The Place:  Panera

The Cup: Coffee for me and iced tea for Michelle.

The Background: One of my favorite and unexpected treats that this project provides are the emails and calls I get from friends, new and old, who have thought of someone they think will be perfect for the project, and they want to make an introduction. Which is precisely how this meeting came to be. My pal Jim Bledsoe, who was one of the four “strangers” I met with to write the tribute piece to Cup 62, Scott Robinson suggested Michelle was someone I needed to meet. He sent an email introducing us, and Michelle and I took it from there.

Michelle has a remarkable story of survival and not accepting “no” as an answer. Her story may leave you with more questions than answers, but as I’ve found, the questions you’re left with are powerful. Before we get into that incredible story, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s a food you can’t live without? Pizza, deep dish.
2. What’s your guilty pleasure? More pizza. But I also could not live without my workouts.
3. How did you make your first buck? Coaching teammates.
4. What is your favorite way to unwind? A movie. It’s provides creativity and inspiration. The part of my brain that’s always working can rest and the creative part can come forward.
5. What’s your favorite place to eat in Austin? I love all Austin-based restaurants – especially Galaxy Cafe.
6. What’s the best gift you ever got? Hardship. It taught me everything I know today. I wouldn’t change anything about it. It’s so crystal-clear what I’m here to do. But I wouldn’t have that kind of clarity if I hadn’t had so much challenge, and been told “no” so many times. I would not take “no” for an answer.

Where Do We Begin?

Michelle grew up in Chicagoland, but when her corporate career brought her to Texas in 1994, like many of us, she never left. In addition to her corporate experience at companies such as Accenture, Motorola and Applied Materials, her career has also included coaching athletes and executives. It has now evolved into a business focused on, as she says, “Creating integrated change from the inside out, for and with people.” To call Michelle a career or productivity coach, while true, wouldn’t even begin to paint the full picture. If I had three days, I couldn’t fully explain Michelle’s gift. It’s one of those things you get, on some deep level, but can’t seem to find the words to explain.

Michelle’s story contains a tragic element which she’s spent her entire life working to overcome. At the age of 10, Michelle fell from the second story of her family home in the middle of the night and suffered a traumatic brain injury. No one saw the accident happen. The family was staying in an unfinished cabin and she and her sister had decided to stay in a room on the second story. I imagine it must have felt quite adventurous, almost like staying in a tree house, to be in a cabin that didn’t yet have all its walls. In the middle of the night, Michelle got up and in her attempt to find her way to the bathroom, wound up falling from the second story.

When she was found, she had trouble explaining what had happened. No one knew what was wrong, but they did know she needed to get medical attention. They loaded up the car and headed off to get help.

On the way to the hospital, the family hit two deer and that accident left the vehicle inoperable.

Making Sense of It All

Can you imagine? How terrifying that must have been for young Michelle. Having a delay in making it to the hospital then after a series of tests, at a time where brain injury testing was new, the hospital had difficulty providing proper treatment. In addition, Michelle didn’t display much in the way of outward injury, and the feeling was, “She’s young and healthy and resilient. She’ll bounce back.

She tells me she had to re-learn everything. She said, “After this type of traumatic brain injury, you don’t see things the same way. You don’t hear things the same way. I had to create change, from the inside out.” Which is exactly how she learned to do what she does with her clients. She was forced to find new paths, new ways of seeing the world and experiencing its stimuli. Michelle took her journey of discovery and has found a way to share that with people seeking new perspective.

Trying to Understand

Michelle explains what she does in various ways. One description she offers is “Pioneering a path to make vision clear that allows change to happen in a way that’s natural.” She tells me corporate executives and athletes come to her for help but they rarely have the words for what they are seeking. Instead, they say things like,”I’ve got this career thing going on.” There are things we are looking for, but cannot name. Michelle’s gift appears to be one of knowing. If a person feels a connection to her and seeks her assistance, that’s all she needs. From there, Michelle uses assessments to discover more and is able to assemble the custom “tool kit” for change that each person needs.

Fostering Change

She says, “The perspective one has while creating change while you’re living in it, gives you the tools. You have to create all these work-arounds for how you’re going to get things done. All this creativity is what allowed me to have access to tools to help other people. People rarely come to me with the clarity of what they need. I am able to serve as the light-bearer.” And Michelle explains that the results are “increased productivity, workability and overall effectiveness.” Who couldn’t use more of each of those?

Michelle’s client list is impressive. She’s worked with the US Army, Whole Foods, Walgreen’s, the NFL – just to name a few. She tells me one of the gifts she recognizes within herself is a level of focus that goes far beyond. And, I’d add to that, an uncanny ability to see things that others do not.

People come to Michelle who are very successful, who are high-level executives at great companies. To everyone looking at them from the outside, they are doing great. But deep down, they know they could be more. Michelle sees that, and knows the tools to get them there. She says, “What I do is reposition their understanding within themselves of who they are, what they do, how they do it and how they create results so that they can become empowered in such a way that they become a beacon of light and then empower other people. These are leaders, so that’s important.”

Getting The Most From Life

Michelle spends much of her days helping others achieve their goals. She does have a few that she’s working on achieving for herself. She tells me one day she will learn to surf, likely on the north shore of Kauai, a special place she considers a second home. Michelle enjoys writing and says that when the time is right, she will publish a book.

Speaking of books, a book that had a significant impact on Michelle is one I am unfamiliar with, but am interested in reading: Love’s Quiet Revolution: The End Of The Spiritual Search by Scott Kiloby. She says it just resonated with her on a very deep level.

Three things Michelle makes an effort to do daily, that she feels contributes to her overall success and happiness are:

1. Writing
2. Walking
3. Practicing yoga

Truth

I ask about something Michelle believed to be true for a long time, but now knows differently and she tells me, “I always knew that being the truth and telling the truth was the way. But I didn’t realize just how true that was until the last couple of years. Every time you handle something that’s truthful – let’s say it’s a difficult situation, and you’re being the highest truth you can be, with the highest integrity and you have the highest intent for handling the person, it has an impact. I didn’t realize until recently how that has a ripple effect in a very big way. Often it takes a little time to get the results you were expecting to get. And you don’t always know how they’re going to show up, but then they show up in a way that leaves you speechless. It happened to me recently and it takes a lot to make me speechless.”

If given 30 seconds to make a speech to the world, Michelle’s message is short, but far from simple. It is, “I love you.” She says, “People are suffering in the smallest ways and also the biggest ways. I’ve had a long road to get here. People need to know that if they have that which is truthful, that they can then relax and go on their path, and live a life that is filled with love and grace and the highest integrity possible. I provide that as much as I can. When I walk into a restaurant or when I walk past someone, I say ‘I love you.’ Not out loud – to myself, but toward that person.  I love you.”

Could That Be It?

So profound, yet just three simple words. Could it really be that simple? As I had struggled, throughout our conversation, to completely understand Michelle’s gifts and her work, I continued to worry I was getting farther and farther away from understanding. We all want to understand. We ask questions, we take classes, we share our stories. In an effort to understand.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is devastating. I know this from experience, though not nearly as intimately as Michelle does. I began my career working in a TBI rehab facility in Galveston, Texas.  Our patients came to us a few months after their injury – once the acute portion of their medical care had been completed. Brain injury recovery is complex and very individualized. But for most people, the bulk of the recovery happens in the first 12 months. The time I spent at that facility was full of miraculous moments of healing and recovery as I worked with the patients. It was also full of heartbreak and loss, as I worked with their families.

Miracles All Around Us

People often asked me how I could handle a job so full of sadness, and this is how I explained it. TBI is devastating. Family members are grieving. Rarely does someone experience a TBI and come out unchanged. Often, the change is dramatic. If it were just physical, that would be easier to bear. But the hardest thing families dealt with was the personality change. The person was never the same post-injury. Who we are is extremely complicated, but our identity is, in part, a mash-up of memory, experience, and things we’ve learned along the way. When a brain is damaged, much of that is gone. As new memories are made, skills are re-learned, and life experience happens, a new person is born.

Yes, it was sad – but I had lost nothing. All I ever knew was the “new” person. Therefore my experience was one focused entirely on progress. As one man, who many thought would never walk again, took his first steps; as one girl who’d spent six months being combative and violent, re-learned to speak, and found words to express herself again, and was no longer angry; I witnessed it all, and every day was amazed by the healing. I learned that just because something isn’t so, at this moment, doesn’t mean it can never be. Every day there were miracles. Every day in my patients’ lives was full of change and discovery and learning new things. And I had a front row seat to the magic. I like to think that it made me more aware of all that I had to be thankful for, and aware of the fragility of life. But most profoundly, it filled me with hope and awe.

Who Knows!

I knew Michelle had an amazing gift. And not just because I could sense it – the web is filled with testimonials from raving clients. I let go of understanding and I surrendered and just began writing. I typed and typed and the words just came. Then I’d pause and read it to see if it made sense.  “Who knows!” I declared, and again surrendered and kept typing. And now here we are.  2,200 words later, and maybe no closer to understanding.

Perhaps it’s not understanding that we truly seek and instead, it’s being understood. Michelle gets people. Her life experience and continuous recovery from her TBI has given her a gift of focus and of understanding. Of hope and of awe. She doesn’t need you to have the words to explain yourself, but she allows you to try and she recognizes that need within you to name the thing you seek. But she knows you. She understands you. And, I have to admit, that feels like enough.

To learn more about Michelle and her Executive Coaching company, Team in Transition, visit her website.