an example of an exercise that anyone can benefit from doing. Last, people who work well with me are more likely to be interested in what’s on this list than in a list of all the clients I’ve worked with over the years.

So, here’s a sampling:

• Building a beautiful timber frame house with hand-crafted joinery, pegged together in one day in an old-fashioned house-raising with sixty people, a bluegrass band, and a keg of beer.
• Consulting to the President and Cabinet of Nicaragua.
• Pulling two adolescent kids out of school to travel in Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand for three months, including swimming with dolphins, sea kayaking, ice climbing, staying with hill tribe villagers in Thailand, visiting HIV orphanages, etc.
• Teaching coaching skills in programs offered by CTI, Hudson Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Irish Management Institute, the University of Virginia, and the Federal Executive Institute.
• Serving as Arctic guide for a geology research expedition in Greenland.
• Living as a commitment to being present and supportive of my wife Walker as she suffers from a rare and very challenging neurological condition.
• Living in a tiny cabin in the woods with my future wife and our six year old daughter: no electricity, water, or outhouse.
• Speaking frequently at major conferences for OD Network, International Association of Facilitators, and International Coach Federation.
• Baptizing a young Quechua girl in Peru as our goddaughter, and staying in relationship over a quarter of a century and counting.
• Investing consistently over many years in learning with some of the best teachers in the change world, and being coached by five top notch coaches in “ my own work.”
• Photographing a wide range of nature and human subjects.
• Working as a uranium exploration geologist for Phelps Dodge in Wyoming and Colorado.
• Teaching ninth grade and high school courses in earth science, physical science, and photography.
• Reflecting and journaling extensively about my life.
• Consulting and teaching in Fortune 100 companies as well as non-profits and educational systems.
• Authoring, and publishing through Wiley, two unique and influential books that people consistently find inspiring and helpful.
• Participating in a home funeral process for the best friend of my younger daughter, killed in a car crash at age 21.
• Doing every aspect of building a house with my own hands, including electrical, plumbing, carpentry, and masonry.
• Writing haiku and poems in other forms.
• Providing countless foot massages in the darkest hours of the night to settle the nervous system of a suffering wife.
• Studying ballroom dancing as a somatic partner practice.
• Becoming carbon neutral, including installing solar electric panels on our retreat center’s roof and matching guest carbon offset donations to support a reforestation program in Kenya.
• Designing an ICF-approved coach training program that has drawn participants from as far away as China, Australia, Argentina, and Denmark.
• Practicing at least a little kung fu, tang soo do, tai chi, chi gong, and aikido.
• Starting a publishing company, and managing the design, publication, and marketing of the original edition of The Mindful Coach.
• Leading students in caving, bicycling, rock-climbing, and parachuting in a high school outdoor program
• Collaborating in varying roles with my wife in building or renovating nine houses and countless other building projects.
• Becoming certified as Professional Coach by New Ventures West, Master Somatic Coach by Strozzi Institute, and Professional Certified Coach by ICF.
• Organizing a week-long dog-sledding trip for my 50^th birthday in northern Minnesota.
• Wood-working with furniture, turned bowls, and beautiful architectural details in our home.
• Going on a poetry-writing retreat with my accomplished poet mother.
• Fixing countless little broken things that involve problem-solving.
• Teaching 60+ public, cross-cultural, addictions, corporate, and international courses for Outward Bound.
• Scoring two “hat tricks” as a 50 year old hockey player against much younger and stronger players.
• Developing a long term lease arrangement with an independent organic grower to supply the retreat center and tailgate markets with fresh produce.
• Designing and directing two international semester-long, college credit courses at Outward Bound.
• Trading extensive life stories, no sordid details omitted, with my father in two consecutive all-night conversations at the beach.
• Paddling on the second ever canoe descent of a very rugged 250 mile "unrunnable" wilderness river in Labrador.
• Helping the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation manage a $3M grant process for Outward Bound National.
• Designing and teaching a 16 day training program in experiential facilitation for Latin American faculty members at Central American Institute of Business Administration.
• Being baptized as an adult Episcopalian, and practicing extensively in Quaker, Buddhist, Open Heart, Native American and agnostic/humanist traditions. Experimenting with countless other spiritual practices.
• Traveling to all 50 states, and over 30 countries.
• Removing the engine and transmission from one 1967 VW bug and installing them in another.
• Being lovingly married to my first and only wife for over a quarter of a century, with all the commitment that this enterprise requires.
• Raising three kids who are now successfully finding their way in the world.
• Teaching in Peru, Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Canada, Ireland, and other countries.
• Serving as the world’s greatest grandfather (according to Miles, who calls me Granddad’n!)
• Climbing, solo, the highest peak in Montana, and an 18,000 foot unnamed peak in Peru. Climbing the Grand Teton twice by different routes, a glacier route on Mt. Rainier, a rock route on Mt. Stuart, etc.
• Coaching many senior leaders to significant changes in their professional and personal lives.
• Founding multiple successful businesses, including Silsbee and Associates, Blue Ridge Consulting Group, Transformation Associates, Ivy River Press, Bend of Ivy Lodge, and Doug Silsbee Coaching….
• Making sufficient income to support my family well for three decades.
• Consulting and training extensively in Spanish in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
• Going on outstanding family vacations: Belize, California, Rockies, Costa Rica, Martha’s Vineyard, etc.
• Buying 63 acre farm with wife Walker, and renovating the tobacco barn into the highly successful retreat center Bend of Ivy Lodge.
• Sea-kayaking on 4 to 12 day trips in Greenland, New Zealand, and Alaska.
• Consulting for ten years with the Carolinas Region of American Red Cross, as they became the consistent best region out of 37 nationally on volume, profitability, and quality measures.
• Developing and teaching a new manager development program to Taiwanese engineers.
• Traveling with wife and elderly father cross-country skiing and wolf-watching in January in Yellowstone, on safari in Africa, etc.