Cindy Cornell, a leadership and executive coach, came to coaching after an accomplished career in business where she was known for being highly motivated with a strong results orientation. In addition to and perhaps more importantly than helping her coaching clients to achieve measurable results, she helps her clients to lead happier lives. She holds the Associate Certified Coach credential from the International Coach Federation and is certified in both Executive and Life Coaching by Results Coaching Systems and New York University. A lifelong learner herself, Cindy is an adjunct member of the coaching faculty at NYU. She is also an accomplished trainer and professional speaker, creating customized content that leaves audiences in productive action.
Can you talk a little bit about the power of language?
How we show up to anything is how we show up to everything. When she is in a conversation with people, she is much attuned to the language they use. We put ourselves down very often in regular conversations by not accepting compliments from people that are generously given to us or putting a limiting belief out there that may have been true for us at some point in our life but does not hold true for other people in their circumstances. We hang on to those ideas and those beliefs. The more we think about them, the truer they become in our mind. Cindy in her coaching helps people come out of stuckness and through curiosity help them towards the path of awareness.
How was your experience coaching Anna Goldstein?
It was a joy for her to coach Anna. She believes her job as a coach is not to be the expert in anyone’s life rather helps people find their own wisdom through language and a set of questions. Cindy says it was great to watch Anna in her early days because she was committed to her ways of thinking and had the ability to judge herself justly and harshly. Cindy believes Anna allowed herself to grow through awareness and explored her interests to bring in what she wanted in her life.
Can you tell what a mind map is?
The idea of a mind map is that of a freeform. Get a clear piece of paper, get some colored markers and put an idea in the center of the paper. If you are starting off with a particular challenge or a goal that you want to achieve, write that in the center of the paper. After that, create branches from that idea and it will start to look like a spider or even a tree with roots. Each branch might mean an action step and could have smaller sub-branches associated with it. Mindmap allows you to make better decisions in your life and allow your mind to see things from a different perspective.
How can you relate coaching with neuroscience?
One of the things Cindy loves about coaching is that it has really evolved in the last few decades. It has come from so many other disciplines like philosophy, psychology, and adult learning theories. There really are so many different influences on coaching. The contemporary neuroscience is particularly interesting for Cindy because it allows us to see physically and chemically in the brain how we create new habits and what is actually happening in our mind. Cindy in her training helps her clients believe that they can train their brain just like we can train our bodies.
What are some of your favorite questions as a coach?
One of her favorite questions is a follow-up question and it is simply “what else?” You might come up with an idea or two. Cindy in her coaching encourages people to explore different ideas.
Her second favorite question that she often asks in her coaching process is “What does wild success look like?”
Third most commonly asked question in her coaching is “What was useful about our meeting today?” She usually asks this question at the end of her session with her clients.
How did you get into coaching?
Her background before becoming a coach was in business. Cindy had an undergrad degree in accounting, had her MBA in finance & marketing. She was actively involved in finance, operations, and international business for a couple of decades before becoming a coach. Cindy had to go back to school to train and become a professional and a certified coach.
What is the best advice you have ever been given?
The most synced piece of advice that she has been given is to “always begin as you would like to proceed, to start as you’d like to continue”. Keep in your mind what your end game looks like and create a space for yourself that is going to help you achieve your end goal. If you want to have a challenging conversation with someone, you don’t have it from a place of angst or accusation, rather from a place of mutual respect and shared vision. You need to bring in that energy with yourself and other people will match with it. If they are not in the same space as you, you wait and hold until they ready to do that.
How can we connect with you?
You can find more about Cindy through her website. Her website’s URL is
You can also follow her on LinkedIn through the following URL
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindycornell/