Gregory V Diehl
Gregory V. Diehl has been described as being among the toughest, most direct personal development coach in the world. He has earned this reputation through the frank and unique way he interacts with clients: prodding into hidden motivators, pointing out internal contradictions, and strategically antagonizing their unconscious sacred ideas until only the foundation of truth remains.
A sort of cryptic sensei, Diehl fosters conversations in the most element (and too often overlooked) form of coaching: to listen with fierce intensity to the unfiltered expressions of his clients, codify them, challenge them, and restate them without the narrative personal bias. The result is to instantly separate the client from the attachment to the story they tell themselves about the most important issues of their lives so they can focus on what actually matters and make progress they once thought to be impossible.
Diehl’s primary coaching technique is a strategy he calls strategic aggravation or antagonization. He works to upset the static ebb and flow of coach-client communication with persistent questions and skepticism. He is dismissive, argumentative, and at times downright rude – whatever it takes to create radical breakthroughs in the people he works with.
What Clients Say about Gregory:
“He’s not one of the hyper-empathic, hyper-feeling, trauma-healing, focused-listening-but-not-real-opinions kind of coaches. He startles me. He can be adversarial, provocative during our coaching, but that’s not his only coaching technique. He only pushes your buttons when you’re not logical, or he pushes them when you settle for mediocrity. He’ll try to jar you when you’re stuck in a story or are sitting unaware of the rest of the world.”
—
“He doesn’t care what you think coming in. I don’t even think he cares what you end up thinking. He wants to see your thinking and rethinking as it happens. He’s impatient and demanding. But it works somehow. He makes you stronger.”
—
“I like the questioning Gregory does. Just having a mentor who’s dissected even the most rudimentary of things about being a human has really helped me feel less lonely and allowed me to relax more into the path that I carve through life.”
Source: gregorydiehl.net/
Books by Author
Videos
