We were lucky to catch up with Kristen Truman-Allen recently and have shared our conversation below.
Kristen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
I use the wilderness and physical experiences as thought provoking metaphoric topics for leadership Coaching
For folks who may not have read about you before, can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide, what problems you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of?
I became a coach after being coached. I hired my first coach when I was a single mom in Graduate School working part time as a nurse in the emergency department. I was managing my life with my daughter, a new relationship, being a full-time student and graduate assistant, all while working, and I was taking minimal care of myself. I felt out of control. I was looking for some balance. I gained so much insight from being coached. I started taking extreme care of myself and learned how I wanted integration versus balance in my life. I began to see myself as a tree, with branches representing all of my different interests and needs and responsibilities. This representation showed me that I am one integrated system with my self at the center rather than being many separate identities that needed equalized and balanced out. On my professional journey as an ER nurse, I also became an Outward Bound expedition leader. With my Master’s in nursing, I became a Clinical Nurse Specialist. In these roles I realized my natural and developing skills as a coach and decided to take formal training and become certified by the International Coaching Federation. This evolution began my journey with human-patient-simulation, and I built an internal coaching program in a health care organization. I completed my Master’s in Human and Organization Systems and ultimately my PHD in Human Development with a focus on professional coaching. Since becoming a coach, I have had the opportunity to bring my personal coaching approach to administrative and executive leadership roles with a focusing on patient and employee experience.
I provide individualized one-on-one coaching with leaders who want to expand and grow something in their world. This might be their teams or their personal effectiveness in their organization. They may be seeking a promotion or developing confidence and personal wellness. We work to enhance their overall experience of being a leader who is ‘on’ 24/7 in their home and in their community.
I also facilitate team development coaching or group coaching and have online programs to support personal and team effectiveness. I developed a model of engagement which flips the elements of burnout inside out and focuses integrating high energy connections to people and purpose. This model aims to sustain and achieve feelings of effectiveness and revolutionize the experience they’re having as they try to keep themselves and others inspired, growing, and thriving in their whole lives.
What sets me apart is my passion for helping people to make sustainable change through experience. I lean into my knowledge of experiential and expeditionary learning. I take leaders and teams into challenging environments, physically, to accelerate the insights that they gain. I coach them toward their highest potential using experiences such as paddle boarding, hiking, and snowshoeing. These situations help clients embody their new found clarity more quickly and inspire action toward their goals. My variety of expertise gives me a variety of languages to speak from including healthcare, experiential education, parenting, service and leadership.
What I’m most proud of is that on my journey I have integrated my passion for work and service with my passion for life. I do not compromise my health or family. I have four children and an amazing partner and I have created a lifestyle that supports me physically so I can live a sustainable and non-inflammatory life. I work to integrate my values; play, freedom, travel and service into one experience! I am open for whatever adventure appears next.
I want people to know that it’s possible to create the experience you wish for. As a leader it takes insight, vulnerability, clarity and commitment to “be a leader” not just “do leadership.” I will always ask who do you want to be and who do you need to be in order to achieve this goal. I want people to design their experience far before they retire. I want them to intentionally design it and live in now it so they have a long fulfilled life they can enjoy in the moment.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
The number one key to engaging teams and improving morale, is to identify what is important to them. Intentionally taking time regularly to determine what is motivating them individually, always gives incredible insight into what will keep them engaged and not burned out. It also helps to determine whether they are aligned with the mission of the work and what inside the system is effecting their energy and connections and potentially their effectiveness. Often leaders feel like this step is time consuming, however if you spend the time making sure your team is really heard, it actually makes your work easier because you aren’t guessing at what will impact them. It becomes super clear what barriers need removed and what education is needed or where people are wanting to develop skills. Regularly connecting with a clear purpose builds trust and ownership and insight and is the most important element to building collaborative and individual morale.
Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.
Once I became a formally trained coach in 2004, I started using my skills in the work I was doing full time. I utilized the concepts and structures andcoaching approach in my leadership roles whether I was coordinating and leading a new graduate nurse residency or developing a human patient simulation program across the region. I was being a coach when I was leading the teams and teaching students and then I had a chance to develop a leadership coaching program inside a healthcare organization. I also began teaching coaching skills to help clinical providers connect and serve their patients and to help leaders to connect and develop their employees. Over this career development period, I had multiple individual clients external to my organization work. I was mostly integrating this side hustle into my leadership roles. The transition to running my full-time coaching business happened when I was a healthcare executive. There was a point in my role as Chief Experience Officer that I wondered if I could make a greater impact working with multiple organizations rather than with one. I realized that the framework I had developed was working and the right people were in place to carry their work on in an integrated, non centralized way. That meant that the rest of the executive team could own parts of pieces of the whole structure and effectively lead out the customer employee focused work. I felt compelled and clear and had a full knowing that it was time to expand this work differently for all of us. That is when I proposed a new model to the CEO which would eliminate my formal role and give me the opportunity to open time and space and energy to begin attracting more clients independently. He agreed to my proposal and I transitioned for a bit as a coach/consultant in order to complete some of the work that was in progress. I began growing my coaching business. I also teach coaching and continue advancing my coaching certification. Now instead of a coaching approach informing my leadership roles, my services to organizations as a coach are informed by my leadership experiences inside organizations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pulpleadershipcoaching.com/
- Instagram: @kristentruman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pulpcoaching
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristen-truman-allen-ms-pcc-1562575/
- Twitter: @ktrumanallen
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUYop-texEfHpsieT8RkPtQ
Image Credits
Kendra Keeley Rachael Gonzales Feathered Penny Photography