Blair Ashby

I recently stopped working with Blair after working with him for over a year. I felt I was benefiting from working with him which is evidenced by the fact that I continued to do so. However, on 2 occasions Blair launched into a tirade of yelling and screaming at me which was followed by dialogue that was confusing and contradictory. After the 1st instance he apologized profusely, and I accepted the apology and we continued speaking about once per month. However, after the last instance, he did not apologize for the aggressive yelling and actually justified what he referred to in his own words as “letting loose” on me.

Part of Blair’s approach is to use statistics and theories on how the brain works. He is very big on how we speak and word things. For example, he does not want you to say “I am mad,” but rather, “I feel mad.” OK, that makes sense. He also doesn’t want you to say anything makes you feel something because we have some control over how we feel. I see a point there. However, if you slip up on these things in conversation, Blair gets angry.

At times I found Blair to engage in blaming and shaming. I understand we are responsible for our actions and thoughts but this type of blaming and shaming serves no purpose in my opinion. In retrospect, I see where I was confused in many of our calls but I chalked it up to not fully getting the big picture of what he was teaching me. In hindsight I see lots of contradictions. In some instances, I found him to lack empathy and be insensitive and then claim that he didn’t need to be because how I felt was “on me.”

I regret working with Blair. This experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I think my work with coaches and counselors is done. I'm sure there are some good ones, but I'm not willing to invest more time, energy and money into finding out.