Coach FEATURE: Jeremy Long BA, ACC, CPCC

We continue to meet our fellow coaches, get inspired and build coach community with our "Meet the Coach" features! This month we meet Jeremy Long BA, ACC, CPCC.

About Jeremy

Lives In: Vancouver, Canada

Company: Enhance Leadership

Type of Coach: Leadership Coach

Describe your coaching business in one sentence: I am a Leadership Development Coach who works with emerging managers and leaders to support them in their people leadership skills, with a special passion for working with Queer clients and other clients who have experienced marginalization or barriers in their lives.

Meet Jeremy

QUESTION 1. What one book should every coach read—and why?

I can't choose just one! Here are my top 3:

1. The Prosperous Coach, because it helps you set your heights higher as a coach, to believe in the value you offer.
2. The Motivation Manifesto, because Brendan Burchard's choice in words to help you end self oppression and step into your higher self, is amazing.
3. Fierce Conversations, because feedback and conflict can and should be seen as a gift and opportunity.

QUESTION 2. Which website do you visit the most?

Greg Faxon's website. It offers great insight and resources for coaches to continue to build their businesses, which is important because as coaches we are taught how to coach, not how to sell.

QUESTION 3. Whom do you admire most and why?

I would have to say that I am constantly impressed by and admire my clients when they choose to acknowledge their resistance to change, feel the fear, and do it anyway choosing to act in a new way because their vision for their lives demands it, because they value growth and opportunity, over playing it safe.

QUESTION 4. What's your vision for your life? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

My journey has been all about overcoming, and developing my own capacity, with the help of therapy, coaching, and men's groups to help me start seeing myself with love, compassion and respect, which I did not always have as a young gay man.

My vision from this point forward, is to take my lived experience, my passion for development, and my bravery in business to go out, get messy, and see how many people I can support and impact on their journey.

I see myself getting married, traveling the world, and helping thousands of people in their personal and professional development.

QUESTION 5. What is your "big project" at the moment? OR What are your Top 3 Goals at the moment?

My business has 2 sides with 2 areas of focus.

One is the leadership training and team coaching I offer to businesses and leaders. I am developing team coaching experiences to support teams integrate practices in psychological safety, honoring diversity and navigating through conflict when things are tough, helping teams in trouble become teams that triumph.

On the other side, I lead Queer Men's groups, supporting men with the emotional maturity, and relationship support. These groups are a bold, honest, challenging yet supportive spaces for men to do the deep inner work that will change their lives.

QUESTION 6. What has been your favourite coaching moment so far?

One of my favorite moments was during a session with a young manager who was struggling with her imposter syndrome working in a tech company. She was afraid she would not be seen as professional, that she would not be respected, especially when admitting that some of her triggers were getting in the way of her being effective at being influential with her team.

Through a series of sessions that supported her in self management of her triggered self, she was able to see that she did have the tools to be as strong as anyone around her, and that when she made a mistake, that she could own it—and show even more confidence. She left our work together with a newfound courage and confidence I had never seen before.

QUESTION 7. What are your Top 3 favourite coaching tools and/or resources?

I love integrating systems coaching to support leaders understand how to influence their team, and help them welcome conflict as an opportunity for innovation.

I also love helping clients get to know their inner saboteur, which stops them from playing big.

And lastly, I love implementing movement to help clients have a somatic experience that supports them in accessing new information about the situation they face.

QUESTION 8. What do you love most about being a coach?

I love that I am invited into a client's personal world, seeing how they see life, and I am invited to challenge them to see it in a new way.

It is both vulnerable and courageous to be included in this experience, and I take my role seriously to honor the space that clients invite to be part of—it's a pleasure to be with someone on their journey through change, witnessing the ups and downs, and celebrating them the whole way through!

QUESTION 9. Tell us a secret about you...

Something surprising about me is that I had a bizarre career path to end up in coaching.

I've worked everywhere from running away with a travelling carnival when I was 16 years old, to a driving school, to working with homeless youth as a peer counselor, to go-go dancing in nightclubs, to traveling onboard a luxury passenger train that traveled through the Canadian Rocky Mountains, as well as creating community programs for a queer health organization.

I believe that all my experience has led me to my passion of elevating people, no matter what career path they are on. And this is why I named my business Enhance Leadership, because leadership is developed and practiced by highlighting all that is already there within you.

QUESTION 10. If you could change one thing in our world, what would it be? And how would you go about it?

I would make sure that any young queer person or person of color who was facing a barrier to developing their own capacity was offered coaching, or access to resources to support them in their personal development.

Because I know how hard it is to climb out of a life of trauma and marginalization, to actually come above water to create a life of abundance, free of fear and scarcity. It takes a team of people to believe in you, to challenge you to be better, to own your behavior, and to lift you up when the world feels completely impossible; at least it did for me.

I would do this by making sure that everyone who has been able to elevate their own lives, pays a little forward to those in need—whether its an hour a month, or year—it all helps!

LEARN MORE about Jeremy here: Visit Jeremy's Website here >> Follow Jeremy on Facebook >> Follow Jeremy on LinkedIn >> Follow Jeremy on Instagram >> Follow Jeremy on Instagram at The Conscious Queer Community >>