- Investors Business Daily
What is coaching?
What coaching is not.
How does it work?
Who is involved?
How does coaching help you?
Who should consider coaching?
What to expect from me as your coach.
What I expect from my clients.
Why coaching?
What is coaching?
Coaching enables people to build effective working relationships to improve overall performance. Executive coaching is primarily the collaborative interaction of two people working together over a period of time, with goals that encourages a shift in who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Coaching maintains respect for you as an individual at all times and helps you move forward to have more of what you want from your business life.
What is coaching is not.
Coaching is not another feel good exercise based in soft skills that has no correlation to the bottom line. Rather it allows individuals to gain a greater understanding of the competencies needed for effective leadership and personal development.
How does it work?
Generally, a face-to-face meeting, an in-depth phone conversation, or a complimentary coaching session would precede our agreement to work together. If we agree we’re compatible, your organization and the person to whom you report and I will agree on the coaching arrangements. I will strike a standard agreement with your HR department and/or business office so we all enter the arrangement with stated expectations. At our initial meeting we’ll evaluate whether a working relationship seems possible. I’ll explain how we’ll proceed, our confidentiality, and how we’ll work with HR and to whom you report. There will be an opportunity for you to discuss your expectations of the coaching sessions and what outcomes would make you satisfied. After our initial meeting, coaching often takes place by phone, with occasional in-person meetings.
Who is involved?
Coaching is a three-way partnership between:
A. The organization hiring the coach.
B. The executive to be coached.
C. The coach.
All three must be involved and agree on specific goals and parameters. The organization needs to have clear goals and a purpose for the coaching program. There must be top-level support and visible links to business imperatives.
The executive has to be willing to accept the process of coaching, including being open to feedback and to making behavioral changes.
The coach must be committed to being candid while fostering a supportive environment. The coach must have a sense of the executive's world from a personal, business, and social perspective and be able to hold up a mirror to the executive to foster behavioral changes. At the same time, the coach must be able to maintain trust and navigate sensitive political issues with the organization.
As in any triangular relationship, the key is defining and clarifying goals, roles, and accountability. For coaching to produce results, the goals should be measurable. Many times this involves using behavioral instruments and assessments during coaching.
Executive coaching may not be for everyone, and organizations and clients should consider their purposes and goals before engaging coaches. While the results may not be directly measurable in dollars, there is no company that can't benefit from more candor, better communications, and more conscious awareness of how its leaders interact with people in order to maximize talents and resources.
How does coaching help you?
Coaching can help you:
- Bolster your performance and sharpen leadership skills.
- Overcome leadership liabilities, removing roadblocks and derailers inhibiting your success.
- Understand business transitions and grow through and with them.
- Thrive, rather than simply survive.
- Fine tune skills in communication, decision making, and teamwork.
- Navigate organizational change.
- Decide whether your current job is right for you.
- Restore balance and fulfillment to your life.
- Adjust and cement your image and personal brand.
- Plan for the next stages of your career.
- Understand how generational differences affect you.
Who should consider coaching?
- High achievers who expect to constantly improve.
- Those who have organizational aspirations.
- People who bump into the same difficulty at work over and over again.
- Leaders in transition, learning new skills and leaving behind old ones.
What to expect from me as your coach.
- My primary role is to help you improve your ability to achieve business and personal goals, provide new insights into your motivations, and help you discover why you do what you do.
- During our coaching appointments I will put you foremost - your needs, your issues, your problems, your concerns - during the entire time together. You will have my complete and undivided attention.
- An open, direct, honest relationship characterized by integrity and genuine appreciation of your unique situation.
- A safe and supportive environment that is in alignment with our pre-discussed agreement on confidentiality.
- I will challenge your pre-set beliefs and current work systems.
- I will listen intently, be a sounding board, and provide input to you while encouraging you to create your own solutions.
- A strategic partner with you as you achieve your goals and reach new heights.
- Tom Landry
What I expect from my clients.
- To be as honest and open as possible, interacting with candor and integrity.
- Commit to coaching by keeping appointments or canceling within our agreement.
- Be laser-focused when we have an appointment, without multitasking or distractions.
- Let me know what is helpful and what is not, what works, and what is not effective in our interactions.
- Complete the work and/or experiments we agree to be done between coaching sessions.
- Co-create specific goals, action plans and a tool kit to the work required to achieve them.
- Be open changes in perspective, new ideas, and opportunities.
Why Coaching?
ROI http://www.human-innovation.com/files/roisix.pdf
Contact Marianne to schedule a free 30-minute consultation to explore working together.
