Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Gilmore.

Hi Megan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a student of life and death and cycles. I think, similar to many other people, I was curious about how life works, and I focused mostly on how a human life could be fully lived for quite sometime, a very “carpe diem” approach, if you will. And then, I noticed that maintaining that kind of pace is incredibly difficult and ultimately harmful to maintain. So, I shifted slightly from a life fully lived to living a life that was fully alive. I know that might sound like semantics, but it shifted so much for me.
I could tell you about my academic background or professional experience. I am proud of those things and they’re big part of what got me to where I am. I could also describe my personality and wild amount of stamina and determination and how that was a part of getting me where I am today. But ultimately, what got me started and got me to where I am today are the people that taught me, loved me, believed in me, championed me, coached me, mentored me, advocated for me, and partnered with me.
I started coaching before I wanted to. I was training to become a therapist in grad school after getting my Bachelors degree in psychology and leadership studies. And one of my undergraduate professors offered me a graduate research assistantship. Through our work together, we found that students that had confidence and clarity in an overriding purpose for their life and one faculty that knew what that was and helped them create a clear academic path to move closer to it were over 17 times more likely to persist to graduation than those that didn’t.
I was asked to start coaching many of these undergraduate students with little to no training in coaching, so I became a voracious learner about it – positive psychology, coaching, well-being, etc. This was all during a time (2006-2011) when so much research was emerging all around the world about the impact of positive psychology interventions’ ability to increase psychological well-being, but coaching, especially in the midwestern United States, still felt very new, unregulated and difficult to explain to the people around me.
I went searching for the most informed and skillful coaches and positive psychology practitioners I could find and was lucky enough to connect with many of them personally and have my dreams and aspirations supported by my supervisors and colleagues. After graduating with my Masters in Addictions Counseling and becoming licensed, I quickly went through my international certified coach training. I realized that I could impact more people and have more control over my schedule as a new parent if I took the risk of starting a private practice, so I did. Then, there was the challenge of working alone, so I invited colleagues in to work with me in co-creating programs and options for our clients that we couldn’t create on our own. When we looked at our collective strengths and passions, we saw a recurring patterns in coaching, education, and facilitating transformational experiences, so we set out to co-create the most transformative coaching education program that we could imagine grounded in emerging research — and that’s how Lark’s Song Inc and our first offering, the Lark’s Song Certified Coach training program were born.
Since then, we have added a Well-Being Certificate, programs and curriculum for children’s well-being, Cascading Cultures of Well-Being in partnership with companies and organizations, and our Culture Care programs that focus on transforming groups and communities through training, coaching, and appreciative inquiry processes. And the Lark’s Song Certified Coach training program has developed a community of coaches across the world that continues to grow.
Stewarding all of this as well as I can while also learning from my mistakes, trying to show up brilliantly, parent my children intentionally, stay engaged in my local community, and remain committed to my own health and well-being requires pretty constant assessment, adjustments, and support. But for now, I’ll keep at it.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

Definitely not! I can look back over the last decade of starting and leading this organization and break down the time into distinct segments that I call “waves.” Each wave was preceded by some kind of crashing of the wave before it. Sometimes this looked like financial difficulty that then impacted me personally. Sometimes it looked like knowing the direction the organization needed to move or expand into next wasn’t what my current employees envisioned wanting or doing. Sometimes it looked like letting team members go that I loved dearly. Sometimes it looked like being ostracized by community members and misunderstood by family members. I think there were two big, recurring struggles. The first was the limiting belief that I was alone! While the loneliness that I felt was very real, I can also now look at those times and realize there were people showing up with me and for me every step of the way. I just didn’t always have eyes to see that. The second was the expectation that I should be excellent and skillful at something I had never done before and had never had modeled for me before. I still struggle with both of these from time to time, but I think my recovery is more rapid these days, and I try to give myself and others the grace to learn as we grow.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I’m known for excellence in coach training and the development of well-being education programs and services. Personally, I also specialize in trauma-informed somatic coaching and incorporating transformative experiences into the coaching process through exposure to nature, animals, art, and movement. I think that I’m most proud of a wilderness coaching excursion that I lead one or two times a year for personal leadership development called Made Wild. Myself and a few other coaches and wilderness guides lead a group of people on four-five day backpacking excursions to do deep work around their personal growth.
I think what sets me apart from many other coaches is the focus on well-being over performance, transforming through the body instead of just the mind, and a focus on dismantling systems of oppression both within and outside ourselves to step into more freedom and aliveness with increased awareness and agency.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?

My advice for finding a mentor is to think of the person that you are inspired by and admire, the person that you’re a bit afraid might say “no” and then, ask them. Tell them why you admire them and what inspires you about them, let them know that you’d be honored to learn from them and would love to partner with them to move the world some place better. If they say no, then ask someone else that inspires you.
For me, networking is about reciprocity. If I enter into a relationship just wondering what I can get from someone else, then I start feeling insecure and a bit too concerned with managing other people’s energy and reactions. But if I enter into a professional relationship with genuine curiosity about what a mutually beneficial partnership could look like or how we might be able to help each other, a respectful relationship can grow from there. And once a trust-driven relationship is built then making requests, inquiries, offers, and invitations is very natural. The challenge is to continue expanding my network, and to realize where I might need to be challenged to connect with new people in new ways. Networking is an ongoing discipline of building web of genuine, trustworthy connections that support and sustain each other in a manner that increases everyone’s best interest and not just a few.

Pricing:

• Lark’s Song Certified Coach Training Program – $5,450
• Well-Being Certificate – $600
• Group/Team Coaching – $300/hr
• Culture Care Services – Custom

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.larkssong.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/larks_song
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/LarksSong
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/lark’s-song-inc-
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LarksSong

Image Credits

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