In today’s fast-paced world, helping your existing teams grow from within is key to staying ahead. But let’s face it: It’s not always easy to make internal mobility a reality. Join us for a candid chat as we uncover practical ways to make a change in your organization. HR leaders and L&D pros, this is your chance to understand how to build a team that’s always moving forward.
Austin is a Life Coach, who partners with people to manifest their desires through personal empowerment while living life-based in ownership and intentionality. As the Founder of RAW Coaching and a Global top sales achiever at Gartner, Austin knows how to work effectively and efficiently when helping others live their lives with purpose and intentionality.
In his spare time, leads groups for BIPOC men to embody their truth and experience the brotherhood in men’s work. Austin is trained by Accomplishment Coaching, a world-renowned, International Coach Federation accredited training program.
Meet executive coach & leadership facilitator, Austin Walker. While Austin started his career in sales, he quickly discovered his love for helping others to purposefully create and pursue new possibilities in their lives. Today, Austin is a professionally-trained coach and facilitator, partnering with people from all over the world to create what they truly desire in their lives.
Austin also loves creating safe spaces for conversations around individual wellness, diversity and inclusion, and personal success. But when he’s not spending time with a client one-on-one, or teaching a Hone class, you can find Austin traveling the world.
To learn more, we sat down with Austin to hear more about how he got his start in coaching, as well as his advice for individuals looking to make a change in their own lives. Here’s what he shared with us.
Can you tell us more about yourself?
I decided early on in my career to switch tracks and pursue the skillset I was born to excel at. I’m a coach and facilitator - I spend most of my time working with clients one-on-one in support of their journey towards the experiences they seek in their life. I also hold spaces for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging conversations. I also help individuals learn how to be more effective public speakers and communicators, as well as how to be more successful in a few specific tracks in life and business.
I’m currently based in Harlem, New York City, where I live with my partner Terresa who is a rising 3L (i.e., entering her third year) at Columbia Law School. I’m an avid adventurer. Earlier this year, I spent five months in the Dominican Republic and I’ll be spending three months abroad in London this Fall.
What first attracted you to coaching?
In early 2018, I had a really successful career in tech sales. I was living in New York City, had my dream income and lifestyle, and realized that it didn’t quite feel the way that I thought it should. That feeling made me curious and led me down a year-long introspective route to consider “What is it that I want to do?” Through conversations with myself, different mentors, and people in my space, it became perfectly clear that my purpose is to empower and inspire people to believe that they can create the lives they want and that they can be the most complete and authentic version of themselves while they do it.
I went and observed a coaches training program—the one where I ultimately ended up getting my coaching certification from—where I saw these masterful coaches helping other aspiring coaches and leaders re-relate to things in their lives, break down barriers, and move forward through conversation. It was almost like watching someone do a Jedi mind trick.
I completed my yearlong program which was the most transformational container to have been in and it completely redefined how I viewed myself and what I was capable of. I launched my practice during that time and I’ve spent the last few years continuously evolving myself to become who I want to be as a coach as well as the manner in which I want to work.
What is your philosophy on coaching?
My philosophy on coaching is to empower people to make the choices that are aligned to the experiences that they want in their life. Coaching is about drawing awareness, or having the ability to take ownership of your experience and, ultimately, giving people the power of choice.
While there are a lot of different coaching styles, I believe a coach’s job is more to say, “Here’s what we know is predictable based on your patterns, here’s the thing that you want, so what has to happen for you to create this new experience for yourself.” It’s giving someone a choice for what they’re going to do and who they’re going to be, so they can have a new experience and create a new possibility for themselves.
What is your superpower?
My coaching superpower is my ability to develop trust quickly. I’ve been told that from both my clients and from people in my life. Coaching can be a very intimate partnership since you’re talking about all different in-depth elements of somebody’s life. The ability to be your full self and be accepted no matter what can be a huge component of a powerful relationship.
If someone is struggling with a work or personal issue, what is your best piece of advice to help them see the situation clearly?
If you’re struggling with anything—personal- or work-related—I find it really supportive to get clear on what the facts of the situation are and if there are any other factors influencing your experience of the facts. You’d be surprised to learn how many people I talk to think that the facts and the story around the facts are actually the same. But, when you’re actually able to pull them apart and distinguish between the two, you can find different ways to look at the situation and pinpoint the different choices that you can make. Once you’ve done that, it’s easier to make a choice that’s aligned with the outcome that you want and who you want to be.
There’s a Viktor Frankl quote that I think about and reference a lot when I’m coaching:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
In every moment of every day, you actually have an opportunity to choose how you’re going to respond to something as opposed to just adopting your default reaction. Being able to respond in a manner that aligns to the outcome or experience that you want will help you get closer to your overall goal and serve you better than being an effect of the reaction.
Are there any books you’ve recently read that you’d recommend?
I’d recommend that anyone read Getting Real: 21 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life by Susan Campbell. It was actually one of the first books I read when I started my ontological coaching training. The book looks at some of the truths and lies that we tell ourselves and shares how to get fundamentally real with who you are and how you show up. It’s such a fascinating look at how real you are being with yourself. Hands down, anyone in any sector or industry would find value in reading this book.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Be continually present to make sure that you are attuned to your needs. I talk to a lot of ambitious people who are trying to create these great things, but the one thing they share is that they commonly forget to prioritize personal wellness. That leads to the conversation of what you could accomplish if you didn’t just have standard wellness within your life—whether that’s sleep, exercise, coaching, therapy, etc.—but if you were actually abundantly supported by your physical and mental being to create whatever it is that you want.
Words of wisdom that I can’t preach enough in the wellness space is that you need to get clear on what it is that you need and start prioritizing your wellbeing. Wellbeing is not just a one-person conversation. Everyone has and needs a community of people who are willing to support their wellness and wellbeing. When you find that, good things can happen.
Our global team of instructors and coaches are experts in their fields, including leadership and management, DE&I, change management, conflict management, and more.
I loved the small group in this class and doing the breakout room exercises as a full group with the coach present.
It really helped to solidify the learnings to have the moderator talk through the “breakout” room and ask questions while in process.
Our session was very well planned and executed.
The session was very interactive and the conversations valuable.
I always wish the classes were longer!
My coach was a great instructor and she fit a lot of material in a short amount of time.
As an HR leader who is continually introducing change, I have been exhausted by the amount of resistance that I’ve been up against.
The coach was wonderful! Very friendly, vulnerable, and welcoming. The session went by lightning fast.
I wish the class had been longer than an hour!
But the hour gave me an opportunity to understand how to frame my current work in terms of an objective and key results that matter and how to plan actions to achieve the objective.
We had a dynamic, engaging, and thoughtful review of how we can embrace one another’s humanity in the workplace.
As my coach said, it’s critical that we place people at the center of the workplace. This class was an exercise in how we can sustainably approach this critical work.
The class was very informative and well-facilitated.
I appreciate being able to participate in break-out rooms which fostered excellent conversations and ideas.
This class really opened my eyes to what microaggressions are and how prevalent they are in society.
I am thrilled with the skills I learned to both recognize the issue when it is occurring and also how to approach the situation so that the problem not only stops, but does not happen again.
The class was a great combination of interactive parts & learning theory.
It gave me some actual strategies to take away and use.
This was very helpful in giving me ideas and tools for how to have discussions with my management about my career path as an individual contributor.
This class gave me a new perspective on how I can use my high energy times to get the most value out of my day and not to take for granted the bodies need for rest and recovery.
Time is finite but energy is renewable.
This class gave me a new perspective on how I can use my high energy times to get the most value out of my day and not to take for granted the bodies need for rest and recovery.
Really relevant and insightful content.
The presentation is very clear and to the point. It has effective methods and resources to apply the knowledge immediately. The coach was excellent!
Our coach asked really empowering questions while teaching us to ask them ourselves.
This course opened my eyes to new ideas and reinstated some ideas that I had forgotten about.
I had an amazing coach who was able to seamlessly and flawlessly adapt to changing dynamics within the class.
Having more Hone classes under my belt truly helps me appreciate the intersection of how we ask questions, react to conflict, change, and other aspects of our lives and how they all impact our various relationships.
Members of this class were all at different levels of their journey and our coach did a wonderful job of creating a shared space for all to learn from.
