“Living consciously is a state of being mentally active rather than passive. It is the ability to look at the world through fresh eyes. It is intelligence taking joy in its own function. Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant and unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them... it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and of the world within.”
My focus is on executive coaching with senior executives and career coaching with mid career professionals seeking change.
Executive Coaching
This coaching is focussed for individuals in senior leadership or management positions. This type of coaching is either initiated by the individual and paid for personally or initiated and paid for by their employer. Motivations often relate to personal skill development, achieving balance, handling stress, managing people, overcoming conflict, understanding corporate politics or career transition. The service normally includes:
Goal setting
Leadership Development Questionnaire with personalized feedback
Coaching sessions taken over a six to nine month period
Personal Development Plan
Unlimited e-mail support
Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies provide coaching services to multiple levels of their management teams. These companies report increased sales, increased profits, growth in market share and increased executive satisfaction when executive coaches are used. The business case for executive coaching is therefore firmly in place within many organisations.
CEO Coaching
Click here for more detail on services available for CEOs.
Career Coaching
Career coaching is about determining what the next right step needs to be for you in your career. That can involve exploring your current work values, your achievements to date, your current situation, when you have been at your best, your personal working style, and how you want to balance your time investment between work, home and leisure. Once you have clarity around these areas you can more confidently assess individual opportunities and generate new opportunities that are aligned with where you want to move next.
What is Coaching?
Coaching is a form of development, where a Coach supports you (a coachee) to create learning, self-development and improved performance in a way that benefits you. All forms of coaching share the common attribute that people are using it to help them move forward in a certain direction.
One simple example is probably that of a sports coach. They support the individual to improve their performance and get better results; depending on what they want to achieve. For a tennis player, the goal might be winning a major tournament, or simply improving their return hand. The role of the coach is to apply specific principles of success, in a way that creates experiential learning and improvement for the player.
Coaching is normally a conversation, or series of conversations, one person has with another. The coach intends to produce a conversation that benefits the other person, the coachee, in a way that relates to the coachee’s learning and progress.
For example, coaching might consist of two people talking in a room about things the coachee wants to change. This is sometimes called “off-line” coaching. It mights also be one person observing another person doing something, e.g. chairing a meeting, then discussing that afterwards. This can be called “on-line” coaching.
Why would you have coaching?
You enlist the services of a coach when you want to improve your situation and achieve goals. You want to learn new ways of thinking and approaching situations, in order to get better results. Common goals might be being more effective and organised at work, gaining confidence in certain situations, or simply relating to other people more effectively.
As a coach I use a combination of observation, questioning, listening and feedback to create a conversation rich in insight and learning. As coachee you will experience a focus and attention that enable you to develop a greater awareness and appreciation of your own circumstances. In addition, you will also create new ways to resolve issues, produce better results and generally achieve goals more easily.
Common benefits people experience from coaching include:
Improved performance
Improved sense of direction and focus
Increased knowledge of self / self-awareness
Improved ability to relate to and influence others
Increased motivation
Improved performance effectiveness, e.g. focussed effort
Increased resourcefulness / resilience, e.g. ability to handle change
Increased confidence
What coaching is not
Coaching is not any of the following:
Structured training, e.g. classroom learning
Structured training relates to a fixed agenda of learning, and a prepared approach to making that learning happen. For example, if you were being trained in a classroom to use a computer, the trainer would use a structured approach to making sure you learn a certain amount of information, within a certain time frame.
Coaching follows a more flexible format, according to the coachee’s objectives. Both the coachee and I, as coach, influence the direction and content of sessions. Coaching also places real responsibility for learning on the individual and encourages learning to continue after the session.
Therapy, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy
Whilst coaching is not therapy, and should not be viewed as therapy, it does provide a viable alternative to people who may have previously considered some form of counselling to resolve a situation. For example, coaching promotes a greater self-awareness, and full appreciation of your situations and circumstances. Sometimes, change can be promoted by a simple change in perspectives. Barriers of self-belief such as “I cannot” or “I do not” can be challenged in order to encourage fresh approaches and ideas. So although coaching contains many therapeutic qualities it is not therapy.
A way of someone else solving your problems for you
Coaching is based in the principle that an individual is ultimately responsible for their lives and the results they are getting. If we acknowledge that we are responsible for something, it follows that we have power and influence over it. For example, if you are not getting the results at work that you want, I , as your coach, may encourage you to:
Understand the situation more clearly
Develop new ideas or approaches for such situations
Take constructive action that gets you the results you want
What I will not do is instruct you to go and do something specific or go and do it for you. If I did, I would be taking responsibility and so power away from you.
What you can expect from me as your coach
My role as your coach is to provide a kind of support distinct from any other. I will focus solely on your situations with the kind of attention and commitment that you rarely experience elsewhere.
I will listen to you, with a genuine curiosity to understand who you are, what you think and generally how you experience the world. I will reflect back to you, with the kind of objective assessment that creates real clarity. During our conversations, I will encourage you to rise to challenges, overcome obstacles and get into action.
A coaching relationship is like no other, simply because of its combination of objective detachment and commitment to the goals of the individual.
Because the relationship is based on trust and openness, the contents of our discussions will be confidential. Where a third party has requested the coaching for you, we will agree with you the best way to keep them involved or updated.
What I will expect from you
In return, I will encourage you to stay committed to the coaching process. That means showing up for sessions, taking your own notes where appropriate, and keeping any agreements you make during sessions.
In addition, I need you to be open to the potential of coaching. That means contributing to conversations honestly and openly. For example, if something is not working, I need to know. If you have concerns or problems, voice them. If you know why a problem is occurring, say so. The strength and power of coaching relates strongly to the level of openness and trust between us.
Questions
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Booking an initial consultation
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