Background | Objectives | Location | Fee Structure | How to Decide | Sign Up Now
Do you need career related counseling and development? Individual leadership or vision development? You might want to consider one on one sessions with Michael Gilbert.
Michael sets aside a few hours each week for such sessions. He's interested in helping individuals with genuinely transformative work. In some cases that will mean working with leaders who are working to transform both themselves and their organizations. In some cases that will mean working with individuals who, while not in a leadership position, are tackling big issues related to social and personal change.
Michael Gilbert's qualifications represent a confluence of many rivers of past experience: (1) seven years of counseling, training, and support group leadership, with a focus on meaningful work; (2) twenty five years of consulting on matters related to leadership and communication, in the context of civil society; (3) a history of service on over thirty boards of directors, both nonprofit and for-profit; and (4) a track record of successful startups and program development, with the occasional poignant failure.
Michael was the founder of GoodWorks, a nonprofit whose mission was the support of public interest work. He designed and taught the "Making a Living, Making a Difference" workshop. He organized and led support groups of people who were bridging the gaps between their work and their values. He designed and taught a unique series of seminars that were framed as time management workshops, but which focused on mindfulness and personal agency. He privately counseled scores of clients, at wide ranging stages of development, in personal and professional strategies for meaningful work. This has included young people who are embarking on a life of committed work; mid-career professionals making a radical jump to more meaningful work; artists, writers, and activist who are seeking greater sustainability; and experienced visionaries who are pushing themselves to new levels of integrity and creativity.
LifeWork Counseling is, obviously, about your life's work. This process is not called "Coaching", because life is not a sport, a stage performance, or a tainted witness stand. It's not called "Career" Counseling, because a career is not a life's work, jobs and resumes are not ends in themselves, and looking for permission is not the path to purpose. It's about the contribution that you make to this fragile world while you are in it. It's about bridging the gap between the world as you know it to be and the world as you wish it were.
The process of creating your life's work, regardless of your level of professional development and regardless of your circumstances, is a neverending dialectic. Another person might envy your position and indeed, it might be the next step in their path. But you see the gap between it and your values and are ready to figure out what's next. Some people are looking for incremental improvements and some are looking for radical change. Some need to focus on what they want and some need to focus on what the opportunities are. But in every single case, your counseling work will be about the brave synthesis of the "real world" and your heart's vision.
Some of the specific outcomes that you might pursue in our counseling sessions include:
- incremental transition plans for your work,
- high powered community building and networking strategies (especially for people who are not natural schmoozers),
- hands-on methods for discovering both your vision and new opportunities,
- risk management tactics for career transitions,
- conflict resolution and enrollment tools for use with those whose support you need,
- research and personal project planning techniques,
- and a mix of long term and short term approaches to continued refinement of personal vision.
We can also simply help you figure out what your next steps should be, since that is often the main thing many people need.
Right now, we've decided to offer this in three counseling formats. Our primary format of engagement will be either (1) in person, at our office, (2) on the phone, or (3) over video chat. These will be scheduled in traditional 50 minute increments. As with any counseling, you can sign up for one session at a time, so long as you feel you are getting something out of it. But should you find that we're compatible, we highly recommend that you commit to a five or ten session series, during which we can facilitate a well developed plan for discovery, strategy, and action. We offer a steep discount for five and ten week commitments. Depending upon the amount of time you have available for the pursuit of your goals, sessions can be scheduled at whatever pace works best for you. We recommend sessions happen once every week or two, to keep our work moving forward at a steady pace.
In addition to the counseling sessions, you will be expected to keep a journal of your progress, in the form of a weblog. This weblog can be open only to us or you can choose to open it to selected friends, colleagues, or anyone else you like. In time, we hope to connect people with similar aspirations, but the weblog is primarily a tool for reflection.
The Assessment Session costs $150. During this session we will discuss your interests, goals, and desires for your life's work. It's possible to benefit a great deal from this single assessment session, and you'll also have time to discuss the benefits of further sessions.
Subsequent sessions can be purchased one at a time for $150 each, or you can pre-purchase blocks of five or ten sessions, for the discounted prices you see here:
- $150 - Assessment Session
- $150 - Single sessions thereafter
- $600 - 5 session commitment (20% Discount, ie $120 each)
- $1,050 - 10 session commitment (30% Discount, ie $105 each)
For low income people, discounts are available, but they are very modest at this time.
There are any number of starting points for LifeWork Counseling, but they all have one thing in common: There is a gap between your values and the work you're doing. Whether you are making a big break from what you've been doing or only looking to make some small changes, we have experience we can bring to bear. Whether you think there are changes you need to make personally or changes that you want to bring about in your working environment, we will help you focus and strategize. Feel free to write us and describe your circumstances and we'll honestly tell you if we think we're a good match. Alternatively, sign up for a single Assessment Session. It's designed to give you as much to work with in a single session as possible, and help you decide if you want to work with us on a longer basis.
P.S. If you just need help finding nonprofit jobs, check out Idealist, Opportunity NOCs, or our own Nonprofit Online Classifieds.