Georgina Halabi, a coach to highly successful executives, joins Niiamah Ashong on the Outlier's Edge Podcast for a conversation about play. She draws a clear line between playing and performing, and the two put it into practice live with a pair of Marvel bobble heads. What emerged is a picture of her eye reading gift reaching many people while she stays focused on one person at a time.
Episode at a glance
- Guest: Georgina Halabi, Coach to highly successful executives, with a background in advertising and technology
- Host: Niiamah Ashong, coach to outlier leaders
- Show: Outlier’s Edge Podcast, released November 10, 2022
- Format: conversation, 51 minutes
- Topics: Play versus performance, Presence and flow, Pattern interrupts in hard moments, Quieting the mind, Eye reading as a superpower, Amplifying one-to-one work
What Georgina brought to the conversation
Georgina Halabi coaches highly successful, highly aware executives on accelerating their career success with well-being, not one at the expense of the other. Her background is in advertising and technology. She lives in the UK and lived in Asia for 18 years, which is where she and Niiamah Ashong met, in Singapore. Niiamah Ashong describes her as someone who brings humor along with spiritual awareness, coaching awareness and agility. Her superpowers, as she names them, are reading people's eyes and helping people see their own greatness and wisdom, so they can switch from self-doubt into compassion and wisdom.
What emerged
Georgina Halabi names the distinction at the heart of the conversation: as a society, people have stopped playing and are only performing. Performing, as Niiamah Ashong describes it in the moment, clenches the body and narrows ideas, and she adds that it kicks a person out of presence and flow. Niiamah Ashong notices that she keeps saying her eye reading works with only one person at a time and challenges that as diminishing the superpower. She takes up his image of a stadium, where she helps one person while the music is felt by everyone else, and she accepts his invitation to record an eye reading session and amplify it.
Questions this episode answers
What is the difference between playing and performing?
Georgina Halabi describes performing as playing for everyone else, with a level of expectation to hit all the right notes, while playing is a heart opening experience that is curious, connected and present. She is clear that people can still have goals and outcomes they want to achieve; the difference is the energy that goes into performing.
How can play shift your mindset in a hard moment?
Georgina Halabi shares a memory from about 25 years ago when, in a painful moment in a relationship, she threw a block of cheddar cheese into a river. The moment was so ridiculous that she laughed out loud, and it gave her the sense that she will always be all right, no matter what life throws at her.
What happens in the body when you feel pressure to perform?
Niiamah Ashong describes feeling clenched, with a narrowing of ideas and an unspoken expectation to deliver the best, which pulls him into thinking questions ahead instead of being with the other person. Georgina Halabi adds that performing kicks a person out of presence and flow, with cortisol and adrenaline running.
Can one-to-one coaching reach more people without losing its depth?
Niiamah Ashong says scaling one person at a time is very possible, using the image of a singer in a stadium who sings to the one person who really needs to hear the song. Georgina Halabi takes that up: she focuses on helping one person while the music plants seeds in many others, without being attached to performing to everyone.
What helps people move out of self-doubt?
Georgina Halabi says people have stopped believing in themselves and are full of self-doubt. Her answer starts with quieting the mind: when people quiet their minds, they switch on a part of the brain that is resourceful and creative, and from there they see that they are not the problem but the solution.
In their words
I think as a society we've stopped playing and we are only performing.
Georgina Halabi
That to me is how play can shift your whole mindset.
Georgina Halabi
I'm not attached to performing to everyone, I'm there helping that one person.
Georgina Halabi
Key moments
01:03 – Picking the guitar back up
05:49 – Who she is and what she does
07:23 – Playing versus performing
10:57 – What performing feels like
17:07 – A memory of throwing cheese
21:17 – Marvel bobble heads join in
24:55 – Naming her superpowers
29:35 – Challenging the one-at-a-time story
32:10 – Playing to one person in a stadium
40:29 – Saying yes to an eye reading session
About Niiamah Ashong
Niiamah Ashong is a coach to outlier leaders, host of the Outlier’s Edge Podcast, and founder of the Trailblazer Collective. He coaches leaders who are creating something only they can make: a company, a body of work or a movement. Make a difference with your difference.
Work with Niiamah: 1:1 with Niiamah | World of Difference
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