About
Evan Colton
Coach. Consultant. Tai Chi teacher. I help people see clearly and move with reality, not against it.
The path
How I got here.
I've taken an unusual path to this work. I earned my MBA at Yale, and I've spent much of my career consulting with small businesses and organizations: helping them with strategy, with the technology and systems they run on, and with the human side that usually decides whether any of it actually works.
Alongside that, the practice that's shaped me most is Tai Chi. I've trained seriously for more than a decade in the Wudang Longmen (Dragon Gate) lineage, and now hold a teacher rank (Lao Shr) as a 20th-generation disciple. A lot of the training is done with a partner, staying in contact and testing each other's balance, and it gives you immediate, honest feedback about exactly how you get in your own way. It's taught me things I couldn't have learned from a book: how to listen with the whole body, how softness outlasts rigidity, how to stay grounded under pressure, and why so much of our effort to force an outcome works against us.
A few years ago I added formal coach training, certifying with Integral Coaching Canada. It works from Integral Theory, a framework that looks at people and organizations across several dimensions at once: inner and outer, individual and collective. It gave me language for something I'd been seeing for years, that the changes that last are the ones that move across all of those dimensions together, not just one.
So the work I do now, coaching for individuals and consulting for organizations, comes from a single worldview seen through two doors. The principles don't change. Listen first. Question the assumptions. Work the whole system. Stay grounded in the body, not just the head.
What I bring
Four things, practiced for a long time.
The questioning mind.
The right question at the right time has done more for my clients than any framework. Most people are working very hard to answer the wrong one.
Integral Associate Coach — Integral Coaching Canada Integral coaching.
Certified Integral Associate Coach (Integral Coaching Canada). The four-quadrant view is how I keep an engagement honest, and the reason real changes tend to stick.
Embodied philosophy.
More than a decade of intensive Tai Chi practice. Lao Shr (teacher rank), Wudang Longmen lineage, 20th-generation disciple. It's a daily practice, not a metaphor, and it shapes how I think and work.
Strategic range.
An MBA from Yale and years consulting with small businesses on strategy, technology, and systems. Comfortable moving across business models, operations, technology, and the people who actually make things work.
The Tai Chi practice
A long, quiet teacher.
I've practiced Tai Chi seriously for over a decade in the Wudang Longmen (Dragon Gate) tradition, where I'm now a 20th-generation disciple and hold the teacher rank of Lao Shr. The most useful gift of the practice hasn't been the forms. It's been the slow, persistent retraining of a lifetime of unconscious rigidity, physical, mental, and otherwise.
Much of the training is done with a partner: the two of you stay in contact and try to keep your own balance while gently testing the other's. It gives you direct, immediate feedback about exactly how you tense up and get in your own way. You can't argue with the floor when you hit it.
Off the clock
The non-work bits.
Off the clock, I read constantly, especially history, and I've never once sent a tweet. I love being out in nature, and I have a dog who makes sure I actually go. I speak Spanish.
Get in touch
Two doors.
Coaching for individuals. Consulting for organizations. Both lead to the same worldview.