Marsha Marsh is one of the best coaches I have met in my twenty years of coaching, training and consulting, so it is a pleasure to introduce you to her and her work. Following is a recent interview I had the pleasure of doing with Marsha.

Melissa: Marsha, in Networlding we emphasis value-based networking. What are your top values and how do they play out in your daily work?

Marsha: One of the top values that I discovered after doing a great amount of coaching is "making a difference." I started to notice how important each client is to me–whether they are spending $50 or $500 I am as present. It really made me see that making a difference was more important than anything else to me. 

Collaboration is a second value. Every voice is important–even the unpopular voices in a group. These voices are important to the outcomes of a group. Synergistic collaboration is probably an even more accurate term for my value as I love to see the creative combination of diverse voices coming together to achieve unique and powerfully successful outcomes.

Melissa: Marsha, share a quick story of how you made a difference in the life of one of your clients recently.

Marsha: I was working on assisting a team at a Fortune 500 company create a more positive environment in order to handle the excessive demands on their time. Just like many workplaces, this team was required to give longer hours with fewer people which was taking a large toll on their individual and group productivity.

My two days of group coaching followed by individual coaching helped them build skills to reduce stress and increase group alignment through the development of a cohesive environment and camaraderie. They are learning to value each other more; they are also taking shared ownership. By valuing the diversity of each team member as opposed to judging it as wrong, they are using conflict as a stepping stone to innovation. They are actually now working as "one heart." The manager I was working with was so pleased that she referred me to a number of other managers. The team found a common language which will help them get to innovating much quicker. That’s where the satisfaction comes for me through results like these.

Melissa: So what do you want to do next?

Marsha: I’m interested in more speaking engagements, reaching a wider audience and more team coaching. I am also working hard at developing my blog. I want to help companies see new ways to help their teams learn collaboration. These new, cutting-edge practices can realize results and sustain them even better than current team building practices. When people can really respect and trust each other, they are going to do something different . . . something better.

Melissa: Thanks Marsha. I am sharing your blog link for others: www.marshamarshcoaching.com.