Dr. Kevin Fleming
Coach/Advisor/Change Agent, Grey Matters International, Inc.
This is Entry #7 of the National Coach Academy Coach Interview Series.
Our main objective here at the National Coach Academy is to enable aspiring coaches to reach their full professional potential. One of the most effective ways to educate students about the world of coaching is by offering them a window into the world of real, practicing coaches and showing them all the different ways coaches make a difference in the lives of their clients.
We hope today’s interview adds another insightful glimpse into the dynamic world of coaching.
Today we are interviewing Dr. Kevin Fleming. Dr. Kevin Fleming is Founder of Grey Matters International, Inc. (www.greymattersintl.com), a world-class neuroscience-based alternative to traditional counseling and psychiatry, featuring the most cutting edge behavior change insights and technologies, all done in ‘we come to you” concierge level care.
NCA: Can you describe your coaching practice and the kinds of clients you typically work with?
Dr. Fleming: In essence, my company is found by people who have not fit the old school “week by week talk about your problems” kind of model. Or people who feel they have been overmedicated or inappropriately diagnosed by a psychiatrist, and who believe there is something ‘else out there”. Or those who are in a high performing field and need the most brain-centric cutting edge solution for their private mental health needs and need it on their terms (time, duration, frequency, location—for I work all over the world with clients).
Lastly, in addition to these folks ill-served by traditional counseling, self-help, psychiatry and feel-good coaches who arent sophisticated with complex behavior change issues, some of the specialties diagnostically are: brain injury, addiction, dual diagnosis, executives mental health, professional athletes, sleep issues, burnout, and resistant or eccentric mood dysregulation cases.
NCA: What initially got you interested in this career path and what kind of degree or certifications did you need to complete, if any?
Dr. Fleming: Well, I am not the best one to give “go here and train here” kind of traditional answer 🙂 I defected from the world of psychotherapy and didn’t find a home in traditional coaching either due to the overly simplistic models of change and an over-reliance on constructs like goal-setting, motivation, and rational thinking.
So I took my training (BA, MA, and PhD from Univ of Notre Dame, Predoctoral Internship in Professional Psychology at Purdue University, Postdoctoral Residency in Behavioral Medicine/Consulting Psychology at University of Wyoming) and went into the entrepreneurial realm and created my own version of the best of behavior change science and neurotechnology innovations. To me, this is the “sweet spot” of radical second-order change and transformation—the place in between shrinking and coaching, where wisdom rests.
NCA: What is the most rewarding part of your career?
Dr. Fleming: Seeing the most difficult of cases being helped—-watching the radical change and breakthrough-level type shifts happen for these great people! You can get a sense of the joy one would feel getting these unsolicited and detailed amazing breakthroughs people share with me all the time, usually just after one 3-4 day private retreat with me:
www.greymattersintl.com/company/testimonials/
Keep in mind these people have traveled from all over the world, saving up money, putting hope into the Grey Matters basket after many many failed attempts at getting their problem truly addressed.
Nothing beats this satisfaction….for my work is really a vocation, not a mere career or a job.
To me, this is the “sweet spot” of radical second-order change and transformation—the place in between shrinking and coaching, where wisdom rests.
NCA: What is the most challenging aspect of the work that you do?
Dr. Fleming: At times, these cases are not easy and the pathology quite difficult and not successful all the time (I would say about 10-15 percent of the folks I am not able to get the brain to change/shift….or in even tougher cases, the “heart” of the person to have mercy and seek that good type of irrational thinking we all tend to resist—–dropping the self-protection, ego, and the desire to be right, but not happy)
This is the hardest thing—to let people have their freedom. To watch them have the right type of problems.
NCA: Can you think of one client or mentor who challenged your beliefs or made you rethink the way you approach your clients or your work?
Dr. Fleming: To me, if one does this work ‘right’, EVERY client should be doing this. For this is not a cookie cutter approach, or some one up/one down “Dr. Fleming has the answers, so listen to me” kind of relationship. Every client challenges me to release preconceived notions of ‘what is’. This is very hard; for many times when we have a good case made with our informational models of how we see the world, we go the extra but non-wise step of moving ‘what makes sense’ into what is ‘definitely true.’
This is a danger in my field where so many people surrender their knowing and project omniscience onto us. There was a day I blindly accepted that projection, for it was a hard thing to reject that when the ego is young and immature. But now, if I do this work well and balanced, I constantly challenge myself and assumptions being made, no matter how uncomfortable and dissonant that is.
It is an ethical requirement, I would say, in our business….something that is getting harder every day as technologies are becoming more ‘right’ in what they can do for us. And I think, if we don’t watch it, this good part of humanity can ‘bleed boundaries’ into other knowledge contexts where caution is needed, and thereby lead the practitioner into extending that improved reliability/validity of a method into our understanding of reality itself. Easy to do, but dangerous in my opinion.
After getting all that training two things are critical: 1) let go of the attachment to that knowledge, 2) seek innovations and ways of knowing that were not included in the base of assumptions included in that training.
NCA: Finally, what advice would you give someone looking to get started in the career path that you chose?
Dr. Fleming: I would say the educational training of advanced degrees are key to “get your ticket’ into the arena of expert-ness, where people will even just entertain your opinion as being something to reckon with. Sadly that is the world we live in, and to get leverage on the stage of ‘change/transformation’ it behooves one to take time and get a formal advanced degree. Sure, there are ‘certifications’, but in my opinion, many have left me unimpressed. There is and also will be a sort of confidence in the PhD or MD level of knowledge.
But — and here is the kicker: After getting all that training two things are critical: 1) let go of the attachment to that knowledge, 2) seek innovations and ways of knowing that were not included in the base of assumptions included in that training. This allows one to get into “what we don’t know we don’t know”….and i think that is where the secret sauce of transformation rests 🙂 Too many half-truths out there and many willing to accept those as the full truth….the perfect collusion to kind-of-sort-of change.
