Creative coaching

Creative Emergence Coaching

For purpose-centered entrepreneurs and those who what to bring more of your unique creativity into your work and create your signature offerings
Developed by Michelle James over two decades ago, this creativity and aliveness-centered coaching process is for passionate, purpose-centered entrepreneurs who want to create a business, services, or products that integrate your unique creativity, meaning, income-generation, and serving a greater good. Creative Emergence Coaching is focuses on:
  • Personal and Professional Development - cultivating your inner landscape for new outcomes and growth in your outer world
  • Discovering/Designing Your Unique Signature Offerings - including your business, services, products, talks, methods, approaches, and more
  • Creating What's Next in Your Work and Life - moving forward in uncertainty; uncorking your creative well-spring for practical applications; transforming current challenges into creative opportunities
Discovery Session Sign-up

Creative Facilitation Coaching

For professional facilitation who want to bring more whole-brain creativityand originality into your facilitation and out of your participants on or offline
Michelle has been leading bi-annual Whole-Brain Creative Faciliation group workshops since 2005, and began coaching individuals a few years later. For professional facilitators/trainers/leaders who want to bring more creativity, meaning, fun, and purposeful outcomes into their workshop design and delivery, and out of their groups (and themselves). This is for independant faciliatators, colleague groups, or in-house organizational training teams.
We often work with an actual facilitation/design project, workshop, or event you have, and customize the approach and activities for the specific event. You can already have most of it it designed, and just need some tweaking, or none of it designed and need a larger structure. These can stand-alone sessions or a 3-month customized package. We also offer public Creative Facilitation workshops.
Costomized coaching to support you to:
  • generate novel ideas and activities for your next event - on or offline
  • create compelling content and engaging, alive workshops
  • bring more of your unique creativity into your workshop design or delivery in a grounded way that meets the groups objectives
  • brings out your participants' creativity and move past their resistance to creative activities
  • easily modify your existing activities, as well as create new ones
Discovery Session Sign-up

Creativity for Coaches Coaching

For professional, successful coaches who want to bring more whole-brain creativityand originality into your coaching and out of your clients
This is for already established coaches who already have processes that work for you. This is to "yes-and" your current repertoire adding more of your one-of-a-kind style and creativity into your session to bring more creativity out of your clients to meet/exceed their goals and expectations. You'll learn how to integrate your unique creative style and gifts (tapped or yet untapped) with storytelling, improv and other theater-based activites, somatic/movement practices, expressive/visual arts, creative process cultivtation, creative visioning, reflective and emergent practices and framewoks into your coaching. It is to expand what you already do and how you do it.
  • Express more of your own ingenutiy, originality, and unique signature creative coaching style
  • Bring our more creativity, discovery, and novel thinking from your coaching clients in their coaching journey
  • Weave in whole-brain, whole-body methods to help your clients meet their goals and objectives
Discovery Session Sign-up

what they say

Michelle's Creative Emergence Coaching was a great experience all around. She helped me helped me think differently about my work. She introduced me to new techniques, such as abstract painting, for clarifying my thinking. I would recommend Michelle to anyone who's looking for an infusion of new ideas to fuel their work.
Amanda setili
Setili & Associates, LLCAuthor of Fearless Growth and Agility Advantage
Michelle is my mentor for teaching facilitation skills employing Improv principles and practices. She built a section of my training manual that has served facilitators around the world. She is a walking treasure trove of creative insights and possibilities. I adore every minute collaborating with her and recommend her creative facilitationc coaching highly.
Paul scheele
CEO, Scheele Learning Systems Internationally recognized authority on Leadership, Learning and Change
Michelle is a creative genius. She is masterful at facilitating environments for people to channel their creative energy behind real business objectives....As my creativity coach, she has profoundly changed my facilitation style. She helped me internalize creativity principles that infuse my work transforming organizational culture with quite extraordinary results. My clients give me feedback that I can directly attribute to Michelle's contribution to my work.
alicia korton
CEO, The Culture Company
From the first day we spoke, I had no doubt that Michelle was the perfect person to foster my personal growth and the growth of my business. She works within clearly set boundaries with a wide open heart and mind. She helped me learn to embrace the gift in the unknown and trust my intuition. One of the greatest gifts she gave me was teaching me to find my inner advocate, the voice inside of me that advocates for my heart, my hopes and my dreams. Her Creative Emergence coaching helped mold the person that I am today in a significant way. I will forever be grateful.
crystal gornto
Cheif Love Amplifier, HeartStories.com
Michelle's creative emergence process helped me uncover issues that were blocking my productivity and the emotional baggage behind them. I've developed successful new products and services as a result of our work together, and refer others to her because I know that she will do a masterful job of helping them draw out their best ideas and most creative self.
Jim smith
The Executive Happiness Coach
Michelle was the answer to my question of 'What's next in my life?' Going through her unique Creative Emergence Coaching process I discovered my most dominant strengths and have tapped into a joyful and creative energy that allows me to confidently redefine myself and express myself in a way that's been beneficial to my well-being, and life-enhancing for others!
Peter colwell
Author, Poet, and Motivational Speaker
Michelle is the perfect ally during these times when we have to constantly change and adapt and maybe finally pursue that one idea on which to build a new life. She is extremely successful at helping you isolate and define the structure upon which you can build a new product, business, creative expression, workshop, website - one that comes from the core of you!
karen rugg
Lead for Aeronautics Communication and Education, NASA
It is no exaggeration to say that Michelle is a master coach in the realm of creative emergence. Her expertise in this realm is matched only by her passionate commitment to each client's unique emergence. I strongly recommend Michelle, as I have to many of my friends for years.
tom goddard
President, The Integral Company
Michelle has been a great source of learning and inspiration to me as a teacher, coach, and co-creator. Her unwavering commitment to travel with me into the unknown and delicious dimensions of my creative soul have enriched me as a Leadership Coach, business consultant, and writer.
mitchel groter
CEO, Quantum Acheivement, and Author
There is a story that at Tuskeegee Institute George Washington Carver had the builders wait to see where paths between buildings formed naturally before they paved the sidewalks. The sidewalks were paved in a way that honored an authentic order, rather than an artificial one imposed from the outside. Michelle performed a similar service for me that enabled me to use my creativity to develop more successful products, and with greater ease.
kathy carroll
President, Brain Firendly Learning
I can hardly believe how easy the breakthrough came. Working with Michelle one time has changed our business strategy. We now have a whole new unique position defined. Her system works. I came away with a clearly defined direction.
cindy atlee
Owner, The Storybranding Group
Michelle has a true genius when it comes to facilitating creative emergence out of anyone. She brings a depth of tools, principles, and multi-disciplinary expertise to her work. Her assistance led to many of our first service offerings. She helped us identify, name and package what we do most intuitively. She was instrumental in the early years of my business and continues to be a cherished friend and colleague. More creativity, innovation, collaboration - if those are your goals, talk to Michelle.
michael margolis
CEP, Storied, and Author of Story 10X
Michelle has an extraordinary gift for guiding us in excavating our own special gifts: bringing to the surface with great joy, surprise– and fun– what was silently lingering just outside our awareness. It is exhilarating to meet with one’s own emerging creativity—to confront the possibilities, to be introduced to parts of the self previously invisible, to learn how we can retrain our thought patterns.
robin horton
Owner, Robin Horton Design
I honor you for being such a kind and gentle leader and coach. You have fought through enough brick walls to empower the others who are called to do so.
ANNE BRACKEN
President, The Possibility Project
Michelle's work is brilliant! She provides a safe environment for the emergence process. Experiential exercises skip you through the path of the unknown, linking you to incredible 'ah ha' moments - information that you can act on for business results.
mimi malfitano
Owner, Subtle Transformations
Your emergence work continues to live with me each day. The shift has happened and continues...I’m inviting my clients and their teams into a more emergent way, and they’re finding it hugely rewarding and effective. Your coaching and support helped me open to a new level of openness and acceptance of the flow.
bob devlin
Organizational Development Consultant, Facilitator, and Coach
I was feeling out of alignment with what I should be doing with my work based on who I am. Michelle’s coaching process helped bring clarity with support and understanding. As a result, I became clear on the direction I wanted to take. Things have fallen into place with my new business, and I already have several clients.
cheryl harlan
Arists and Educator
I now enjoy doing the things I used to find daunting and draining. Instead of avoiding them, I do them. The emergence process helps even the mundane aspects of the creative process sparkle and come to life.
alexis outerbridge
Clinical Social Worker