What is Coaching?
Executive coaching is a collaborative and creative relationship between an executive and coach, which can provide improved performance, insights and high levels of sustainable change.
My coaching values are grounded in the conviction that clients are already talented and competent individuals with many strengths. I respect my clients as the experts in their lives and work, and I believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole.
Through coaching, I can empower people to find their own answers by helping them unlock their personal and professional potential, which is essential in today’s fast-moving and complex environments.
Typical Coaching Process
I hold a free, no obligation initial ‘chemistry’ meeting with potential clients to explore together whether we feel we can work together. Once we agree this, our initial meeting focuses on:
- Exchanging information and exploring expectations
- Exploring coaching style and creating a working relationship
- Gaining common understanding of the learning goals and desired outcomes
- Reviewing and reflecting on information provided in advance by the client
- Clarifying and agreeing key areas
- Establishing and agreeing clear boundaries of confidentiality
- Sharing the ICF Code of Ethics
We also agree on logistics, confidentiality, key focuses, desired outcomes; differences others would notice and how we want the coaching space to feel. There follows a bespoke programme of coaching with milestones of review and evaluation.
I facilitate and note an initial 3-way meeting with the client and their manager to share expectations and ensure that agreements around confidentiality, support, boundaries and reporting are mutual, clear, and well understood from the outset.
Strengths
My demonstrated strengths in coaching include:
- Supporting senior people to lead and model transformational change
- Enabling leaders to have maximum impact and authenticity
- Helping leaders gain clarity about strategy, purpose and future direction
- Connecting people to their values, vision and strengths
- Providing challenge and robust feedback
- Empowering leaders to develop their own new thinking, behaviours and solutions
- Facilitating coach education, leading workshops and programmes across sectors
Reflecting and Evaluating
Regular reflection and evaluation with each client in terms of the learning and the coaching experience is part of my practice. The impact of the coaching is measured through a reflexive process with the client (and key people involved in multi-party contracts) focused on progress and learning against objectives and outcomes identified during contracting process.
I use a continuous feedback process: with self-reflection, peer conversations, and supervision. The focus is always on the client’s experience, learning, behaviour and results.
Formative and summative feedback processes evaluate success in relation to goals and desired outcomes. The client and I share informal feedback at the end of each session against agreed agenda and outcomes, with more formal evaluation midway, followed by a reflexive review at the end of the coaching programme.
The final coaching session is about:
- Looking back/looking forward
- Tracking changes.
- Reflecting on differences (individual and organisational)
- Impact and evidence
- Reflecting on coaching relationship
- Articulating and deepening learning
- Completing the phase and sustaining development
Here's a short video of me explaining why Coaching is helpful: