Our Team
Maggie (Milne) Chicoine
Maggie
Chicoine is the “Idea Sculptor”, Master Coach, Professional Keynote
Speaker, Facilitator, M.C., writer.
- Leverage! Strategic Systems Thinking to shift from vulnerable to valuable
- Creativity, Originality, Innovation & Action
- "Experience Speaks ... with a twist of ingenuity"
Ideas du Jour posted at www.theideasculptor.blogspot.com
Maggie is known for her expertise as a seasoned speaker who relies on more than theory to get her point across. Her firm, MMI (1986) The Idea Sculptor, has a reputation for zealous, interactive high content programmes with a twist of ingenuity. Maggie has developed stimulating connections with audiences in the mudhuts of Ghana and executive boardrooms in Canada and Australia. As a Master Coach, her savvy in finding the least obvious and most invisible connections helps clients find the flow.
Her claim to fame is her passionate ability to jump in with both feet. She has a long list of “firsts”: first female to be hired on contract with the Canadian Grain Elevators; founding Executive Director of the Multicultural Association of Northwestern Ontario, and the Ontario Prevention Network. Editor of “Rural Connections”, and a wedding and funeral photographer with her parent’s family business. Maggie has never been traditional and she has never stood still!
Maggie was the Atlantic Speakers Bureau’s “Consummate Speaker of the Year” and Northern Ontario Business magazine chose her as one of the north’s “Most Influential Women” in May 2001. Maggie was honored for “demonstrating phenomenal influence as an inspiration to others in Northern Ontario.” In April 2002, she received the “Outstanding Mentor” award from the Young Entrepreneurs of Canada. In 2004, she received the “Amplifying the Thunder Award” from the Thundering Women Festival. In 2005 she was awarded “Business of the Year” by PARO Centre for Women’s Enterprise. In March 2006, the Thunder Bay Business Women’s Network awarded her their first Lifetime Membership Award.
She has studied creativity at the Monroe Institute and with Dr. Betty Edwards at the Boston School of Fine Arts. She is certified with the Herrmann Brain Dominance Institute (whole brain thinking and facilitating), as well as training in learning organizations (Nevis, Dibella and Gould) at Harvard. She invests one month annually into her personal professional development, receiving her certification in coaching in San Diego California (2004). Her first coaching certification took place in the dinosaur era of the industry, in 1987. She is a regular at the Maui Writers’ Conference.
Maggie is a founding Director of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) and a member of the International Federation and NSA (1991). She holds membership in the International Coach Federation as well as the International Association of Facilitators, the Chamber of Commerce; she is a founding Champion of Leadership Thunder Bay and its Alumni Association, as well as the Northern Women’s Leadership Forum.
Her work on leadership is included in the anthology, The Master’s Collection: Executive Insights for Global Leaders. Maggie’s current work in progress, “Creative Confessions: The Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship” addresses vulnerability and resilience through the eyes of a dozen courageous women. Her column, Creative Confessions appears in MidWest Edge and Transforming Boundaries magazines.
She's like the Rodin Sculpture - you can see her thinking.
I've Come to Understand
- There is no right, and no wrong…just “what is”
- What is most obvious is most invisible
- Seeing the world through other’s glasses can be so very rewarding
- Flow is easier when I pay attention to how “it” looks, feels, sounds and smells
- Laughter is the universal glue of relationships
- “Moving toward” sounds different than “moving away from”
- My grandmother was a truly wise woman
Why Coaching?
It's not the problems that trouble you, it's the thinking that gets you bogged, muddled and stuck.
I love the process of coaching in that it is “iterative”…the discovery of beliefs and assumptions, behaviour and commitment as they move back and forth along a multi-dimensional continuum. Quite often the metaphor of weaving a length of cloth helps to illustrate how to view and change patterns, resources and how we interact with each other and the world. The vertical warp of values and beliefs weaves past with future. The horizontal weft is the “now”. The “near” and “far” of how the cloth will be woven are potentially visible in the mind. For example, you may have been comfortable (complacent!) weaving with only nubby wool for several years; the thought of working with silk threads may seem too fragile for you at first…until you realize that silk is incredibly strong in its composition. Your fabric will evolve when new design options come to you. Keeping the best of the warp, making choices about what is most important about the weft, one thread at a time, brings insight, closure and opportunity.
The context of coaching is transparent. There’s no right, no wrong, just what is. There is permission to move forward at whatever pace is required. There is logic, analysis, and structure as well as inspiration, intuition and emotion. There is congruence of belief and action. There may be laughter with an “aha” or tears that signal truth. There is respect.
Expect me, as your Coach, to stretch you with questions. To challenge you to move from being vulnerable to resilient in the now, near and far. Expect me to work with you on strategy and design, your capacity and your capability, to help you carve out what is most important for you.
The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.
My Style
As a certified Whole Brain Facilitator, my Coaching style includes the four thinking modalities. Naturally, my communication style is far-reaching “right” brain – conceptual, imaginative, risk-taking and relationship centered. I’ve come to respect my left brain’s capacity to analyze and sequence. Future and Feeling no longer compete with Fact and Format! This explains, to some degree, why humor and laughter are certainly present in all my interactions.
People feel at ease. They are challenged. They are heard. Their issues are laid out on the table, and their thoughts are handled with sensitivity as well as just enough pressure to dig a bit deeper. And they are reassured by knowing that their coaching is conducted in their best interests, that it is credentialed, very experienced and confidential.
Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I can move the earth.
Training
Professional Training and Certification *
1987 to present
- Developmental Coaching B\Coach,* 2003 – 2004
- Systems Thinking (Wheatley at Chicago, Senge at New Orleans)
- Omega Institute, Women and Health, New York City
- Systems Thinking Facilitation* (Innovation Associates at Florida)
- Whole Brain Thinking and Learning* (Herrmann Institute at N Carolina)
- Whole Brain Facilitation* (Herrmann Institute at N Carolina)
- Assessment of Organizational Learning Capacity* (Nevis Dibella and Gould / Senge at Harvard)
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Edwards at Boston)
- Exploring Creativity (Munroe Institute at Virginia)
- Coaching for Commitment* (Kinlaw at San Francisco)
- Leadership and Mastery (Innovation Associates at Banff School of Management)
- Strategic Planning (University Associates at San Francisco)
Interests
Community involvement in many forms, usually with innovative start-up projects such as MEMO, the Medical Equipment Modernization Opportunity (Redundant medical equipment from 2 closing hospitals equipped 2 150 bed hospitals in Cuba and the Philippines); Leadership Thunder Bay; Northern Ontario Women’s Leadership Forum; Canadian Association of Professional Speakers, now celebrating 10 years!
Time spent: Travelling to places where real people live. Being close to big water and big sky. Walking daily. Entertaining and feeding noisy family and friends. Little kids and big kids. Reading, writing but not ‘rithmatic. Learning, playing and discovering. Being surprised. Giving things away. Good movies with no commercials. Finding the funny at every possible moment.
