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Bringing IFS Into Your Work With Leaders
Explore how Internal Family Systems (IFS) can be applied to leadership development, executive coaching, and team settings. In this practical training, Michelle Gibson shares her experience bringing IFS beyond the therapy room, including common leadership parts, group work, professional boundaries, and adapting the model to organizational contexts.
Maybe you’re already bringing IFS into your work with leaders, executives, or teams. Maybe you’ve felt a pull toward it and aren’t sure how it translates outside the therapy room. Or maybe you’ve wondered how I do this work.
Through my Lead From Within program, I’ve been bringing IFS to leaders for a while now, and I’ve seen how much it resonates. Leaders tend to recognize their parts quickly: the one who carries everything, the one who can’t slow down, the one who needs to get it right. When they start getting to know those parts, the way they lead starts to change too.
This training is my way of sharing what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning, and how I’ve shaped the work so it fits the realities of leadership.
Why IFS fits this work
Leadership asks a lot of our protectors. Many leaders have been rewarded for years for the very parts that are now exhausting them. IFS gives them a way to understand what’s happening inside without being pathologized, and it respects the jobs those parts have taken on. It also offers something leaders often haven’t had: a way back to clarity, calm, and connection that doesn’t depend on pushing harder.
What we’ll explore
- Individual and group structure. How I design one-on-one work and cohort or team-based work, and what changes when parts show up in a group setting.
- The parts that commonly show up in leaders. The patterns I see again and again, and how to work with them.
- Taking the model into a new context. As an IFS therapist and Approved Consultant, I know many practitioners wonder what happens with exile work outside of therapy. We’ll talk honestly about the boundaries of this work in a leadership setting, and about why IFS remains such a powerful model here, even when the work looks different than it does in the therapy room.
- Boundaries. What needs to be clear from the start, including working with organizational sponsors, confidentiality, and when to refer someone to therapy.
Who this is for
Clinicians, coaches, and consultants who practice IFS and work with leaders, executives, or teams, or who want to.
About Michelle
Michelle Gibson, MSW, RSW, has over 15 years of clinical practice and over 10 years in consulting and teaching. She holds IFS Level 3 Certification and is an IFSI Approved Consultant. Michelle is the founder of Gibson and Associates, a multi-location group practice in Ontario, and The Nest Collective, where she brings IFS-informed leadership development to individuals and organizations. Her work focuses on the intersection of mental health and high-performing leaders, and she created Lead From Within to offer leaders a more sustainable way to lead. She is a former Adjunct Professor at Western University.
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We’re setting dates for 2027 now. Add your details below and we’ll let you know as soon as dates are confirmed, along with access to early bird rates.
