You at Your Best, Navigating Complexity
Leading Yourself and Leading Others
Resilient • Resourceful • Capable • Wise
The Thriving Edge View of Leadership
Leadership is much more than a role or title. It’s a dynamic capacity. It’s the ability to read a situation with clear vision, determine the best outcome for everyone involved, and coordinate people and resources to make that happen. It’s a lens for viewing, evaluating, and responding to whatever happens. It’s an approach you can bring to any part of life.
Results-Only Leadership Isn’t Sustainable
Leadership isn’t just about driving results. You can meet deadlines and hit targets in the short term by pushing hard, but that usually comes at a cost. You sacrifice wellbeing, whether you’re pressuring the people you’re in charge of or pressuring yourself. The price for that is high: burnout, disengagement, and diminishing performance. Over time, this approach fails.
People-Centered Leadership Boosts Performance – and Results
There’s a better, more sustainable way to get results. Wise leaders value people, respect their wellbeing, and treat them as a renewable resource. They treat themselves that way, too. Prioritizing wellbeing promotes persistence and resilience so people don’t get used up and burnt out. It’s a very different approach from just telling people what to do.
Wise Leadership is Guided and Driven by Wellbeing
When wellbeing is a priority, people respect and value themselves. They know their strengths, values, and guiding principles. They use these core qualities as an inner compass and as motivation.
Self-Leadership is the Key to Generating Wellbeing
The way to make wellbeing a priority is self-leadership. Self-leadership is the ability to see yourself accurately, recognize what matters to you, identify the right path for you, and decide how you want to show up in each situation that arises. Self-leadership keeps your decisions and behavior aligned with your core qualities. This generates wellbeing to fuel your efforts.
Wise Leadership Encourages Self-Leadership that Generates Wellbeing
When you realize the power of wellbeing in your own life, you’ll want the people you lead to develop self-leadership so they can experience it, too. Your ability to model self-leadership will inspire them, and your encouragement to develop self-leadership will empower them.
Self-Leadership Centered on Wellbeing Builds a Culture of Thriving
As people develop self-leadership, they strengthen their resilience, resourcefulness, persistence, and motivation. There is a ripple effect of mutual wellbeing and mutual regard that creates a culture of thriving. When thriving is central, people are being restored, renewed, and empowered to be at their best and do their best.
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The Bottom Line
You don’t have to sacrifice wellbeing for success. In fact, tending to wellbeing fuels greater success. Focusing on wellbeing engages core qualities like strengths, values, and guiding principles to build resilience and tap into motivation. It aligns goals and actions with these core qualities, and that’s a sustainable strategy for success. Challenges are easier to overcome and rewards are more meaningful.
Thriving Gives You the Edge
Wise leadership is people centered. It’s built on self-leadership. And it creates a culture of mutual wellbeing and sustainable success. In this environment, individuals, families, teams, and organizations can achieve meaningful goals while continually raising the bar.
That’s what Thriving Edge is about.
Develop Your Thriving Edge
Does this approach speak to you? Would you like to find out if coaching or training built on this model is the right fit for you? Fill out this contact form so we can plan time to talk.
Need More Information?
Continue reading to learn more about the Thriving Edge approach.
Services
Coaching
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The Thriving Edge Coaching Model​
Coaching is a dynamic partnership focused on your goals and your development. In the short term, coaching helps you define meaningful goals and achieve them. In the long term, it builds your capacity to engage your strengths, express your values, and follow your guiding principles to actualize your potential. Craft Your Leadership Lens Coaching amplifies your ability to think things through when you can’t come up with an answer on your own. When you’re trying to make a decision, looking for a solution, or figuring out a plan, coaching can help. ​Coaching works by boosting your own "think it through" process. It helps you read people and situations more fully and accurately. It helps you evaluate and assess with more detail and nuance. It prompts you to notice more information and more factors to consider. Rewire Your Mental Habits Most of our thinking is on autopilot. Even when we think consciously, we often use shortcuts. But efficient, shortcut thinking does not work well with novel or complex situations. When thinking gets stuck or starts going in circles, coaching slows it down and unpacks it. Automatic thoughts, limiting beliefs, and assumptions are revealed. Feelings are recognized and their significance is considered in context. Habitual patterns of thought and learned expectations can be observed. With a slower, more deliberate process, you create new mental habits for accurately reading the specific situation and specific people involved. Lead from Your Core Coaching helps you see what's at stake and what really matters to you. It invites you to identify your values, strengths, and guiding principles. This is your positive core and it's a guide to how you want to show up in the world, who you want to be, and what you want to contribute. Your positive core is a compass to guide you through complex, challenging situations with focus and purpose when the answers aren't easy to find. Your compass shows you how to act in alignment with being your best and doing your best. When you lead yourself from your core, you can also guide others to act in alignment with shared values. Over time, this core-driven leadership lens becomes your automatic way of responding.
Would You Like to Learn More About Coaching?
For more information about how coaching works and what to expect, click here to start a conversation.
Assessments and Consultation
Thriving Edge provides evaluations with recommendations using formal assessment tools and structured interviews. Evaluations can be used to design a customized leadership development plan or self-leadership plan or to create an individual, family, team, or organizational wellbeing plan.
Results are delivered in a consultation session to explain key concepts and how to apply the recommendations. Assessments and consultation sessions are co-designed with the client and customized to meet their specific needs and expectations.
Formal assessment tools available:
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Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i 2.0)
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Social Emotional Intelligence Profile (SEIP)
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VIA Survey of Character Strengths (VIA)
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Vision and Mission
The vision of Thriving Edge is a world where every person feels empowered to develop and express their unique combination of strengths and talents and live in alignment with their values and guiding principles. Everyone is able to direct their own life and do what really matters to them. They feel welcome in their community and enjoy mutually beneficial relationships. They optimize their own wellbeing and contribute to the wellbeing of others. They accomplish remarkable things. This is a vision of what people are capable of doing when they thrive.
The mission of Thriving Edge is equipping you with Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility to thrive so you can bring your vision to life. This is the vision of Thriving Edge applied to you and the remarkable things you want to accomplish. The capacity of Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility builds on Social Emotional Intelligence using neuroscience, mindfulness, and positive psychology. It asks you to identify, develop, and integrate your inner resources and align the domains of your life. Inner harmony brings you confidence and a sense of ease in what you do. Living in alignment shows other people you are reliable, trustworthy, and wise. This is a model for leading yourself, other people, and workflow through complex challenges for mutually beneficial outcomes. You were born with a drive to explore the world around you and develop yourself. As an infant you began developing your relationship skills, your motor skills, your senses, your ability to understand the world, and your language skills. You had a drive to master these developmental challenges so you could take care of yourself in the world around you. You were born with a survival drive. You were also born with a generative drive to develop your potential and express the best of who you are. This drive shows up when you use your innate strengths and talents. You can recognize it in the ease you feel and the energy that flows into you when you do things that seem to come naturally. It becomes the persistence you need to accomplish a personally meaningful goal when you are doing something that really matters to you. It thanks you in the satisfaction and pride you feel when your contribution makes a difference. This drive is built into your nature. You were born to thrive. When you are thriving, you are more open and connected. You become more capable, agile, and resilient. You take charge of your life, generating success and wellbeing aligned, not sacrificing one for the other. You enjoy mutually beneficial relationships. You lead a fulfilling life guided by your values and principles. You are at your best, bringing out the best of who you are and doing your best. Thriving is a state, a way of engaging with life, not the end goal. Generating this state is not easy at first, but with the right tools, techniques, and strategies, it becomes easier. To thrive, you need to navigate complex challenges that might pull you and those you lead off course and cause distress. You need to be able to understand yourself and others well so you can read any situation and identify what needs to happen to get to a mutually beneficial outcome. And you need to know what interventions you can apply to boost wellbeing. You need Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility. Thriving is the driving force that keeps you motivated while you bring your vision to life. Your vision is your view of the way you want life to be. You create your vision when you use your imagination to design your desired future. A thriving vision is a preview of you expressing your strengths, values, and guiding principles as you direct your own life and shape the world around you as a leader. With Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility, you can develop a clear, compelling vision. You can see the path to realizing your vision. You can identify the resources needed and the people who can contribute. You can design a plan that guides the people, resources, and workflow toward your desired outcome. You can bring your vision to life.
About Stephen Coxsey, MA, PCC
Steve Coxsey has been a psychology nerd since high school and has also become a neuroscience geek in recent years. He is fascinated by the human mind and our embodied brains and neurological systems that generate our minds. But not in a detached, impersonal, lab rat kind of way.​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Steve’s mission is to help people have richer, fuller, more meaningful lives by living in alignment with who they genuinely are. He wants you to be able to know yourself clearly, realize what really matters to you, recognize what you are capable of doing, and develop your agency to make that happen. Steve pursues his mission by helping you craft your vision and then make that vision real. Your vision is your imagination showing you your desired future. It is a preview of your authentic core qualities being expressed in the world. Your authentic core is your unique combination of abilities, strengths, perspectives, values, core beliefs, and guiding principles. Your vision is a blueprint for directing your own path and shaping the world around you. Steve partners with you to cultivate the qualities and capacities of self-leadership and leadership so you can plan, organize, and direct the resources you need to bring your vision to life. That includes communicating your vision to other people to get them on board. Steve’s coaching, training, and consulting work are grounded in his education in general psychology, clinical psychology, counseling, human development, and professional coaching. He spent several years working as a therapist, so he brings in relevant skills and models from the counseling toolkit. He draws on his experiences as a business owner, when he was coordinating programs, supervising staff, and overseeing daily operations. He continues to seek new ideas and new perspectives to inform his work, especially from the fields of neuroscience, mindfulness research, and positive psychology.
Steve is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
He is a Certified Executive Coach through MentorCoach, accredited by ICF.
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About Thriving Edge
Thriving Edge provides services and tools you can use to develop yourself and cultivate the development of others for greater success and fulfillment. It was founded by Stephen Coxsey, MA, PCC as the vehicle for his professional service. Steve is committed to people developing their full potential, bringing out the best in themselves and others, and contributing in a positive way.
To that end, the mission of Thriving Edge is equipping you with Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility to thrive so you can bring your vision to life. We offer coaching, training, and consulting to fulfill the mission. Mental and Emotional Strength and Agility serves as a leadership lens that can be applied to your vision for any part of your life. This includes work leadership, personal leadership, family leadership, and business ownership.
Click here to read about the Vision and Mission of Thriving Edge.