Day 49: Viki Winterton

November 18, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“I think that your authenticity as a person changes every day as you grow and as you have new experiences.  And the depth of your experiences with other people helps you determine your preferences, once again, and the direction you want to grow.  And it really expands your universe because you’re learning as opposed to knowing.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Viki, for agreeing to join us on this project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Viki Winterton: It’s my pleasure to be here, Toni.  Thank you so much for inviting me; and I am Viki Winterton, and currently I am involved with coaching not only personally and in the area of corporations and Fortune 500 companies, but also a networking site for coaches called The Coach Exchange.

Toni: Okay.  When you do the work that you do or even in your personal life and you think about inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you go about that?

Viki: I try to be an inspiration for everyone I meet by being fully in acceptance of who they are, the authentic person they are, and having a curiosity and appreciation about what that is.  So I like to try to allow the space for everyone to be who they are so I can really get to know that person.  I find when I’m allowed that space, that inspires me.

Toni: I see.  And when you do that type of work, when you are looking to provide that acceptance and that authenticity, how do you go about that?

Viki: It’s through a natural curiosity, I think.  It’s by asking questions and showing interest about who they are, but it goes beyond what I do with the work that I do.  I also carry that into my personal relationships outside of work.  And I have found that as a result of that, the relationships that I’ve fostered have been richer, they’ve been deeper, and they’ve been mutually appreciative and in acceptance of, again, who the person truly is.  So that really drives me.  Authenticity really drives me and appreciation of that in others.

Toni: And so that driver inside of you helps you to inspire others.  And when you take that then, that driver, how do you think that helps others explore their potential?

Viki: I can only express what it does for me, but I would assume if the interaction that I’ve had with others also maybe provides them a space where they can be totally themselves, where they can be at the height of their creativity because of the level of acceptance that is there.  And I think that that’s really important; having the space to be able to explore your creativity and your uniqueness in a sense of totality.

Toni: You know, Viki, it really sounds to me like a totally turbocharged definition of the word trust.

Viki: Actually when you bring up that word, yes, that does resonate with me.  I think the appreciation, again, for the authentic person, they would sense trust.  And certainly when I experienced that in the environments that I explore and am involved in, certainly trust would be a word to describe the essence of what it is.

Toni: That’s what it sounds like to me with the acceptance and really no judgment, that when you’re working with others or even in your personal relationships, that allowed space to be totally who they are doesn’t come, I think, naturally to some people.   So therefore, there must be an enormous amount of trust around that to just be who you are.

Viki: It is.  And I think, for me, it certainly hasn’t always been this way where I’ve had an appreciation for this thought process or this type of attitude in relationships.  But since I have fostered it over the last decade or so — and it’s become stronger and stronger as I’ve been enriched by it — I think probably some of the most important aspects of it are the depth of the relationship and the thoroughness at how you get to know people and how you really experience life.  I like to refer to it as … I used to have really strong ideas about what I wanted, what I needed.  Now I have preferences.  And those preferences often change because of exposure to other people in a space where they’re allowed to be totally themselves.

Toni: The strong ideas and the preferences … can you give me just a little bit more on that?  That’s really something, that you used to have strong ideas and now you have preferences.  Can you give an example of that?

Viki: Yeah, I would say that I used to have almost requirements in order for me to feel content, in order for me to feel happy, in order for me to feel fulfilled, and those have now evolved into preferences.  So I find that my life is basically happy all the time.  And I would prefer maybe for some things to happen maybe sometimes even differently than they’re evolving, but I find that when I really, truly embrace them as preferences, they’re not emotionally charged.  So as a result, I can be very, very content with what’s going on present time.  And again, that’s probably evolved for me more fully over the last decade, but it’s a really wonderful, happy place to be.

Toni: It sounds it.  When you talk about inspiration like you are here with the personal transformation that you’ve gone through in the past decade that you’ve referred to here, even now, what do you need to be inspired?

Viki: I think for me to truly be inspired, I need the space to be able to express myself fully.  And that can be with others, again, if they are in accepting space.  But if I don’t find it with others, then I probably need some quiet time for retrospect and for that creativity to grow.

Toni: Are there tools or methodologies or resources that you might reach for in order to stay inspired, or when you know that you’re seeking inspiration that you might reach for?

Viki: Yes, I do a lot of inspirational reading, and I also try to meditate on a daily basis.  For me personally, that’s really, really helpful.  I think, again, it allows that space from everything that’s occurring and going on.  I think it was Wayne Dyer … I heard him quote someone saying “Without the space between the notes, there is no music.”  And I think for me, that again really resonated as being true.  I need some quiet time in order for things to grow and be nurtured.  Sometimes that is with others — it’s a peaceful time of creativity — and other times I need to be alone and by myself.  But I find that that’s really helpful.  I find this particularly helpful if I’m in a situation, a quandary, a situation where I need to make a decision or I feel pressured.

I used to feel that I needed to go at it twice as strong, and now I feel more that that’s probably a time to step back and just sort of watch what’s happening.  And I found that very few decisions have to be made without allowing some time and space for things to evolve to help you if you’re in a quandary.  For me, that’s really been true.  I used to think everything had to be turned around in an instant, and now I find that things can be actually put aside for a day, a week, or even longer sometimes, and let them kind of evolve to help crystallize what needs to happen with them.

Toni: Was there a certain point that you realized in your career or personally that that change started to take place?  Where when you used to have the strong ideas or you used to feel that you needed to react or make a decision right away?  Was it an evolution that just kind of snuck up on you, or was it something that you actually experienced that you went, “You know, in the last decade, I need to change this?”

Viki: It’s interesting you should ask that, Toni, because I think I need to attribute it to the fact that since the mid 1980s, I have been working in corporate culture doing coaching, doing process reengineering, some pretty heavy corporate type of work with people that had high expectations as far as the outcome.

And I would say it was about a decade ago that I actually started volunteering some time to women in need.  And these women had experiences and lifestyles that I couldn’t even begin to relate to.  And in order to be able to really embrace the time that I had with them and to make it productive, I had to throw away any misconceptions that I may have had about where they were, what they experienced, what that meant to them.  I had to be totally open to them in order for them to have a meaningful experience by our exchange.  And as a result, the relationships were so rewarding and so rich that it changed the way I started looking at everything.

Toni: So it was a conscious change?  It was that experience of moving out of one environment to accept another environment to be able to benefit from that environment, so to speak, is where that transformation began?  That’s what I’m hearing you say.

Viki: Yes, it was interesting because initially I was doing the volunteer work along with the corporate work.  And I found that as I became more and more enriched with this volunteer work, the nature of the type of work that I decided I wanted to do changed.  And a I had a very big contract that ended and, rather than going on to another contract, I decided to do something different.

And that’s when I started the networking site for coaches and started really getting involved in a way where I felt I could have deeper relationships that didn’t involve maybe the superficial corporate politics that sometimes, you know, are very necessary and need to be in place to be able to play in that world.  I just decided I didn’t want to play there anymore, even though I had been there for a really long time and had a lot of success.  I consciously came to a place where I made that decision.  It evolved over a period of time, but there was a day when I made the decision and thought, “No, I want more of this and no more of that.”

Toni: When you take all of that body of work and all of the transformation that you’ve been through and what you are doing now and use what inspires you in your work or personal life, what do you do that relates to that that might help you continuously explore your own potential?

Viki: I think … What it did for me was it allowed me … it for the first time created a desire in me to want to have really deep relationships.  I had been so busy with work and single most of my life that I had more superficial relationships, and I really pursued that as something that was necessary because of my travel schedule and all of these things.

And I think what happened was I put the depth of relationships into the forefront of everything that I was doing and, as a result, that evolved into some really — and one specific — very, very deep personal relationships.  And I’m exploring that probably thoroughly for the first time in my life; and that inspires me greatly.  The idea of going after the depth and the substance and the true totality of what another person is as opposed to the way I’d like to see it or the way I’d like them to be, or the fact that I don’t have time to discover it.

Toni: And so by almost wearing a different set of lenses now, you know, and looking at life in a different way and experiencing that depth of a relationship, how does that help you to explore where you need to be to the potential that is within you now or where the potential is going to come from?

Viki: I think what has evolved for me is I used to look at authenticity of a person as being somewhat static, and now I look at it as very fluid.  I think that your authenticity as a person changes every day as you grow and as you have new experiences.  And the depth of your experiences with other people helps you determine your preferences, once again, and the direction you want to grow.  And it really expands your universe because you’re learning as opposed to knowing.

Toni: Viki, I have to tell you that your interview today has been really inspiring for me, coming from a corporate background as well.  And so I can relate to that, and that’s where I know that there are going to be many, many people who are going to listen to this interview and listen to how you believe you inspire others and help them explore their potential by allowing them to be who they are and have that acceptance and to be authentic with them which is creating that trust.

And then what you need for inspiration, how you explore your own potential, but where you were and what you learned from where you were to where you are now, to sit in that space of deeper relationships and authenticity and acceptance.  And that just so translates into the relationships and how you work with others now, and the learning and benefits that you have given in this interview, I cannot thank you enough for.

Viki: Thank you so much, Toni.  It’s been my pleasure.

Toni: Thank you, Viki; take care.

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For more information about Viki Winterton:  www.thecoachexchange.com

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