What is Coaching?
A powerful collaborative partnership that supports and accelerates the success of the person being coached. It involves questions, exercises and methodologies designed to explore challenges and opportunities. Coaching’s focused dialogue is designed to help clients overcome obstacles, accomplish goals and find new ways of navigating the challenges of the workplace.  A coach helps clients focus as much on how to think as on what to do. Coaches partner with individuals or groups to articulate goals, identify obstacles, plan for change, and develop skills or behaviors to achieve those goals.  This goal oriented conversation, listening and guidance enhances the client’s ability to have strategic impact on workplace results and relationships. 

Coaching works best when the client:
  • Is willing to listen, learn and make changes when necessary
  • Commits to goals and wants to be held accountable for results
  • Does what it takes to make progress with patience and persistence


For Leadership
People at all levels have leadership potential. Managers who want to be more than bosses can be leaders. A coach can help them move to that next level, improving performance, effectiveness and achieving goals.

A leadership coach can help when a client’s challenge is:
  • Transitioning to a higher level position or a different field
  • Leading a team through a reorganization or major change
  • Starting a new venture, division, or department
  • Dealing with differences in management and communication styles that are inhibiting effectiveness
  • Thinking through and implementing major decisions or choices
  • Retaining valued staff by creating an environment for success
  • Employing strategic communication style for high performance
  • Building a more confident, polished leadership presence
  • Setting new standards and achieving results through the efforts of others
  • Scaffolding a person, team or organization to build capacity

For Professional Development
Coaching is an option at all organizational levels regardless of whether the person being coached is subsidized by his employer or pursuing goals of her own.  Coaching individuals at any level in or outside the workplace can be appropriate for a wide variety of objectives:

  • Contemplating what’s next or what is possible in terms of career aspirations
  • Improving job performance, building skills
  • Making major decisions or thinking through complex problems
  • On-boarding with a new company or new position
  • First time managers
  • Identifying blind spots: what may be standing in your way professionally

 

Coaching partnerships, teams, groups or the whole system
No one at work exists in a vacuum. There are connections, interactions and interdependencies among all individuals involved. We often see more of co-workers and customers than we do our own families. Workplace relationships are unavoidable and can be the start of some beautiful friendships. To be successful, teams, partnerships and organizational systems must focus as much on the relationships as on the business.
The alternative – allowing ineffective relationships to remain that way or worse, disposing of people instead of problems —costs businesses big time in terms of lost productivity and drained energy. 

Systems relationship coaching is when the coach participates with all members of a duo, group, team or organization to help them interact more effectively, more profitably and with a higher level of enjoyment.  The coach’s role is not to “fix”, but to help the system see its own characteristics, challenges and potential. Once people can take a look at who they are together as well as who they are individually, they can then self-manage and find their own solutions. Systems coaching is key to organizational alignment, an essential success factor.

Examples of systems and group coaching services:

  • Helping partnerships, teams, groups begin, change or end workplace relationships
  • Organizational assessments: culture audits, team self assessments, 360 degree feedback, capacity building analyses, management skills needs assessments
  • Coaching specifically for alignment of values, goals, vision
  • Analysis of group process and mentoring for improved performance
  • Off sites and retreats for improved group performance

Related coaching services for individuals or groups:

  • Professional assessments: Emotional intelligence, leadership profiles
  • Assessing team or group effectiveness
  • Obtaining 360 degree feedback
  • Observing and coaching the clients in context: working with teams, staff, boards and other internal groups

See Organizational Development for a more comprehensive and specific overview of work with groups, teams and entire organizational teams.