Deene Morris Leadership & Culture Coach

03/26/2026

If you want to grow in compassion for another human being, read the journals you wrote decades earlier 🤨.

Recently, I read all of them since age fourteen!
It was achingly humbling — (and frequently embarrassing) — to meet my younger self on the page.

The certainty. The blind spots.
The intensity of a developing brain doing its best with the life it was navigating.

And yet something else appeared, too.

A through line.

Over time, the light we carry begins to gather itself.

What once scattered in many directions slowly becomes a single flame — the flame of who we are.

Instead of trying to shine everywhere, it becomes clearer.
Simpler. Truer.
And what a relief that can be.

I wrote more about that experience here:

Reading journals written decades earlier is an exercise in humility, compassion, and self-awareness. A reflection on the through line of a life.

02/25/2026

Welcome.

Leadership is rarely tidy.

Many of the leaders I work with are thoughtful, capable people carrying big responsibilities — for their teams, their organizations, and the cultures they’re shaping.

As a leadership and culture coach, I create space for leaders to step back, think clearly, and reconnect with what matters most.

Sometimes what’s needed isn’t another answer.

It’s a conversation that opens new perspectives.

Here I share reflections on leadership, culture, and navigating the messy middle of meaningful work.

Learn more:
deenemorris.com

02/24/2026

Feeling a little short on love or possibility these days?
This reflection about hummingbirds, a dentist’s office, and the power of truly seeing someone might speak to you.
Because every small act of connection and nourishment opens the possibility for something new to unfold

The Quiet Power of Being Seen

02/21/2026

When I notice the shift to fix, I know I’m about to work too hard.
And likely not accomplish my goal of helping.

I can feel the tightening in my ribcage. When I slow down and listen for the picture instead, something softens.

Counterintuitively, what often shifts a conversation isn’t an answer.
It’s one clarifying question — at the beginning or in the middle:
“What’s most important about this for you?”

When someone feels heard, their nervous system settles.
When I stop clinging to the need to have the answer, mine settles too.
I wrote more about this small but mighty shift.
Many times it's not ours to solve.
However, it's often ours to hold.

The question that changes what happens next

12/19/2025

Winter invites a different kind of listening as we approach the new year. When we slow down, we’re better able to discover — not force — what wants to emerge.

Last year, on December 20, we moved into our new cozy (small) home with two cats, two dogs, and two home offices. I believe my intention then was to do less and experience more. Ha! What followed in 2025, however, was an all-action year.

So as winter settles in again, I feel a familiar longing to slow down — to listen more closely rather than rush toward answers. I’m eager to disappear into my winter garment of snow (weather gods permitting), with holiday festivities, quiet woods walks, rest, and reflection.

It’s been quite a challenging year for many of us. This darker, quieter season offers a different rhythm — one where attention matters more than action.

Winter can be a season of composting — the quiet, unseen work that happens before new life emerges. A time to turn down the volume on our rational minds and let them rest alongside journals, a roaring fire, loving conversations with family and friends, walks in nature, or sunrise with coffee — all in service of attuning more carefully to the body and our intuition.

Because while the mind is a powerful tool, it’s not meant to lead the pack.

In coaching, we call this somatic wisdom — the body’s inherent intelligence and capacity for guidance and resilience. It shows up as a felt sense: a tightening, an ease, a pull, a knowing — information that often arrives before the mind explains.

When we stay with this process, it’s remarkable how much wisdom we already hold about our next steps and path forward.

This is how I now approach my New Year intentions.

Intentions aren’t about making wishes or setting targets to hit. I don’t experience them as guarantees or formulas for outcomes. Instead, intentions help me notice the themes and patterns I want to live into — a way of aligning my behavior, step by step, with my values and what truly matters.

Winter also reminds me that this kind of clarity often doesn’t come from knowing what’s next, but from being willing to remain unclear — staying with the mystery long enough to listen for what’s emerging.

Here, the body becomes a guide.

Not by giving us answers, but by offering signals — subtle cues of ease, tension, expansion, or contraction. These sensations aren’t instructions to act, but information to notice. When we slow down enough to listen, the body often knows what the mind is still trying to figure out.

When we pay attention in this way, simple questions begin to surface.

What feels right?
What feels heavy or constricted?
What brings a sense of ease or vitality?

Again, you don’t need to have answers — simply noticing is enough (and it can take some courage, too!).

Here’s a quiet pause you might try:
Place a hand on your chest or belly.
Take one slow breath.
Ask gently: What’s asking for my attention right now?
Notice sensations — not answers.
Then go on with your day.

No urgency.
No forcing.

Listening — asking first, acting later — becomes a gentle way into greater alignment.

If some surprising no’s emerge along the way, hold them lightly. Stay curious about what they’re telling you. When I journal, I encourage myself to write as if I were incapable of telling a lie—no whitewashing.

Attention before action.
Intention before goals.

Trusting that clarity will arrive in its own time.

My wish for you this holiday and January season:
the space to slow down,
to notice what’s alive in you right now,
and to listen for what’s waiting to emerge.

Because this is how what matters is given the time and space to grow. ❄️

12/02/2025

A client shared these words at the end of an exploration about how to coach their staff to be respectfully direct, rather than passively (or aggressively) frustrated with one another:

“When we don’t make a request, the answer is always no.”

So often, frustration pulls us into replaying what went wrong—what someone did, didn’t do, or how it landed.

But what we often skip is the part that actually creates movement:

👉 What do I need?
👉 What could they do that would help me move forward?

This shifts the focus from blame to clarity. And while there’s no guarantee our need will be met, naming a clear request opens the door to communication, understanding, and yes—change.

Try it—with someone you’re coaching, or with yourself.
What do you need to create positive change in this situation?

11/26/2025

Last week reminded me that awe can arrive at the most unlikely times—and in the most unlikely of places, right in the midst of the holiday rush and life’s contradictions. One moment came through an RN who sings her way through love, loss, and more love; another surfaced unexpectedly during an ordinary moment of frustration. As we move into a holiday season that means many different things to many people, may awe be your unexpected companion. Here is an article I wrote on this reflection:

A reflection on how awe arrives unbidden — through music, kindness, and even a bald eagle — inviting us to hold joy, ache, and contradiction side by side.

11/17/2025

Have you ever felt a feeling you thought you were “above”?

The other day, I felt jealousy.
Like a splinter in an otherwise pleasant moment.

I was embarrassed by myself.
I left jealousy behind decades ago — or so I told myself.

And besides, the situation was a ridiculous reason to feel jealous.
So I was just about to push it away…

When I remembered: as a coach (and a friend and a human being), I invite people to welcome all of their feelings — the pleasant, the uncomfortable, and the ones our ego insists we’re above.

So begrudgingly, I stayed with it.
It was icky.
It wasn’t profound.
But it was honest.

And I know that what I don’t own, I project onto others.
I’ll dislike someone for the very thing I won’t acknowledge in myself.
The good news is that beneath the jealousy, I found a reminder of something I value but haven’t tended.

It made me think about clean pain and dirty pain… embracing our shadow instead of handing it off to someone else.

If we want cultures of psychological safety, inclusion, trust, and learning, we have to be willing to move with and through the uncomfortable moments — not around them.

It’s humbling.
And that’s a good thing.
For everyone involved.

What’s one feeling you thought you had outgrown… until it showed up again?
(I know — it’s a vulnerable question.
But imagine the conversation we could have, and how much we could learn from one another. What makes us cringe may not make others cringe at all.)

11/16/2025

We often confuse control for confidence.
And yes, of course, control can sometimes be appropriate — when safety, timing, or clarity depend on it.

But more often than not, what looks like control is actually our own fear or anxiety showing up, disguised as “getting things done.”

We tighten our grip because uncertainty feels risky.
We equate decisiveness with strength, and holding on with leading well.

But confidence isn’t about gripping harder — it’s about grounding deeper.
It’s the willingness to not know, and to stay present anyway.

Yup — it is damn scary at first to make the shift. It is a practiced-to-become-natural EQ skill.

I once worked with a director who said, “Letting go felt like chaos!”
A few months later, she reflected, “Who knew. I didn't. My staff didn’t need me to hold on tighter — they needed me to let go, empower, and trust them.”

Control keeps systems rigid.
Curiosity lets them breathe.

💬 Where might fear or anxiety be showing up as control in your leadership this week — and what could loosen the grip?

11/14/2025

Our culture rewards certainty.
Leaders are expected to have answers on demand.

But wisdom often starts with three simple words: “I don’t know.”
Those words model vulnerability — and make it okay for others not to know, too.

Not knowing isn’t weakness; it’s wonder.
It’s the space where new possibilities emerge.

I like to have answers. And as a recovering people pleaser, I can offer them quickly in an effort to helpful.
Early in my career, admitting “I don’t know” felt like failure — like leadership expected me to be the expert.

But is expertise about reciting our bookshelves of knowledge?
Or is it about engaging the expertise of others — those with perspectives we don't have access to?

“I don’t know” is a critical link in the chain of creativity, trust, and innovation.
It’s not disengagement — it’s trust: in our team, the process, and the moment.

11/05/2025

Let’s be honest — the hardest shift from telling to asking isn’t about learning new techniques.
It’s about noticing that split-second space between jumping into doing and pausing to be present with others.

That moment feels so small.
And yet—it’s some of the most powerful work we can do as leaders, managers, colleagues, family, and friends.

At first, it feels counterproductive — like there’s no time for this pregnant pause.
Organizations and teams are moving at the speed of light, so telling someone what to do seems efficient.
Helpful, even.

But… how often does that really work for you?

Because beneath the fixing, there’s usually something else — a discomfort with not knowing, or with someone else’s struggle.

When we lead with presence instead of prescriptions, everyone prospers.

I love the Zulu greeting Sawubona, which means “I see you.”
Not your title.
Not your to-do list.
You.

In the language of Psychological Safety, it’s this:

I see your worth before I evaluate your worthiness.

We all know what it feels like to be truly seen.
It’s visceral — a deep sense of safety and belonging.
We exhale. And then, we begin to offer our head, heart, and hands together.

Seeing is stronger than solving.
Curiosity doesn’t fix people — it frees them.

💬 Share your success story of taking the plunge from telling to asking — and the outcome. Let’s encourage one another to keep shifting the ratio.

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10/31/2025

We often treat curiosity like a soft skill — something nice to have, sitting quietly beside kindness and patience. Kinda lame and tame we think, for the professional world or any situation with conflict.

But curiosity is anything but soft.
It’s catalytic.

It transforms tension into dialogue, confusion into clarity, and stagnation into movement.

I once coached a senior director who felt responsible for solving every team problem. She was brilliant — and tettering on burnout.
When she stopped providing every answer and began asking a single question —

“What do you think would work best?” — the culture began to shift.

Her team started thinking for themselves (because they were finally given the permisson). The energy, ownership, and trust was palpable almost instantly.

Curiosity doesn’t weaken leadership; it deepens it.
It says: “Your voice matters.”
It creates psychological safety and fosters innovation — because it opens what certainty shuts down.

When we choose curiosity over control, we stop managing the tasks and start empowering the potential of others.

💬 I'm curious! What question or mindset helps you from falling down the black hole and moving through stuck to engagement?

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