Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D,

Dr. Fleming has over 10 years of experience in utilizing psychological insight to make success more automatic, communication more productive/influential, and change efforts more sustainable. He utilizes training in philosophy, neuropsychology, change theory, organizational behavior, and executive coaching to better align individuals and teams with reality. For reality only wins all of the time.

As an executive coach, Dr. Fleming has experience in making successful change happen in the most rigorous of settings and with the most complex of clinical and organizational situations . Whether it was a University of Notre Dame football player preparing for a bowl game, a Juilliard musician wanting to nail an audition, or a billionaire executive with addiction issues, he has aided many professionals in high performance realms to “think differently about their thinking” and to consequently begin the journey of transformative behavior change. Working under the assumption that successful coaching at the “tail end of the bell curve” can lead to more acute insight with the rest of the normal, professional population, Kevin has guided numerous executives to a more wisdom-full approach of leading and influencing others. His specialty areas include working with leaders on developing an authentic leadership presence that transcends any list of tips/techniques; working with ambivalent yet promising candidates in organizations; 360 assessments that link core belief structures to leadership behaviors of a team; the derailed or burned out executive; communication training; conflict resolution; expert consultation on hiring the best candidates for positions; health coaching for executives; strategic planning; coaching entrepreneurs; team building, keynote speaking, and private/corporate retreats that focus on ROI and transfer of learning.

Dr. Fleming’s expertise in creative applications of behavior change models comes most notably from training and consultation with Dr. James Prochaska, head of Pro-Change, Inc. and Director of the Cancer Prevention Research Institute at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Prochaska discovered the Transtheoretical Model of Change, is an eminent scholar and psychologist, author of the bestseller Changing For Good, and researcher of hundreds of articles and grants on human behavior change. Kevin has been integral in applying the transtheoretical model of change in his executive coaching with significant ROIs. He is certified as a practitioner by Richard Barrett's National Values Centre, which offers global organizations a brilliant model of assessing values-alignment and the level of  "full spectrum" consciousness in a culture/organization.

In addition to his coaching practice, Kevin also speaks internationally on the topics related to helping corporate minds maximize untapped aspects of human nature so as to ultimately convey that successful interactions and enhanced productivity come more from unlearning than learning something “new.” He writes a regular column for Gately Consulting, a management consulting firm out of Boston. He has also been asked to host his own internet radio show on VoiceAmerica on business psychology issues.

He is in the processing of developing an exclusive onsite arrangement as an executive coach for the worldclass Amangani resort (www.amanresorts.com) in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He also serves as the Honorary Chairman for Wyoming on Congressman Tom Reynold’s appointed committee on business advisory issues in Washington D.C.

His past and current corporate clients include Fortune 500 and 1000 clients, such as: Oriental Trading Company, Tender Heart Treasures, Paragon Global Resources, Davita, Jorgensen Associates, The Impact Group, Bank of Jackson Hole, Real Estate of Jackson Hole, University of Notre Dame, and TrestleTree. Visit Dr. Fleming online at www.effectiveexecutivecoaching.com

 

PageOneLit.com:  Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why? 

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: I grew up in Western Massachusetts, in a little New Englandesque town called Longmeadow. With our school system being one of the top rated schools in the country and my graduating class back in 1990 being all ivy league-bound folks, you can be rest assured that to keep up with those folks I was indeed a lover of reading and literature :) Most of my early influencers were "deep thinkers"; folks like CS Lewis, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Toni Morrison, James Hillman....real eclectic mix of great minds...I was a bonafied nerd who walked that line of loving the big questions of life and still was a popular kid and not finding myself in multiple wedgies and stuffed in lockers.

PageOneLit.com:  You have been called the 'shrink who doesn't like shrinks"  Explain.

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D:  Yeah, Richard Koch's noted endorsement always gave me a chuckle. For I guess even that statement is a half-truth in and of itself: that is, i like when shrinks when they capture the transcending power in that office and not operate out of some prescribed rule book of rationalized labels that do nothing to help people bust out and surrender to the joys of a new life vs navigate safely more in an evolved fear kind of way. And yeah, you're right---if you read that last sentence of mine and think, "damn, his thinking wasn't the kind of therapy I GOT", then the shrinks driving that car for ya I dont like. and take it from me, it is too easy to be a shrink that i dont like---for i was and still am at times one of them.

PageOneLit.com: Your book titled "The Half-Truth High: Breaking the Illusions of the Most Powerful Drug In Life & Business " is groundbreaking -- What is "The Half-Truth High"? 

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D:  It hit me after reading CS Lewis' classic The Screwtape Letters many years ago as an undergrad at the University of Notre Dame, that it wasn't just evil (from a purely theological perspective that Lewis came from and wrote about in that book) that got passed on so cleverly throughout the world, but that confusion, no matter the topic, was similarly sold in this world as "half truths". Evolution has done our neocortex a big favor in some ways in that we can spot pure BS and lies rather easily---but we are still primal in discerning half truths (things that are sort of kind of true/right) from fully true, virtuous, fully alive kind of things. Eduardo Punset says it best that we need to discern more then ever now the difference between what is important and what is essential. That gap between the two, in my words and in my book, is the half truth high---that addictive part of us all that makes us turn around from the essential and befriend what is important and make that all there is.
 

PageOneLit.com: In your book, "The Half-Truth High: Breaking the Illusions of the Most Powerful Drug In Life & Business ", you write that in the early 1970's many people you knew or met had been in therapy for years with little results. To top it off some of these people were advanced academic students of psychiatry - Explain

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: Actually, as I recall, this was written by Tom Morris, my NY Times bestselling author that wrote the Foreword of the book. He recalls at Yale his experience of interacting with the intellectuals who were entrusted with this power of healing people and he felt then a sort of disconnect between the theoretical (or at least how i read Tom's words) and the embodiment of something "true". You see, from a brain/neuro perspective we are seeing more and more the need for mind and body to interact and lead someone to transformation. And look at that word---embodiment. What do you see? the word "body" in there.  We need that kinesthetic and mental merging to lead us through some of the trickiest, elusive, complex behavior change issues of our day. But then again, if a therapist believes it is their role more to "minimize the dysfunction of psychopathology" this beautiful and amazing goal will never be met by the people that know engagement and the brain the best. Odd, indeed....at least to me :)

PageOneLit.com:  In  "The Half-Truth High: Breaking the Illusions of the Most Powerful Drug In Life & Business " you write that you feel is full that psychiatry is full of half truths. Please explain.

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: We say we want to heal but we violate accountability all the time. We say we care, but we care take based on our roadmaps of change that are more full of what we didn't get or what we are supposed to have done projected out. We say we believe in an egalitarian process of a relationship but everything about how the session is conducted screams power. We say we want to empower people to change but then we numb them with psychotropics in the name of "stabilization".    Both sides of all these equations are not lies, they have their place. I am arguing more for the overuse or misapplication at times of each side of the equation at the expense of reality in front of us with the patient. This is the gasoline to half truth perpetuation.

 

PageOneLit.com:You write that you believe 'psychologists should not live to give advice...' Explain.

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D:  Perhaps better said: we should live the advice we give, and we should live the advice we dont give.  The bridge better the two? an understanding of reality for that will win out all the time. It is more a keen understanding to that that will lead us to truth, whether that comes through advice or not.  To be able to truly discern whether the advice we gave today was authentically applied to us. And whether the advice we gave we truly feel is more for someone else and not us, if not, why? These are the meta-level questions we need to be asking....understanding the advice about our advice....that's more critical to making change happen out there and in us. 

And so, the application of something to one's self is the essence of being in and living in truth.

 

PageOneLit.com: Half truth #6 - Spirituality and Religion are two different things - Explain

 Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: They are different in that they estimate different parts of the transformation wheel, so to speak, but they are not as diametrically opposed as society makes em out to be. You see, it is one of those necessary but not sufficient kind of thing. To me, the religious person is nothing if he is not in truth the essence of being a spiritual person. And the spiritual person, if in essence that is the truth of the center of that person, will have that spirtituality, by essence of being spiritual, want to seek more acts of piety in their behaviors, which is subsumed mostly under the rituals of religion as we know it

 

PageOneLit.com:  You are a regular columnist on Transformation Insights for the high end executive magazine, Executive Decision -- Discuss some of your latest articles and what you enjoy about being a journalistic contributor?

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: I enjoy writing for them for they seek creative mind-blowing ideas to the "business as usual" world. They allow me to question the assumptions of reality underneath common practices. I have taken on topics and overturned assumptions around team building, corporate retreats, and common management communication ideas. The core of them all is to build transparency and authenticity. And when you do that, no matter the business focus, you are concerned with commitment on something ----not compliance.  And we know the values-aligned profits, productivity, alignment, growth, etc are all on the side of sustainability....and that can only come from commitment, not compliance. Nothing not true lasts real long.

 
PageOneLit.com:   What's next?

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D: I am thinking about a next book with one of the neuroscientists from the What the Bleep Do We Know fame around aligning brains with therapy. Have we done that? Does the process of therapy and this self-help industry that is grown all around it is it aligned with the metaphysical powers of the brain?  if not, will we ever change as humans? and if not, shouldn't mental health care about that question? 

 

PageOneLit.com:  What was the last book you read?

The Happiness Trip by Eduardo Punset. Brilliant amalgamation of the research on what this elusive thing we are all seeking actually is...and what it isnt

 

PageOneLit.com:   Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Kevin J. Fleming, PH.D:  I am a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist who enjoys playing music and recording CDs of my own (www.cdfreedom.com/kevinfleming) It informs my work with people for it jogs the right side of my brain into novelty and spontaneity, the very thing we need to break unquestioned patterns and "used to" kinds of things that are left brain loves.....and with the surprises of people and their BS, you better be able to dance.