A New Point of View

Dr. Elena Espinal, MCC (Mexico), is no stranger to turning challenges into opportunities. As a pioneer of the coaching industry in Latin America, Elena worked tirelessly to change the minds of individuals who were skeptical—even fearful—of coaching. Now, more than two decades later, she’s using her business’ newest venture to help visually impaired individuals turn their own challenges into opportunities through a first-of-its-kind coach-training program.

From White Coat to Coaching

The daughter of two prominent dentists, Elena considered a career in medicine before her father encouraged her to follow in her parents’ footsteps. After Elena completed her dentistry training she moved into the field of pathology, earning master’s and doctoral degrees and numerous accolades for her achievements as a researcher.

Soon after Elena’s father passed away, she had an epiphany that changed the course of her professional life.

“One afternoon, I found myself doing biopsies in the laboratory. I was looking at a slide from a young woman, showing that she had a cancerous tumor in her breast,” Elena remembers. “When I finished, the patient came in to look for the result, and I had a real contact with her. I thought, ‘In two minutes, she will know that she may only have five years to live. Surely, she has kids, a husband, parents and plans for her future.’ I hadn’t noticed any of these things when I was working. I realized that I was going crazy—out of the world, away from people’s pain and suffering, in a cave where I hide myself, called ‘science’ and ‘research.’ That was the moment where I began to change.”

Elena embarked on a new professional journey that included studies in ontological coaching and the completion of a licentiate degree in psychology from John F. Kennedy Argentine University.

Elena’s heart was in coaching, but the late 1980s and early 1990s were a challenging time for the burgeoning industry in Latin America. “At that time, some individuals in the psychology profession started a conversation likening coaching to witchcraft, because of the changes that people experienced as a result of coaching,” she recalls. “However, I took what was happening as the opportunity for a breakthrough,” she says of her decision to partner with Jim Selman and co-found what would be the first coach-training program acknowledged by Argentina’s Department of Education, Science and Technology. “Now witch-coaches were legal in that country!” she jokes.

Seeing with the Heart

A decade after she launched her coaching business, Team Work, in Argentina, Elena took her coaching model to Mexico and founded Team Power. Team Power’s client list includes high-powered organizations from a variety of sectors, such as American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coca-Cola, Novartis and Sony.

However, it’s one of Team Power’s smallest clients that looms largest in the minds and hearts of Elena and her team. Founded in 2006, Ojos Que Sienten (OQS), or “Sight of Emotion,” is a nonprofit that works to change perceptions of individuals with visual disabilities by focusing on their skills; empowering and including them in social, vocational and educational settings; and supporting them in overcoming their barriers.

The organization’s name came from its first initiative, launched by photographer Gina Badenoch, to teach photography to visually impaired individuals. Although the medium of photography is visual, the act of capturing a photograph calls the other senses into play. OQS’ sensory photography workshops lay the foundation for participants to begin a creative process, tell stories through photography, and build new skills and aptitudes in service of personal and professional development.

OQS branched from its sensory photography program to offer job-skills courses, public awareness events and inclusiveness training for organizations. “OQS staff knew about Team Power and our experience inventing games and doing team coaching in companies,” Elena explains. “They asked us for collaboration, and we fell in love! We love what they are doing and the way they do it.”

However, the process of developing training programs for OQS to deliver to organizations brought about a realization for Elena and her team. “They always needed a coach working with them when they went into these organizations,” she explains. “We acknowledged that we were the ceiling for OQS participants. They couldn’t grow higher because of us. In that moment, we began considering the possibility of training them as coaches—of giving them the opportunity to join our profession.”

A New View 

The first class of students in Team Power and OQS’ training program will graduate in June 2014 with training that has laid the foundation for pursuit of an ICF Credential. Elena says the process of delivering training around the ICF definition of coaching, Code of Ethics and Core Competencies was as much of a learning experience for Team Power’s faculty as it was for the students, as the trainers learned how to provide instruction without such classroom standbys as handouts and PowerPoint presentations. The results were freeing, she says. “We learned to teach from and trust in our hearts, instead of trusting in a particular model. That was a
great adventure!”

Elena and her colleagues found that their visually impaired students approached the coaching conversation with unique skills and competencies. “They have a listening for space that we don’t know or use,” she reflects. “They distinguish distance and also movements, emotions and changes in the voice because a body has changed position. What we learned is that they can coach from a different kind of listening than we do.”

Elena says her students have also changed the way that she thinks about face-to-face interactions. “These students broke some profound beliefs that we held about how emotions are shown through the face. Because their eyes have no expression, we have to read emotion in a different way.”

Above all, Elena says she was inspired by each student’s personal journey. “All of the students in class lost their vision later as children or as adults—they had all seen in some moment of their lives. They have created a possibility from nothing, which makes them extra-skillful at hearing the excuses we often make to justify staying where we are.”

Elena says she has no doubt that these 14 coaches—and the trainees who will follow them—will change lives when they enter their new profession. “We want organizations to understand diversity as a contribution. Our coaches will open minds not only to people with disabilities, but to anyone who thinks or behaves differently. They’ll help people within organizations ask much-needed questions where intimacy, comprehension and compassion are included. They’ll also set a great example of possibility: When something gets closed, what other things are opening for you?”

Learn more about how Ojos Que Sienten’s coach-training program is opening doors for individuals with visual impairments: