Catherine Osler
Alumni and former TEC Chair
Vancouver, BC
A Vision to the Future
It was one of “those” days. Catherine Osler was frustrated with her business, she was feeling overworked, people were driving her crazy, and the last thing she wanted to do was take two hours out of her day to meet with her TEC Chair. How could she have known that those two hours would completely change her life?
When Lynn Tanner, Catherine’s TEC Chair, arrived for their monthly one-to-one session he wasn’t expecting to find the normally cheerful Catherine at her wit’s end. No sooner had their meeting started Catherine, holding nothing back, unloaded the frustrations she was feeling as a result of running a rapidly growing oil and gas communications firm.
It was obvious to Lynn that Catherine had had enough, so he decided to take their one-to-one, which normally dealt with the pains of running a growing business, in a completely different direction.
"Lynn shifted the conversation to a visioning exercise." said Catherine; "He took me out of the deep frustration I was in at that moment by gently asking me questions about my vision of my perfect future."
Although Catherine had never considered such questions before, she came to understand the strength each of them possessed as a clear picture of her future took form. By the time Lynn departed her office that day, he had left Catherine revitalized and with a direction towards her vision.
Catherine credits this one-to-one for putting the wheels in motion for a whole lot of decisions that helped her achieve her vision. From merging her communications firm with a design firm to form Parallel Strategies, to moving to Vancouver to run Parallel in B.C., to ultimately selling Parallel and becoming a TEC Chair herself, Catherine’s present is a direct result of the vision Lynn helped her discover years earlier.
