Synthia Smith

Synthia Smith is a leadership strategist who works with executives and their leadership teams in leadership development, team building, communication skills, and coaching. A hallmark of Synthia’s work is the use of the client’s thinking skills to shape behavior, performance, and the experience of wellbeing. In the last ten years, she has assisted hundreds of clients in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East.

Synthia’s coaching and consulting practice draws from her 25 years of corporate and independent business experience. She has been a partner and vice president of two training, coaching, and consulting companies. In addition to coaching services, she has created and led public workshops and corporate programs in change management, learning, meditation, resiliency, creativity, time management and personal effectiveness. Previously, Synthia worked as a geoscientist and management advisor at a Fortune 100 corporation for 19 years where she explored for oil, drilled wells, and developed worldwide training and development programs.

A passionate lifelong learner, Synthia has received coach training from Sage Innovations, Right Management Consultants, and the International Coach Federation. She is currently learning another coaching system from Legacy Learning, LLC (the former coaching division of Franklin Covey.) Synthia holds a BS in Psychology from the University of Houston, a BS in Geology from Indiana University, and a 2ême degré in French Language from the Université de Strasbourg, France.

Synthia’s innovative coaching style is a fusion of her unique background and rigorous training in exploration and discovery processes, natural science, eastern philosophy, accelerated learning, chaos and complexity theory, organizational systems, and psychology in addition to her extensive corporate and independent business experience. She helps leaders learn how to recognize hidden opportunity, develop people, grow high performance environments, and thrive in the midst of rapidly changing conditions.

Synthia coaches individually and in groups. Her experience has taught her that real change happens simultaneously from the “inside out” and the “outside in”.high performance environments emerge when everyone is fully and authentically engaged, curious, energetic, aligned on clear goals, and connected with their team. Synthia believes reflective awareness is a core competency for leaders and says “The bigger the waves, the better the surf. Let’s find your sweet spot where external action and internal stillness meet to create breakthrough results.”

Synthia is a member of the International Coach Federation and is a certified Leadership Development Coach with Right Management Consultants. She has served in a variety of elected offices and positions, including the Board of the Houston Geological Society, the HGS Advisory Committee, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists House of Delegates and the Advisory Board of the Treatise of Petroleum Geology. Synthia is a licensed Geoscientist in the State of Texas and co-manages silent meditation retreats for the Dzogchen Foundation.

Learning partner, trusted listener, sounding board, scientist, leader, catalyst, and innovator. Synthia brings tremendous resources and enthusiasm to her coaching partnerships. Most of all, her clients credit her practical yet deeply intuitive approach as the key to their unexpected results.