Leaders Today Blog

Re-hope

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:46:49 GMT

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��️ This piece grew out of a talk with professionals facing job loss. It’s about change, moral injury, and the work of re-hoping — not only to kindle a feeling, but as an active, dynamic practice.

Earlier this autumn, I was invited to speak to a group of professionals who would lose their jobs at the end of the year. And now, that moment has arrived. Knowing this deadline was approaching has weighed heavily on my heart. Out of respect for the dignity and resilience of everyone who lost a job this year, I want this post to be more filled with hope than sadness.

The end-of-year holidays always stir up a strange mix of emotions. I still remember, so vividly, the excitement of my nephews when they were little, hiding upstairs, barely able to contain themselves as they waited for Santa to arrive. Even decades later, that memory fills me with a sudden swell of joy.

And yet, in many families — mine included — the expected seasonal lightness is softened by the loss of loved ones over the years. The chairs that will no longer be pulled up to the Christmas table. And still, we have so much to be grateful for. We carry sadness alongside gratitude. And somehow, both are true at the same time.

When I look at the world around me, I feel that same tension. There is so much to delight in, and just as much to despair over. With the constant, invasive flow of news, it’s almost impossible to sustain a festive bubble, sealed off from everything else that is happening. That can be uncomfortable. But I also think it matters. It keeps our empathy awake. It keeps our compassion from going dormant.

I want to share what I said that day in the fall, not to signal virtue, but on the chance that it might offer something — a word, a thought, a small anchor — to anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation of job loss.

I had been asked to speak about managing personal change, drawing both on my work as a coaching professional and on my own life experience of having lived through an unjust, unwanted, and far-reaching change.

It was an online event, participants with different professions hailing from various parts of the world and mostly not knowing each other. I could not see them, nor feel the room in the way you can in-person, yet the virtual setting allowed for a safe space to address a sensitive topic.

This is what I said.

I began by talking about something I genuinely believe: every single one of us is already an expert in change. If you look back at your own life, you’ll find plenty of proof. Think of the times you stepped into the unknown, the moments you were knocked off balance, the defeats you endured, the discomfort you survived — and the fact that you are still here. Humans have an extraordinary capacity for resilience. That doesn’t erase the impact of painful change, but it does remind us that we are all sitting here today with a history of change behind us, and more change ahead of us too.

I also said this clearly: all layoffs are traumatic. Some come with explanations, others don’t. And very often, they leave behind a strong sense of injustice — personal, collective, sometimes even social. The loss isn’t just about a job, a salary, or a work permit. It’s also the loss of purpose. The loss of a mission. The loss of feeling useful in a way that mattered.

So if you feel outraged, you are not overreacting. You are reacting like human beings who cared deeply about what they were doing.

And when the work you were doing was demonstrably good for the world, the absurdity of being let go cuts even deeper. Especially when you know that real people, real beneficiaries, will suffer as a result. That knowledge leaves a mark.

From there, I spoke about change itself — and about a particular kind of change that feels especially wounding. When people are laid off because of what I call an “unjust” change, there is often a deep moral injury involved. It’s not only the familiar stages of shock, disorientation, grief, and rupture. It’s also the feeling that something you valued has been violated. That your values have been trampled on. Navigating this kind of change requires an acknowledgement of what you are going through - be kind to yourself - combined with the same grit that led you to embrace purpose-driven work.

In these moments, there is a certain urgency to reclaiming a sense of agency, it is the first step toward rebuilding. Of course, it can’t be rushed, processing unwanted change takes time. But it also can’t be postponed indefinitely. At some point, we need to begin finding new ways to create meaning and stability in our lives again, even while the ground still feels unsteady.

Sometimes stories reach places that explanations can’t, so I offered a metaphor: One day, this will be a story you tell. And like so many human stories, it has the shape of a hero’s journey. In myths and cultures all over the world, the hero is called to an adventure — often against their will. They cross a threshold they didn’t ask for. They feel lost. Afraid. Out of their depth.

But along the way, allies appear. Helpers show up. And although the journey is demanding, the hero does not walk it alone. I invited them to keep their eyes open for those allies — because they will be there — and to trust that this journey, too, will eventually bring them home with renewed strength.

I also spoke about the importance of staying connected. Shock, embarrassment, and fear have a way of pushing us inward. They whisper that we should withdraw, disappear, handle things alone. I warned them not to listen to that voice. Stay in contact. Talk to others — colleagues, including those who are still employed, friends, family. Collectives are a source of strength, of comfort, of shared information and resources. We are not meant to go through upheaval in isolation.

Then we turned to something very practical: the balance between outer work and inner work. When you lose your job, the outer demands quickly take over. Searching for new roles. Preparing applications. Going to interviews. Navigating administrative processes. Planning relocations. All of this is necessary, and often exhausting.

But it’s crucial to protect some energy for the inner work as well. For reflection. For making sense of what has happened. For processing emotions. For recentering. The inner work is not a luxury. It’s what gives you the stamina to keep going with the outer work without burning out or hardening inside.

I also invited them to take stock of their strengths — and I was very clear that this is not a superficial exercise. Yes, you need to articulate your strengths for your CV and for interviews. But even more than that, you need them for yourself. When the ground has shaken beneath your feet, naming your strengths is a form of self-validation.

Strengths are not only technical or professional skills like strategic thinking or stakeholder management. Your most important strengths are your values — the inner compass that guides you. And your personal qualities: the way you show up, the way you relate, the way you carry yourself in the world. These are your unique treasures. You need to know them, name them, and take ownership of them.

And then we came to the most important topic: hope. We often say that where there is life, there is hope — meaning that as long as we are alive, there is still the possibility of a good outcome. But research in psychology and medicine actually suggests something even stronger: where there is hope, there is life. Hope is a powerful predictor of well-being. It fuels motivation. It supports resilience. It helps us keep moving when things feel bleak.

So what can you do when hope feels lost?

Restoring hope is not a single moment. It’s a process, often called “re-hope” — an intentional shift from hopelessness toward small, doable actions, taken step by step. I briefly shared the work of psychologist Charles Snyder, who developed a theory of hope that is humane, practical and dynamic. At its core, it rests on three things: identifying goals that truly matter to you, believing that you have some agency to influence your life, and finding pathways — different ways forward, even when one path is blocked.

In everyday terms, I suggested thinking of re-hoping as a simple, repeatable process. First, pause. Step out of the whirl of anxious thoughts, even briefly. Breathe. Take a walk. Listen to music. Do something that gives your nervous system a break.

Then re-orient. Look at your situation from different angles. Ask someone you trust to help you see possibilities you can’t see alone. Allow yourself to imagine new dreams — even if they don’t yet feel realistic. Possibility often comes before feasibility.

And finally, design a few small steps toward those new directions. Nothing grand. Just something you can do. And if a path doesn’t work, pause again, re-orient again, and try another route. That, too, is part of hope. Hope is not stubborn optimism. It’s flexible persistence.

To all those who have lost their employment: you may have lost a job, but you have not lost your mission. You have not lost your commitment to something that matters. This moment — with all its difficulty and all its possibility — is now yours. Make it your own. Hope, and re-hope. And in time, write your own story of change. I wish you Godspeed on this new journey.

The Six Stages of Coaching Culture Evolution

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 19:42:30 GMT

Build a coaching culture starting from where you are! Start small, scale smart.

Coaching has become one of the most powerful levers for leadership development and organizational performance. Yet, despite growing enthusiasm, many organizations struggle to make it stick. A few managers may be trained, a handful of coachees may benefit, but the ripple fades. The question remains: how do you move from isolated initiatives to a thriving coaching culture that transforms how people lead, collaborate, and learn?

At Leaders Today , we’ve spent years helping organizations make use of coaching. Through our framework — The Coaching Edge — we've designed a method to guide teams in building the ecosystem where coaching doesn’t just exist but truly flourishes.

Below is a roadmap outlining the six stages of coaching culture evolution — from Newcomers to Coaching Strategists.
Understanding where you are today is the first step to choosing the right next one.

1. Newcomers – The Seeds of Awareness

At this early stage, coaching is recognized but not yet practiced. Leaders may have heard of its benefits, or a few individuals may have experienced coaching personally, but it hasn’t yet found its place in everyday life.

Typical signs include:

Coaching appears in HR or leadership strategies but isn’t yet operational.
Conversations remain directive and task-focused.
Curiosity exists, but confidence is low.

The Opportunity:
Create awareness and spark curiosity. Offer leaders a chance to experience coaching rather than just hear about it. Host interactive sessions or short introductions that link coaching directly to real leadership challenges.

2. Explorers – Experimenting with Coaching

Here, curiosity turns into action. The organization begins to test the waters — running pilot programs, offering leadership training, or hiring external coaches.

Patterns you’ll notice:

A few leaders use coaching tools informally.
Small-scale coaching initiatives emerge in different parts of the organization.
Early wins create excitement but remain isolated.

The Opportunity:
Capture what’s working. Celebrate small successes and gather lessons learned. Create simple reflection tools or debriefs to help leaders understand what makes coaching impactful. At this stage, learning and sharing stories are your best growth engines.

3. Enablers – Building Alignment and Structure

Momentum grows. Coaching has proven its value, and HR or Learning & Development teams begin to coordinate activities. You start to see a shift from individual enthusiasm to collective effort.

You might notice:

HR formalizes coach training or mentoring programs.
Leaders are encouraged to use coaching in performance and development conversations.
Internal coaches may be appointed or trained.

The Opportunity:
Build alignment. Develop a shared language around what coaching means in your organization. Define purpose, outcomes, and quality standards. Begin to measure progress — participation rates, feedback, and visible changes in communication.

4. Champions – Gaining Momentum and Visibility

At this point, coaching is moving beyond HR. Enthusiastic leaders and teams are visibly modeling coaching behaviors. Coaching becomes “ how we do things here .”

What’s happening now:

Positive stories circulate informally across departments.
Coaching appears in leadership competencies and development plans.
Teams start using coaching techniques during meetings and problem-solving sessions.

The Opportunity:

Make it visible. Share stories internally — through newsletters, town halls, or short videos. Recognize the leaders who embody this new mindset. Their enthusiasm inspires others and gives legitimacy to the movement.

5. Culture Shapers – Living the Values

At this stage, coaching has become part of daily life. You can see it in how people interact, give feedback, and collaborate. Leaders model empathy, curiosity, and accountability — and others follow.

Common signs include:

Coaching skills are embedded in leadership development programs.
Team dynamics reflect openness, trust, and ownership.
Internal coaches form communities of practice to sustain quality and learning.

The Opportunity:
Sustain and refresh. Provide continuous learning and peer support for coaches and leaders. Align HR processes — recruitment, appraisal, promotion — with coaching values. The focus now is on consistency and renewal.

6. Coaching Strategists – Coaching as a Strategic Lever

Few organizations reach this level — but those that do experience remarkable results. Coaching is no longer just a skill or a program; it’s a strategic capability woven into the organization’s DNA.

You’ll see:

Coaching integrated into executive decision-making and innovation processes.
Leaders modeling openness and reflective dialogue at the highest levels.
Systems and culture reinforcing each other to sustain growth and adaptability.

The Opportunity:
Leverage your maturity. Use coaching as a driver of innovation, engagement, and change readiness. Strategists continuously evolve their culture by staying curious, adaptive, and intentional.

Moving from Awareness to Integration

Wherever your organization is today — whether you’re a Newcomer just discovering coaching or a Champion expanding its reach — the key is to move forward with clarity and purpose.

At Leaders Today , our Coaching Edge Framework provides a structured yet flexible roadmap that helps organizations evolve their coaching culture sustainably.

The process unfolds in four adaptive phases:

Assess – Understand your current culture through diagnostics, interviews, and insight.
Pilot – Test what works in your context and refine through experimentation.
Scale-Up – Train leaders, expand internal networks, and communicate success.
Sustain – Embed coaching in systems and leadership routines for long-term impact.

Start Where You Are

Every organization’s journey is unique. The most successful ones are those that meet themselves where they are — with honesty and curiosity — and move forward with intention. The may start small and then scale smart .

If you’d like to explore how The Coaching Edge could help your organization build a thriving coaching culture, we’d love to start the conversation.

The Promise of Coaching: Understanding How Change Happens

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 15:33:33 GMT

The human science behind potential, change, and growth

Why is it that some conversations leave us lighter, clearer, and more confident — while others drain our energy?

Coaching is built around the quality of conversation. It is about creating a particular kind of conversation — one that awakens clarity, courage, and commitment. When done well, coaching changes how people think, feel, and act, not because they are told what to do, but because they reconnect with what matters most to them.

This article opens a new series, Coaching Unpacked , which explores the foundations of coaching: what happens inside these conversations, and why they work.

Unlocking What’s Already There

At its core, coaching is not about teaching, advising, or fixing. It is about unlocking what is already present in a person — their experience, intuition, and capacity to learn.

A good coach does not provide answers. Instead, they hold up a mirror, allowing clients to see themselves and their situations more clearly. With that clarity often comes renewed self-trust and a stronger sense of agency.

Coaching is less like giving directions and more like revealing a path you already sense beneath your feet. When people feel truly seen, listened to, and believed in, something subtle yet powerful happens: the mind opens, habitual thinking loosens, and new possibilities come into view.

How Coaching Works

There is now a substantial body of research exploring how and why coaching can be such an effective catalyst for change — often leading to shifts in perspective, confidence, and action in a relatively short period of time. I will briefly highlight a few perspectives that help explain what is happening beneath the surface.

Psychology has made an important contribution to our understanding of coaching, particularly through developmental and positive psychology. Concepts such as self-awareness, agency, intrinsic motivation, and positive emotion help explain why coaching supports sustainable development rather than short-term performance fixes. Coaching creates the conditions in which people can reflect on experience, make sense of it differently, and mobilise their own resources for change.

Developmental psychology, in particular, informs coaching approaches that support holistic growth over time. Rather than focusing solely on skill acquisition, coaching invites clients to evolve how they relate to themselves, others, and complexity — an essential capacity in today’s organisations.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has also influenced coaching practice, especially in its attention to how habitual thought patterns shape behaviour. While coaching is not therapy, it draws on similar principles when helping clients recognise limiting assumptions, experiment with alternative perspectives, and adopt ways of thinking that enable purposeful action.

Neuroscience has shed light on the well-known “aha” moments that often occur in coaching — sudden insights that reorganise how a situation is understood. Research suggests that such moments are associated with increased neural integration, when previously unconnected ideas come together. In coaching, these insights are often accompanied by emotion, because they touch something personally meaningful rather than merely intellectual.

Coaching has also developed into a robust field of research in its own right, with thousands of peer-reviewed studies exploring its processes and outcomes. One important source is the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring, an open-access, international peer-reviewed journal published by Oxford Brookes University.

One of the most illuminating books on how coaching actually works is Coaching Understood: A Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process by Dr Elaine Cox, Founding Editor of the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching & Mentoring . Cox explores coaching as a process grounded in lived experience, beginning with what she describes as Touching Experience — the moment where the coach–client relationship is established and potential coaching goals start to emerge. In this space, felt and often only partially articulated experience is explored, allowing meaning to surface and awareness to deepen. The book then examines the coaching process in depth, analysing the evolving contributions of both client and coach, and culminating in an integrated understanding of the Experiential Coaching Cycle .

Three Forces That Make Coaching Effective

From my experience as a practitioner, three forces are particularly central to what makes coaching work.

1. Attention and Presence

Being deeply listened to is rare. In coaching, the coach’s full presence creates a safe space where the client’s nervous system can settle and the mind can begin to organise itself differently. Judgment is suspended, curiosity is invited, and attention turns inward in a constructive way. In this calm, focused conversation, new insights can emerge.

2. Powerful Questions

Thought-provoking questions interrupt automatic thinking. Coaches do not ask questions to gather information — they ask questions to support better thinking. Well-crafted questions shift attention from “What’s wrong?” to “What’s possible?”, from assumption to exploration. They ignite curiosity, which is the starting point of all learning. Clients often say, “I’ve never thought about it that way before.”

3. Accountability and Action

Insight alone does not create change. Coaching helps translate awareness into action by inviting small, realistic steps that build confidence and momentum. The process typically begins with something the client wants to change, moves toward a clear formulation of a desired outcome, and then into exploration, experimentation, and action planning.

The coach does not give advice. The client articulates the content throughout the process and therefore takes genuine ownership of the actions they choose to take. Self-generated change is far more likely to be sustained.

As Peter Senge famously put it: “ People don’t resist change. They resist being changed .”

A Cycle of Growth

Together, these elements form a cycle that makes coaching such a potent developmental approach:

Presence → Insight → Action → Confidence → More Presence

Each phase reinforces the next, gradually expanding both self-awareness and capability.

A Real-Life Glimpse

One client, a senior leader, came to coaching feeling overwhelmed by constant decision-making. Her instinct was to move faster, to push through.

In our sessions, she slowed down — perhaps for the first time in years. As she spoke about her challenges, patterns became visible: assumptions she had never questioned, priorities she had lost sight of. Within weeks, she began delegating differently and creating space for reflection and strategic thinking.

Nothing “new” was added. What changed was her relationship with her own thinking. She rediscovered her capacity for clarity.

The Bigger Picture

Coaching works because it honours people’s natural drive to grow, much like all living systems. This is not always recognised in workplaces where the focus is often on weaknesses and errors, and where accountability is too easily equated with blame — a dynamic that can stifle learning and initiative.

In coaching, accountability is understood differently. It emerges from empowerment, agency, and responsibility. A far more attractive — and effective — foundation for development.

Coaches trust that when people are supported with presence and inquiry, they will find their own way forward — and that this self-generated learning is more durable than any external advice.

In essence, coaching reminds us that potential is not something to be installed from the outside. It is something to be invited from within.

Perhaps the best in us is not something we need to find — it is something we need to remember.

Self-Coaching for Motivation

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:17:25 GMT

6 Self-coaching tools to get you back on track with energy and focus

Motivation can feel elusive. Some days it’s there in abundance; other days, it’s buried under stress, self-doubt, or simply too many competing demands. Coaching doesn’t magically create motivation—but it cultivates it. It does so by clarifying aspirations, turning goals into actionable plans, strengthening confidence, and helping you move through obstacles with greater ease.

Whether or not you’re working with a professional coach, you can apply many of these same principles to coach yourself and rekindle your drive.

I use these inquiry strategies to help my clients find the spark again, when they are demotivate. I hope you enjoy reading them and most importantly, trying them out in self-coaching.

1. Clarifying Your Aspirations

Motivation thrives on clarity. When people feel demotivated, it’s often because they’re working hard toward goals that no longer feel meaningful—or because their true aspirations are fuzzy.

A coaching conversation begins by helping you reconnect with what really matters. Coaches use questions like:

“What do you most want to create or experience in your work or life?”
“What would success look and feel like for you?”
“If nothing were holding you back, what would you go for?”

These questions bring values, purpose, and desire into focus. Once you know what you’re aiming for—and why—it’s easier to find the energy to move forward.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Clarity

Set aside 20 quiet minutes. Ask yourself:

What am I longing for right now, professionally or personally?
Why does it matter to me?
How would achieving it make a difference in my life—or for others?

Write down your answers, without editing. Then highlight the words that evoke energy, joy, or excitement. These are clues to your authentic motivation.

2. Making Goal Setting Easier and More Meaningful

Once aspirations are clear, coaching turns them into achievable goals. But not just any goals—motivating goals. A coach helps you define objectives that are specific, measurable, and realistic, yet still inspiring. The key is to connect goals to your deeper “why.” When goals reflect your values and sense of purpose, motivation follows naturally.

Coaches also break big ambitions into smaller, doable steps. Each success builds momentum, turning motivation into a self-reinforcing cycle.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Goal Setting

Take one of your aspirations and use this structure:

What do I want? (state it clearly)
Why do I want it? (link it to your values)
What do I need to move forward? (sketch out an action plan)
When will I know I’ve achieved it? (define success indicators)
What’s the first small step? (make it realistic and doable)

Then, celebrate every micro-step forward—each one strengthens motivation through a sense of progress.

3. Building Self-Efficacy and Confidence

Motivation depends on belief in one’s ability to succeed. Psychologists call this self-efficacy, and it’s one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior. Coaching boosts self-efficacy by highlighting strengths, reframing failures as learning, and encouraging reflection on progress.

Coaches often ask, “What did you do that worked?” or “What strengths helped you overcome that challenge?” This helps you internalize your own competence. Confidence doesn’t just come from praise; it grows through evidence of your capabilities—and coaching helps you see that evidence clearly.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Confidence

At the end of each week, ask yourself:

What am I proud of this week?
What did I handle better than before?
What can I learn from what didn’t go as planned?

Write your answers in a notebook. Over time, this becomes a record of your growth—a motivational resource to revisit when self-doubt creeps in.

4. Overcoming Obstacles and Staying on Track

Even with clear goals and confidence, obstacles appear: distractions, fear, fatigue, setbacks. Coaching helps you anticipate and navigate these barriers without losing steam. A coach might help you identify what typically derails your efforts—like perfectionism, procrastination, or overcommitment—and design strategies to manage them. They also normalize setbacks, reframing them as part of the process rather than proof of failure.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Obstacles

Think of a challenge that’s blocking your progress. Ask yourself:

What’s really getting in my way—an external obstacle or an internal one?
What’s within my control here?
What could I do differently next time?

Then, create a simple plan for the next step. For example:

“If I’m procrastinating because the task feels too big, I’ll divide it into 15-minute parts.”
“If I’m afraid of failing, I’ll remind myself that learning is part of success.”

The point isn’t to eliminate difficulty—it’s to stay in motion, even when it’s hard.

5. Creating Accountability and Positive Momentum

One of the most motivating aspects of coaching is accountability. Knowing someone will ask about your progress keeps you engaged—and the conversation itself can renew your sense of purpose. But you can create accountability for yourself, too. Setting up systems—like progress check-ins, weekly reflections, or sharing goals with a trusted colleague—reinforces commitment and builds momentum.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Accountability

Choose one or more of these:

Write a weekly email to yourself summarizing what you accomplished and what’s next.
Pair up with a colleague or friend for mutual accountability calls.
Use a habit-tracking app or journal to visualize progress.

Small, visible wins remind you that effort leads to movement—and movement sustains motivation.

6. Celebrating Growth and Renewing Purpose

Finally, coaching keeps motivation alive by celebrating growth and revisiting purpose regularly. In coaching sessions, clients often realize how much they’ve changed—not just in results, but in mindset and confidence.

This reflection fuels intrinsic motivation—the joy of seeing yourself evolve. It’s deeply satisfying and keeps the journey meaningful.

Try This: Self-Coaching for Renewal

Once a month, reflect on:

What have I learned about myself recently?
How have I grown or stretched?
What am I grateful for in this journey?

Take a moment to acknowledge your progress, however small. Motivation fades when we rush ahead without recognizing how far we’ve come.

The Bottom Line

Coaching is not the same as motivational speaking. It doesn’t inject motivation from the outside—it awakens it from within, with thought-provoking questions that reveal new perspectives. By clarifying what truly matters, translating vision into achievable steps, building confidence, managing obstacles, and celebrating progress, coaching helps people tap into a steady source of self-driven energy.

And while having a coach accelerates that process, you don’t have to wait for one to begin.

Start by asking yourself powerful questions, reflecting regularly, and creating your own systems of accountability and celebration. With consistent self-coaching, you’ll find that motivation isn’t a fleeting spark—it’s a renewable resource you can nurture and sustain.

10 steps to prepare yourself for leadership with self-coaching

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 14:24:28 GMT

Are you preparing yourself well for a step upwards?

You may be wondering why all the promotions are passing you by. Here are 10 things you can do to set yourself up to progress in your career and prepare yourself for a leadership position.

1) Know that leadership is everybody’s business

Leadership is not automatically bestowed upon you with a new job title. Leadership is a mindset and behaviour, exhibited at any organizational level, whether you are a “boss” or not. So it’s important to already express your leadership potential today.

I’ve heard some of the participants in my workshops mistaking leadership with having an over-assertive style and pushing others to do things. Understandably, this is not a very attractive way to be. But I reassure them that pushiness and coercion are closer to dictatorship than leadership! and they don’t have to turn into a dragon to be a good leader. Quite the contrary. Kets de Vries, Professor of Leadership at INSEAD, tells us that most executives want to be effective and at the same time preserve their humaneness. And they can! These qualities are not mutually exclusive.

Leaders then do not force, they inspire, guide, model and take responsibility. They obtain people’s buy-in spontaneously because they inspire trust, show integrity and consistently deliver on their word. Everyone is called upon to express his or her leadership at one point or another. So at whatever organisational level you may be, look for opportunities to start flexing your leadership skills right now. Volunteer to take charge of a project, create a new initiative, take responsibility for improving your team’s working methods, organize an event or a fundraiser. Federate your colleagues around a common cause.

2) Create trusting relations

Trustworthiness is essential for effective leadership. If people don’t trust you, they will not put energy into implementing any of your initiatives. At best, they might pay lip service to you to not make waves. According to a Hope-Hailey (2014) report on trustworthiness, published by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), trustworthiness is exhibited in four areas:

your ability to do the job
your concern for others
your integrity
your reliability

So use every opportunity to demonstrate these behaviours, make people feel safe around you and create relations of trust with your colleagues, clients and bosses.

3) Consistently exceed expectations

Doing your job well is normal, but walking the extra mile is extraordinary. It’s what makes your clients happy and wanting more. It makes you feel that you are useful, that you have a unique contribution to make, that you have a purpose. It is this willingness to add value that creates your reputation for being an overachiever who is always striving to do their best their clients, team, co-workers, boss and ultimately the company. Be ready to always endeavour, to create, to be proactive and productive.

4) Don’t wait to get noticed

Be your own ambassador, make sure everyone knows what you projects you are working on and what you have achieved. Stay real and honest, and above all don’t play yourself down. If you are excessively modest about your accomplishments, they will not be noticed and you will not get credit for them. Careful though not to overstep it and get a reputation for being a show-off, and make sure you give due credit to others too. If you can manage being your own ambassador gracefully, without boasting, you will build a solid and reliable brand.

5) Get a mentor or become a mentor

Experienced colleagues can give you invaluable tips about how to navigate through your organisation’s cultural paradigm. They will tell you what is accepted and what is not, they will guide you through the politics and help you select your best career development strategy. They will share their leadership experiences with you, what worked and what didn’t. They might also share their network with you and help you progress. By definition, Mentors act out of selflessness and because they believe in you and your talents. Always be honest, reliable and grateful for their support.

If you are already an experienced professional, become a Mentor to someone. By sharing your experiences and knowledge, you develop another human being, and you increase your satisfaction at having contributed meaningfully to someone's career. Mentoring also ehances your overall reputation in your company.

6) Develop yourself

Don’t ever, ever think that you have nothing to learn. Improve on yourself constantly, take courses, read specialized work-related articles and books and also broaden your general knowledge. Leadership scholar Warren Bennis lamented the pervasive cultural illiteracy of many leaders and managers in today’s workplace, despite their technical adeptness. This ignorance of the world diminishes their capability to understand and positively influence others in today’s global complex settings. Instead, being world-wise and cultivated greatly increase a leader’s self-confidence.

So, make use of the tons of learning opportunities on the web, from free MOOCs to online degrees, great education is only a click away. Consider making a commitment to a certifying course or a new degree, if that will help your personal and professional development. Especially, don’t wait for your employer to provide you with training. Priority and budgets for learning and development differs from company to company, so you cannot count on that. Your personal development is your responsibility.

7) Stay authentic

A lot of people put on a mask when they walk into the office. They have consciously or unconsciously chosen a professional persona and that’s the mask they wear all day long. Apart from the fact that constantly keep up a front is exhausting, it is also highly ineffective in terms of establishing trusting relations with others. Everybody senses a fake. It’s intuitive, we all have this inborn skill of sensing when people are not being their true self. We instinctively notice discrepancies between what a person says and their micro body language, between the values they proclaim and their deeds.

Your only Unique Value Proposition is YOU. So don’t try to be anyone else. There is nothing more wonderful and precious than YOU. And besides, YOU is all you’ve got, so be aware of your strengths and leverage them, work on your weaknesses with serenity, it’s perfectly normal to have some. Your ability to accept your own imperfection while still holding a strong self-concept is the key to emotional maturity, and it makes you a reliable and honest leader. Your authenticity is your charisma.

If you think you may be having issues with authenticity, you might want to work on your self-confidence, it is the fastest path to letting your true self shine.

8) Say thank you

Say thank you to anyone that helps you on the way. We never, ever do it alone. Being grateful and giving credit is your way of giving back and consolidating a reputation of being the kind of person people want to have around them, the kind of leader that people are willing to follow towards a common goal.

9) Have a plan, but more importantly, have a purpose

Having a career plan is great, wanting to get to a decision-making position is fine but you must discover what your life purpose is. Knowing your life purpose is what fuels your motivation. Why do you want to progress? Is it for the money, the title or the power? Of course, these are important factors but if you don’t have a deeper anchorage, alas your happiness will be short-lived. Understand what you want to contribute and whom this will benefit. Focus on moving towards your purpose. Avoid complaining, unless you just want to let a bit of steam off on rare occasions. Otherwise, complaining is just an energy drainer, it does nothing for your leadership capabilities, and it won’t get you anywhere. When you have a deeper sense of purpose, you are energized. And when you have a plan of how you intend to realize it, taking action will be easy and you will find that surprisingly your career unfolds before you, with very little effort on your part and lots of joy in the process.

10) Know thyself

Self-awareness is the hallmark of effective leadership. It means knowing how you work inside, what makes you tick, what you are good at, what you are afraid of. As a self-aware leader you are fully conscious of what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you are doing it and what impact your action has on others and yourself.

The ancient Greek precept “know thyself” is still extremely pertinent today, given that the workplace is so stressful, people are overworked and there is no space for thinking time. Many leaders I work with are so overwhelmed by impossible deadlines and ridiculous targets to meet that they function on automatic pilot, just charging through the day doing what needs to get done. It seems that time for self-reflection is a luxury they just cannot afford. So in coaching, we just go ahead and take the time, together, until the leader gets into the habit of creating a brief, daily, special time for herself.

It’s really very simple, reserve a moment for yourself, commuting to work or taking a walk at lunchtime. It’s a time when, you can reflect on yourself, on your leadership style by asking questions… How can I think more strategically? What makes me react like that with that colleague? What help do I need to solve this difficult problem? What other solutions haven’t I thought of? What qualities did I exhibit in that crisis? What do I really enjoy about my work and how can I do more of that?

You will be surprised at all the good answers that you find!

In conclusion, leadership starts within and it is exhibited in your behaviour on a daily basis. Start practicing it now and you will be more aligned with your values, by being proactive you will naturally make yourself more visible and you will greatly boost your chances for career progression.

Try doing at least one of these points and let me know how it went in the comment box!

What’s different about a coaching conversation?

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 22:00:00 GMT

Many people use the verb “coaching” to indicate a form of teaching, training or advising. In general they refer to giving information or instructions on how to do something, rather than transmitting theoretical knowledge. It appears that in this usage, “coaching” is intended to mean a dynamic, informal, practical sort of teaching.

There are strong, valid historical reasons for this. In the past, coaching meant precisely (and almost uniquely) teaching people ( telling them ) how to do something practical whether it referred to studying, playing tennis, singing, or selling.

In the last 30 years, a new form of coaching has evolved. It is a professional practice that has grown quickly from multidisciplinary influences as varied as ancient Socratic questioning, humanistic psychology, management sciences, brief therapies, philosophy, project management, positive psychology, eastern philosophies to name but a few.

Coaching has now developed its own body of knowledge. It is a respectable and researched discipline comprising many approaches, techniques and genres, but on the whole professional coaching today is seen as a mainly non-directive practice that enables the coaching client to find their own solutions and develop their potential to more than they had previously thought possible. Essentially, it involves on the side of the coach, doing everything BUT telling!

Non-directive? So what on earth does that mean? How can you help someone without giving them useful tips, without telling them how you would do it, without giving some good, sound advice? How does it play out in real life?

It’s true, it’s difficult to imagine. From grade school we have been taught to have a quick answer for every question the teacher asked, throughout our studies we were required to produce thousands and thousands of answers, views, firm opinions, strong positions. At work we better have an answer, a solution and good advice to give… and fast! We are programmed to TELL people what the best course of action is. Sometimes it seems that our credibility hinges on our ability to tell people what to do. We are expected to KNOW and TELL!

So this is all very well when it comes to technical issues. We are all happy and very grateful to have experts such as accountants, statisticians, pharmacists, bankers, and dentists to tell us what the best course of action is.

But when it comes to our decisions, choices, behaviours, outlooks and feelings, well…… advice is not really helpful, in fact it may even be annoying, and we rarely follow it.

On the other hand, non-directive coaching is helpful, because it helps us to think things out by ourselves more clearly. A non-directive coach does not tell, instead she asks questions.

To illustrate the point, here is a typical, short workplace conversation where one person uses the usual advice-giving, telling style (not coaching) and again with the person using an asking style (coaching).

The second conversation is a composite of real conversations (cases from our coaching students) where one colleague was using a coaching style with another colleague who was distressed about something.

________________________

ADVISING / TELLING STYLE (not coaching)

Mary – I don’t know what to do. Bob is not cooperative, he consistently avoids doing what I ask him to do on the new IT project. I need his support for my work and he’s just not there for me.

Ted – You should talk to him about it.

Mary – I’ve tried. I’ve tried many times, but he just won’t listen.

Ted – Maybe you should be more patient. He’s under a lot of stress now.

Mary – Well, I am a very patient person you know, but this is really too much.

Ted – If I were you, I would talk to him when he’s less likely to be under pressure.

Mary – We’re always under pressure here, all of us, not only him, so I don’t know when I can find such a time.

Ted – When my team were avoiding to do work on our last big project, I found they were insecure about it or didn’t have enough information. Maybe you should spend more time with him explaining things.

Mary – Ok, well, yeah, I guess you’re right.

________________________________

ASKING STYLE (coaching)

Mary – I don’t know what to do. Bob is not cooperative, he consistently avoids doing what I ask him to do on the new IT project. I need his support for my work and he’s just not there for me.

Ted – What have you tried so far?

Mary – Well, I’ve talked to him on several occasions.

Ted – And what are you saying on these occasions? How are you getting your message across?

Mary – Hmmm, well…. actually I only talked to him on two occasions, and both times I was really mad because we were late for a deadline. I was in a hurry and didn’t have much time really.

Ted – When would be a best time to have a conversation with him?

Mary – Well, I guess I could be more patient and wait for the right moment. The best time would be after the management meeting on Fridays. We are all more relaxed then and heading towards the weekend.

Ted – And what will you ask him?

Mary – I’ll ask him what the problem is. Maybe I'll find out what is drawing his attention away from my project.

Ted – And what else?

Mary – Well depending on what he says, I might ask him what he needs to overcome the problem. In fact, I might be able to help.

Ted – So how does that feel?

Mary – Yes, that’s great. It’s a lot clearer now. And I'm feeling less angry.

Ted – Are you set?

Mary – Yes, absolutely. I know what to do now! Thanks!

________________________

In the first conversation, Ted was trying hard to find some good tips to give but his advice elicited responses from Mary that were explanations, or justifications. She wasn’t learning anything new.

In the second conversation, Ted’s questions enabled Mary to think new thoughts, to explore some slightly new perspectives, to open up doors so to speak. She moved from “being stuck” to finding a strategy and renewed energy to resolve her problem. Ted didn’t have to rack his brains to find a solution for her. This is what a short, effective coaching conversation looks like.

So how do you get to the point where you are spontaneously asking effective questions, the right question at the right time so that people can find appropriate solutions for themselves? Coaching involves a complex set of skills and mindsets, and you’ll be glad to know that anyone who really wants to can learn it.

Coaching is a way of communication so there are many ways you can use it in your life:

Learn coaching skills to integrate them as part of your leadership style
Integrate coaching skills into your profession, whatever it may be
Use coaching skills in your personal life to have better quality conversations with family and friends

Pourquoi les entreprises forment leurs managers en compétences de coaching

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 12:44:53 GMT

Pourquoi acquérir des compétences en coaching ?

Le coaching était en grande partie réservé aux cadres exécutifs et supérieurs pour lesquels un coach professionnel externe était embauché pour les aider à progresser dans divers aspects de leur fonction de leadership. Le coaching est une expérience d'apprentissage et de développement exclusive et hautement personnalisée, conduite par les objectifs du client, ce qui explique pourquoi les entreprises étaient disposées à faire l'investissement uniquement pour un nombre choisi d'employés.

Plusieurs recherches sectorielles, y compris ceux publiés par la Fédération Internationale de Coaching ont mesuré les avantages de recevoir un coaching et le retour sur investissement s’avère être excellent, parfois exceptionnel selon la façon dont il est calculé. Les résultats montrent que les employés, à divers niveaux organisationnels, qui se font coacher améliorent les performances et la gestion des affaires, augmentent leur productivité et leur motivation, aiguisent leurs qualifications en résolution de problème, deviennent plus autonomes et proactifs, et développent une attitude globale plus positive qui à son tour influe positivement sur le climat organisationnel.

Compte tenu de tous ces avantages remarquables, les entreprises augmentent la disponibilité du coaching pour un segment plus large de leurs employés en créant des rôles de coachs internes, généralement les professionnels RH qui fournissent des services complets de coaching. Ils forment également les gestionnaires à intégrer les compétences de coaching dans leur style de leadership.

Les caractéristiques des gestionnaires qui coachent

Le coaching par les gestionnaires est très différent de ce que font les coachs professionnels. Premièrement ils n'ont pas de clients de coaching en tant que tels, ils coachent les membres de leur équipe ou d'autres collègues. Deuxièmement, si un coach professionnel n'a pas d'ordre du jour autre que les objectifs du client, un gestionnaire doit équilibrer les objectifs du membre de l'équipe, les objectifs de l’organisation et leurs propres objectifs en tant que personne responsable des résultats de l'équipe. Les gestionnaires doivent également collaborer avec les employés de différentes manières en plus du coaching, selon la situation. Il y a des moments où il est plus approprié d'enseigner, par exemple quand on veut transmettre des compétences techniques, ou donner des directions claires, quand il y a une urgence et qu’une décision rapide est nécessaire.

Une fois qu'ils ont appris les compétences de coaching, les gestionnaires tendent à utiliser la plupart du temps un style de gestion qu’on peut qualifier de « leader coach ». Il y a de bonnes raisons à cela.

Voici trois des plus grands avantages.

1. GAGNER DU TEMPS

Les gestionnaires qui coachent développent les capacités de leurs membres d'équipe, les rendant plus indépendants. En utilisant les techniques de coaching, ils soutiennent leur personnel à apprendre rapidement, trouver leurs propres solutions et résoudre les problèmes plus efficacement. Un gestionnaire qui a tendance à vouloir tout contrôler, qui préfère avoir le monopole sur toutes les réponses, finit par involontairement conditionner ses collaborateurs à s’attendre à des solutions et des directives. Cela lui demandera un grand investissement de temps et d’énergie.

Au lieu de cela, le gestionnaire qui coache facilite l'apprentissage et l'autonomisation des collaborateurs dans leur rôle. Quand les gens se sentent plus compétents, ils deviennent plus autonomes et capables de prendre des responsabilités. Ils avancent, sans avoir à demander constamment des conseils. Cela permet aux gestionnaires qui coachent de gagner beaucoup de temps.

2. AUGMENTER LA PERFORMANCE

Un gestionnaire qui coache se concentre sur ce que les employés peuvent déjà faire et les aide à tirer parti de leurs forces existantes pour atteindre de nouveaux objectifs. Une approche axée sur les forces, plutôt qu’axée sur le déficit, a un impact positif sur le rendement parce que l'accent est mis sur la réalisation des résultats en utilisant les capacités existantes plutôt que repérer les faiblesses.

Il existe généralement différentes façons d'accomplir une tâche et si un employé peut avancer en utilisant ses forces existantes, il produira des résultats plus rapides et meilleurs. L’institut Gallup s’est spécialisé dans la création de cultures d’organisation basées sur la force, dans le monde entier, augmentant la performance des employés à un niveau où les entreprises ont pu atteindre jusqu'à 29% d'augmentation des profits, et une réduction du désengagement des employés à aussi peu que 1%.

3. APPORTER UNE DIMENSION POSITIVE AUX RELATIONS DE TRAVAIL

Le coaching repose sur un certain nombre d'hypothèses qui favorisent un environnement de travail positif, en commençant par un regard favorable sur les personnes et leur potentiel de croissance. Les gestionnaires qui coachent traitent les employés comme des individus et appuient leur développement car ils sont certains que cela est bénéfique pour tout le monde : la personne, l'équipe et l'organisation.

Les gestionnaires qui coachent renforcent les bonnes performances en donnant généreusement des commentaires positifs factuels . Même lorsqu'ils doivent donner un retour négatif, les gestionnaires formés aux compétences en coaching sont en mesure de le livrer de la manière la plus constructive, ce qui le rend acceptable et permet aux employés de trouver leurs propres solutions correctives pour améliorer leur performance.

Apprendre des techniques de coaching développe également des compétences interpersonnelles, telles que l'écoute active, l'empathie et la capacité de construire des relations de confiance. Ainsi, en utilisant une approche de coaching, les gestionnaires apportent inévitablement une touche humaine plus chaleureuse aux relations de travail.

Le coaching est le style de leadership pour le XXIe siècle

En conclusion, les organisations qui adoptent une culture de coaching et forment leurs gestionnaires à montrer des compétences de coaching ont trouvé un style de leadership très efficace qui produit d'excellents résultats de performance tout en améliorant le climat de l’organisation.

La disparition du mode « commande et contrôle » traditionnel a laissé un vide. Les gestionnaires ne sont pas sûrs des comportements de gestion idéale à adopter quotidiennement. De la gestion par objectifs, à des notions vagues de leadership démocratique ou participatif, à la soi-disant organisation horizontale, les gestionnaires sont un peu perdus sur ce qu'ils devraient réellement faire en pratique pour habiliter les employés tout en contrôlant les résultats pour lesquels ils sont tenus responsables.

Développer des compétences en coaching est une façon élégante de résoudre ce dilemme. Les managers qui coachent ont un style de leadership adapté au XXIe siècle et des employées qui s'attendent à être valorisés, habilités et activement impliqués dans le plus grand but de l’organisation pour laquelle ils travaillent.

6 étapes pour accompagner votre équipe virtuelle dans le changement

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 11:23:53 GMT

Si vous êtes nouveau dans la direction d'une équipe virtuelle, avec une équipe dispersée également novice dans le télétravail, vous aurez besoin d'autant de ressources que possible pour vous aider à réussir dans ce nouveau mode d'être avec vos collègues et de coordonner le travail en ligne. Le leadership en temps de crise requiert des compétences techniques qui doivent nécessairement reposer sur une forte capacité à créer et entretenir des relations positives par téléphone ou ordinateur. Les astuces dans cet article sont également utiles si vous retournez progressivement au bureau, moment qui est également semé d'incertitudes.

Vous savez déjà comment organiser le travail, créer des processus efficaces, attribuer des rôles et des tâches. Je me concentrerai donc sur les "soft skills", et en particulier les compétences de coaching qui sont essentielles pour motiver et responsabiliser les collègues à travers le changement, encore plus lorsque l'on travaille sous stress et à distance.

En période de stress, en tant que chef d’équipe, vous pouvez être l’une des rares sources d’encouragement pour vos collègues, alors n’hésitez pas à être positif et solidaire. Parfois, vous devrez également être décisif et fournir une direction dans une grande incertitude. Pour naviguer dans ces différents styles de leadership, vous trouverez utile de vous renforcer avec ces compétences de coaching faciles et pratiques en six étapes.

1. Comprendre comment les gens sont affectés par le changement

Dans la crise pandémique actuelle, le travail à domicile n'est pas le seul changement que vous et votre équipe subissez. Vous pourriez être confronté à des changements multiples, simultanés et parfois choquants, liés à la santé, à la famille, à la sécurité de l'emploi, aux conditions de travail, aux finances, à la vie sociale, le tout aggravé par l'impossibilité de prédire comment les choses se passeront dans un proche avenir et la peur des nouvelles perturbations qui surviennent.

En tant que chef d’équipe, il est important que vous reconnaissiez que le niveau de stress dans votre équipe peut être plus élevé que d’habitude et que chaque individu a des défis différents et des façons uniques de faire face aux changements qu’il vit. Il existe de nombreux modèles de changement, et je trouve que William Bridges incarne élégamment ce concept complexe dans ce qu'il appelle les « transitions », les trois étapes psychologiques que les individus traversent lorsqu'ils vivent le changement.

La première étape, « les Fins » c'est lorsque le changement se produit, c'est le moment où nous laissons quelque chose derrière nous, et cela peut provoquer des sentiments de choc, de perte, de colère, de confusion ou d'anxiété. La « Zone Neutre » est la deuxième étape, une période d’incertitude et de chaos, où nous ne savons pas comment les choses peuvent évoluer. Cette étape est accompagnée de sentiments d’inconfort, d’isolement, de scepticisme et de blocage. Mais c'est aussi une zone fertile d'où émergeront éventuellement de nouvelles idées. La dernière étape, « Nouveau Départs » survient lorsque les gens acceptent le changement et embrassent les nouvelles possibilités qu'il offre.

Au cours de cette pandémie, nous sommes tous encore au cœur d'une période difficile et fluctuante. La plupart des gens sont soit au stade des « Fins » ou, au mieux, dans la « Zone Neutre » dans de nombreux domaines de leur vie. Cela signifie que vos collègues peuvent être anxieux, confus et inquiets pour l'avenir. Comprendre comment les individus vivent le changement vous permettra de comprendre vos propres réactions au changement et de faire preuve d'empathie envers les membres de votre équipe lorsqu'ils naviguent dans le changement. Cela aidera également chacun à devenir proactif malgré les sentiments d'incertitude.

2. Soyez conscient de votre rôle et de l'impact que vous pouvez avoir

Désormais, les chefs d’équipe ne sont pas des psychologues - et cela ne devrait pas être votre rôle - mais ils peuvent être des êtres humains compatissants, ce qui contribue grandement à remonter le moral. Assurez-vous donc de prendre en compte l'état émotionnel que vivent les membres de votre équipe car cela a un impact direct sur leur bien-être, leur engagement, leurs performances et leur productivité. Si vous avez un collègue en grande détresse, référez-le toujours à un professionnel de la santé.

Si votre équipe est suffisamment petite, prenez le temps de faire le point avec chaque personne dans une conversation en tête-à-tête. Vous les aiderez à s'adapter aux nouvelles conditions en reconnaissant que les récents changements au travail peuvent être inconfortables. Le simple fait d’être à l’écoute des préoccupations des gens est un moyen efficace de réduire leur stress et de renforcer la confiance. Lorsque vous travaillez en ligne, il est encore plus important de montrer votre humanité et votre volonté de traverser des moments difficiles avec l'équipe. Si vous dirigez une très grande équipe, réservez une partie de vos réunions en ligne pour discuter de l'impact du changement sur tout le monde.

Avec des individus ou en groupe, utilisez des questions ouvertes et axées sur les solutions pour guider votre conversation. Cela signalera que vous comprenez vos collègues, que vous reconnaissez ce qu'ils vivent et que vous êtes prêt à explorer des solutions. Une approche de coaching ouvre la confiance et renforce la motivation. Votre rôle à ce stade est d'ouvrir un espace de dialogue et d'écouter attentivement avec l'esprit et le cœur afin que vos collègues se sentent entendus. Vous saisirez également cette opportunité pour comprendre leurs besoins et trouver des solutions appropriées dans la mesure du possible.

3. Évitez de perdre du temps

Que vous parliez à un individu ou à un groupe de personnes, vous n’avez pas besoin de passer des heures et des heures là-dessus. Si vous gardez vos conversations structurées, comme dans les exemples ci-dessous, vous irez directement au cœur des problèmes à résoudre. Les gens s'épuisent lorsqu'ils passent beaucoup de temps à se défouler, ils veulent être entendus mais ils apprécient également un changement d'orientation vers des solutions. En tant que leader qui utilise des compétences de coaching, vous pourrez atteindre à la fois un temps d'écoute et un temps pour définir des actions.

Dans tous les cas, le temps que vous investissez dans ce processus sera cent fois plus rentable en termes de confiance que vous générez avec vos collègues, de l'impulsion que vous pouvez donner pour naviguer plus sereinement dans le changement et de l'impact positif sur la performance de l'équipe.

4. Tenez compte du vécu de vos collègues durant un changement

Il est important que vos collègues expriment ce qu’ils ressentent face au changement qu’ils traversent, car cela contribue à réduire le niveau de stress, ou du moins à offrir un moment de soulagement temporaire afin qu’un aperçu de nouvelles perspectives puisse émerger. Cela peut aider les gens à passer d'une phase de « Fin » où ils ressentent le choc du changement, à celle d’une « Zone Neutre » à partir de laquelle observer la situation et peut-être percevoir certains aspects positifs, même minimes. Ou cela peut accélérer la transition vers " Nouveaux Départs " si vous êtes déjà près de cette étape.

Une approche de coaching efficace à ce stade est de « demander plutôt que de dire ». Inviter les gens à réfléchir et à exprimer leurs points de vue, plutôt que de leur donner des tonnes de conseils non sollicités (même s'ils sont bien intentionnés). Poser des questions ouvertes qui invitent à la réflexion est une compétence clé de coaching qui ouvre de nouvelles perspectives. Voici une séquence de questions qui démontrent que vous êtes attentif à l’expérience de votre équipe en période de changement, tout en restant concentré sur les enjeux clés liés à l’évolution des conditions de travail.

Comment vivez-vous les nouvelles modalités de travail ?
Quel est l’aspect le plus difficile ?
De quoi vous inquiétez-vous en ce moment ?
Quels sont les aspects positifs de cette nouvelle façon de travailler ?

Une autre compétence de coaching que vous pouvez utiliser maintenant est d'écouter attentivement. Cela vous oblige à calmer votre esprit et vous concentrer entièrement sur la personne qui parle. Vous serez surpris de constater jusqu’à quel point les gens peuvent ressentir que vous les écoutez attentivement (et aussi quand vous ne le faites pas !), et combien ils apprécient cela.

5. Discutez de leurs besoins et explorez ensemble des solutions

La prochaine étape consiste à comprendre les besoins de l'équipe et à explorer les solutions qui peuvent être apportées. Alors, vous passez d’un moment d’expression de sentiments ou de décharge du trop-plein à un moment d’examen des aspects pratiques qui faciliteront la gestion de la situation.

Soyez prêt à découvrir toutes sortes de besoins qui doivent être satisfaits. Cela dépend en grande partie de la réussite du déploiement du travail virtuel par votre entreprise et du retour au bureau physique. Il peut y avoir des besoins personnels tels que du temps libre pour prendre soin d'un membre de la famille. Ou des besoins qui pourraient être liés à la technologie, au matériel, aux logiciels et à la formation. Vos collègues peuvent avoir besoin de plus d'informations ou de transparence. Ils peuvent avoir besoin de nouveaux processus de travail ou simplement de votre soutien pour traiter avec d'autres départements.

Ouvrez une discussion collaborative et concentrez-vous sur les besoins actuels, et non sur ce qui aurait pu être ou ce qui pourrait être nécessaire un jour dans le futur. Cela donnera aux membres de l'équipe l'occasion d'exprimer leurs besoins immédiats et vous obtiendrez des informations précieuses sur les ajustements que vous pourriez avoir à faire.

Commencez simplement par demander :

De quoi avez-vous besoin maintenant ?

Discutez brièvement des besoins et classez-les immédiatement en 3 groupes selon qu'ils peuvent être satisfaits ou non. Obtenez les commentaires de votre équipe sur les solutions possibles, de sorte que ce soit vraiment un effort de collaboration.

Oui, c'est possible (décidez ensemble des prochaines étapes)
Non, ce n'est pas possible (expliquez pourquoi, obtenez d’autres points de vue de l’équipe)
Je ne sais pas (décidez qui se penchera sur la question, invitez les membres de l'équipe à prendre les devants)

En tant que leader qui coache, donnez aux membres de votre équipe les moyens de s'impliquer dans les prochaines étapes. C’est une excellente occasion de déléguer et de faire en sorte que l’équipe s'approprie les solutions. Pour vous assurer que vous avez tout couvert, à la fin de cette partie de la conversation, donnez le dernier mot à votre équipe en posant une question importante qui pourrait révéler des préoccupations supplémentaires.

De quelles autres manières puis-je vous soutenir ?

6. Observez la réalité pour décider comment travailler ensemble malgré toute l'incertitude

À ce stade, vous avez :

visiblement reconnu que votre équipe traverse des périodes de changement difficiles
créé un espace de dialogue et écouté leurs préoccupations
compris les besoins de votre équipe, dressé une liste des éléments pouvant être réalisés et décidé ensemble des prochaines étapes.

La dernière étape consiste à renforcer les capacités d’adaptation de vos collègues et de vos capacités à faire face au changement et à l’incertitude.

Un aspect important de l’approche coaching est de tirer parti des forces plutôt que d'amplifier les faiblesses. Une stratégie très utile nous vient de l'Enquête Appréciative de David Cooperrider, un modèle de processus positif pour réaliser un changement individuel ou collectif. L'idée est de regarder vers le passé pour découvrir ou redécouvrir des situations dans lesquelles une personne ou une équipe a utilisé ses forces pour surmonter une situation difficile et ensuite modéliser ces forces pour le défi actuel.

Je crois que les êtres humains sont en fait très adaptables et capables de gérer le changement. La vie de chaque personne est rythmée par le changement. Parfois bons, parfois mauvais, parfois voulus, la plupart du temps inattendus, nous gérons le changement depuis le jour de notre naissance, et nous le gérons probablement beaucoup mieux que nous ne le pensons. Utilisez votre talent en tant que leader qui coache pour poser des questions ouvertes qui chercheront les forces face au changement.

Voici quelques exemples :

Quelles autres situations de changement avez-vous / avons-nous vécues ?
Comment avez-vous / avons-nous géré le changement ?
Quelles compétences professionnelles avez-vous / avons-nous utilisées ?
Quelles qualités personnelles avez-vous / avons-nous utilisées ?
Comment pourriez-vous / pourrions-nous utiliser vos / nos compétences et qualités aujourd'hui, dans la situation actuelle ?

Les personnes avec lesquelles vous parlez trouveront toutes sortes de méthodes d'adaptation qu'elles ont utilisées, des compétences techniques, à la méditation ou au sport, aux groupes de discussion et à d'autres méthodologies de travail, aux qualités personnelles telles que la résilience et le courage. Bien sûr, vous seriez parfaitement capable de déployer une longue liste de conseils et astuces sur la façon de vivre en période de changement et d'incertitude, mais en utilisant une approche de coaching « demander plutôt que dire », vous inspirerez les autres à identifier leurs propres forces, pour renouer avec ce qui a déjà fonctionné pour eux individuellement ou en équipe.

Vous montrerez également que vous croyez en leurs capacités à trouver leurs propres solutions. C'est le meilleur moyen d'habiliter les autres à un moment où ils ont le plus besoin de rassembler toutes leurs forces.

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4Q Coaching Model™

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 17:27:10 GMT

Leader Coach Video Tutorials

When someone comes to you with an idea of something they want to do, but they’re still wondering about it, instead of jumping in to give them all sorts of advice, try adopting a coaching posture by asking these 4 questions.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Coaching Mindsets: Growth, Solutions, Strengths

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 16:37:00 GMT

Leader Coach Video Tutorials

Coaching is about having the right supportive mindsets, as well as displaying excellent communication and coaching skills. Adopting a positive, humane, winning, mindset will help you be a better leader coach.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Knowing when to Coach

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 11:34:14 GMT

Knowing when to coach is just as important as knowing how to coach

Coaching is a leadership style

Coaching is not only a skill-set, it’s a leadership style. It’s a hat you can put on when needed and take off when a different leadership approach is needed. It's a non-directive way to release potential, create positive relations and improve performance.

Being a leader coach involves having a certain mindset - open-minded, solution-focused, a positive outlook, and being well-inclined towards others - which underpins their overall attitude at work. Leaders who coach have many hard and soft skills, including the ability to engage in conversations with a coaching style, which is fundamental to energizing for results.

When not to coach

Nonetheless, leaders who coach, don’t coach all the time; they have a situational style of leadership. This means, they adapt their behavior and the way they speak according to the context of the situation at hand and the needs of the people who are involved. Sometimes they might need to be directive, or they might have to teach something, or they might act as a mentor to a colleague.

For example, if you’re a leader who coaches and there is an emergency in your office, you won’t be coaching, you’ll be giving instructions. There’s no need for in-depth exploration of a topic when a clear, fast and helpful directive would be more appropriate.

You also won’t be coaching if your technical expertise is required or when someone needs to understand a process or policy of the company. In this case, it would be a teaching or consulting moment. You would give clear descriptions, explanations and perhaps your advice as an expert.

When to coach

You will, however, use coaching when you want to invite new perspectives, when you want to open a space for team members to discover solutions and make their own proposals, or simply when you want to help someone think through a problem. In these situations it is sufficient to use the basic coaching skills of listening attentively, and asking open-ended, thought-provoking questions to advance the inquiry on the important issue at hand. These skills can be incorporated in your natural behavior, you don't need to have a dedicated, formal coaching session like professional coaches do.

Some examples of when coaching, rather than teaching or advising, would be useful are:

you want to do some strategy-building together with your team members
a colleague is in conflict with someone and they don't know what to do
a team member has a good but vague idea on how to tackle a problem and you want to help them develop it
one of your team has been promoted and they want to adopt a more strategic outlook
your team is stressed by a recent organizational change and you want to help them manage it
you are faced with a new challenge and you have to find the best way to deal with it (use open-ended questions for self-coaching!)

Weaving coaching skills into normal conversations

Leaders sometimes feel obliged to always be the problem-solver and they are tempted to put forth their own ideas as the only way forward. But, as a leader coach, you trust your colleagues' competencies, so you empower them to elaborate their own solutions to problems. This is also a way of encouraging autonomy and creativity, which are both key determinants of motivation.

In practice, leaders who coach assess situations and decide when using a coaching approach would be most productive. This may involve a little bit of planning ahead, but most often a coaching opportunity occurs on the spot, in impromptu conversations with colleagues at work. That's why it's important to develop an instinct for when to use coaching skills naturally, in a way that will be helpful and insightful for your colleagues.

Coaching involves weaving open-ended questions into a natural conversation , to help colleagues explore topics from several vantage points. This can be done in any informal or formal conversational setting. Then you give space to the person or the team to elaborate, to come up with new ideas and an action plan to make the desired changes or improvements.

Here are some examples of coaching questions that might come up in a conversation with a group or an individual:

What’s your / our biggest challenge with this situation?
What do you / we want this to look like 5 years from now?
How important is this?
Which solutions do you think would help?
What haven't you / we tried yet?
What would make a real difference?
What are the next steps you / we need to take?
How can other team members be of help to you?

Quality questions and quality listening

Coaching questions differ from other inquiry questions because the intention is not to get information. Coaching questions have a special quality, they are designed to help a person thinking in different ways, to explore more deeply and find new perspectives.

That's why backward looking questions, looking for what happened, who was responsible and so on, or closed questions that result in a yes or no answer, are not really useful, nor are questions that sound accusatory, and questions that insinuate incompetence.

Leaders who coach don’t just ask effective, mind-opening questions, they are fully present in the conversation and focused on what the other person is saying, rather than being distracted by mentally starting to formulate how they will answer before the person has even finished speaking. Lack of focus and inattentive listening is the source of many misunderstandings and missed opportunities to tap new ideas that may simply have not been noticed. When you have a strong intention of being fully present, you naturally develop a higher quality of listening which goes beyond hearing the details of the spoken word. You become tuned into the other person's intentions, their feelings and the deeper implications of what they are saying.

Conclusion

Developing a coaching mindset can be relatively easy, especially if you are already inclined to being generally positive, empathetic and solution-focused. Learning coaching skills takes determination and consistent practice because it involves adopting new relational and conversational behaviors. Once you've acquired the mindset and the skills, knowing when to coach is just as important as knowing how to coach.

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Leader coach ou Manager coach?

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 20:46:39 GMT

Leader vs Manager Coach

Beaucoup de gens me demandent pourquoi j'appelle notre programme de formation “Leader Coach” tandis que d'autres écoles de coaching se réfèrent plutôt à “Manager Coach”. Je pense que le choix du terme dépend de votre vision du leadership.

La première raison pour laquelle je préfère le terme “Leader Coach” plutôt que “Manager Coach” est que la gestion est associée à s'assurer que les processus fonctionnent correctement, apportant l'ordre, l'organisation et le contrôle. Alors que le leadership est associé au traitement des personnes, à la création d'une vision, à l'instauration de relations de confiance, à la motivation, à l'autonomisation des autres. John Kotter a écrit un document marquant en 1990 appelé "Ce que les leaders font vraiment" sur la différence entre les rôles de leader et de gestionnaire, comment les deux sont nécessaires dans le monde du travail et comment chacun peut devenir compétent dans les deux.

Que font les coachs?

Quand vous regardez ce que font les coachs, en parlant avec les gens, en développant des talents, en responsabilisant les autres et en les aidant à rendre des comptes, c'est beaucoup plus proche du leadership que de la direction. Les compétences requises pour le coaching se chevauchent avec celles d'un leadership efficace, par exemple, l'autogestion et l'intelligence émotionnelle, ou des compétences de communication avancées telles que l'écoute, la réflexion, le questionnement.

Bien sûr, la plupart des professionnels font les deux, un peu de leadership et un peu de gestion, mais quand ils coachent, c'est un aspect distinct de la façon dont ils expriment leur leadership. Dans un certain sens, vous pouvez voir le coaching comme un style de leadership.

Les anciens concepts de leadership

Beaucoup de gens sont encore attachés à un concept précoce de leadership. Les études au début du XXe siècle dépeignent les leaders comme des figures plus grandes que la vie, avec des traits innés spécifiques qui leur ont permis d'avoir une forte influence sur une suite fidèle. Bien que ce modèle soit généralement considéré comme dépassé dans le monde des études de leadership, le mythe du dirigeant super-humain reste dans l'esprit des gens. Il y a une certaine fascination à ce sujet. Il y a une croyance largement répandue que vous avez besoin de caractéristiques spéciales, ou que vous devez avoir une position de haut niveau pour être un leader.

Cela signifie que la plupart des employés hésitent à s'identifier avec le mot «leader», ils pourraient sentir qu'il est prétentieux ou au moins un peu gonflé, ou tout simplement qu'ils n'ont pas le «niveau» ou le «pouvoir» à être un leader. Si c'est votre vision du leadership, alors le terme «Manager Coach» sera ressenti probablement moins menaçant, plus confortable !

Je tiens à me lever contre ces idées parce que je veux encourager tout le monde à reconnaître leurs capacités de leadership, indépendamment de leur position professionnelle. Je pense que tout le monde, les particuliers et les entreprises bénéficieraient de cette reconnaissance du talent.

Le leadership n'est pas une question de hiérarchie

En ligne avec de nombreuses théories de leadership contemporaines, je crois que le leadership n'appartient pas seulement à certaines personnes au sommet d'une hiérarchie. Chacun exprime son leadership à différents moments au travail ou dans la vie en général. Donc, s'il est vrai que certaines personnes ont des responsabilités permanentes en matière de leadership dans le cadre de leur travail, d'autres peuvent être appelées à exprimer leur leadership à des moments donnés, par exemple, si elles doivent mener un projet, ou si elles doivent soudainement mobiliser un certain nombre de collègues pour résoudre un problème urgent. Chacun d'entre nous peut citer un exemple de quelqu'un que nous connaissons qui s’est soudainement élevé à l'occasion, ou qui est très influent sans être un "Boss" classique.

Je me souviens que, dans une entreprise où je travaillais sur le changement de culture, j'ai demandé qui était la personne la plus influente, autre que le PDG. Il s'est avéré que c’était le chef du Service à la clientèle. Ce gestionnaire de ligne était si positif, orienté vers le client et dynamique, qu'elle avait bâti une réputation pour être un “solutionneur” de problèmes. Les cadres supérieurs des entreprises clientes la contacteraient directement pour demander un conseil ou une connexion, et elle trouvait toujours une solution ou sollicitait d'autres collègues pour en trouver une.

Le leadership comprends aussi le coaching

La notion de leader s'est élargie de quelqu'un dans un poste nommé, comme un chef de département, à quelqu'un qui a la capacité d'influencer positivement les autres à prendre des mesures, peut-être juste pour un temps donné, indépendamment de leur position hiérarchique.

Plus important encore, nous savons maintenant que le leadership, y compris la capacité de coacher -qui est une compétence clé du leadership- peut être appris et constamment amélioré !

De nombreuses études montrent que les professionnels qui ont déjà des responsabilités de leadership trouvent que l'apprentissage à coacher les aide énormément à améliorer la qualité de leurs relations au travail, à renforcer leur propre confiance en tant qu'individus qui peuvent vivre en conformité avec leurs valeurs et contribue de manière significative à leur environnement de travail.

Voici ce que Paul A. Stodden, Président du groupe Siemens, cité dans l'ouvrage Make Coaching Work" Clutterbuck & Meggison 2005, dit au sujet de l'impact des professionnels ayant appris à coacher dans leur entreprise.

"Nous avons constaté que la pression continue sur la productivité donne des résultats limités à long terme, tandis que le coaching aide à briser les barrières à la confiance, à gérer une complexité accrue et encourager une culture mutuellement solidaire. De cette façon, il soutient directement le succès de notre entreprise.”

Où que vous en soyez sur votre parcours, j'espère que vous vous sentez confiant d’être déjà connecté avec vos capacités innées de leadership, et que vous puissiez les développer davantage en apprenant à coacher au travail !

Vous trouverez pleins de ressources gratuites sur comment être un leader coach en cliquant ici

Leader Coach or Manager Coach?

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 12:54:00 GMT

Leader vs Manager Coach

Many people ask me why I call our training program Leader Coach while other coaching schools refer to Manager Coach instead. I think the choice of the term depends on what your view of leadership is.

The first reason that I prefer the term “leader coach” rather than “manager coach” is that management is associated with ensuring that processes work properly, bringing order, organizing and controlling. Whereas leadership is associated with dealing with people, creating a vision, establishing trusting relations, motivating, empowering others. John Kotter wrote a ground-breaking paper in 1990 called “What leaders really do” on the difference between the roles of leader and manager, how both are necessary in the working world and how everyone can become proficient in both.

What coaches do

When you look at what coaches do, talking with people, developing talent, empowering others and helping them be accountable, it is much closer to leadership than management. The competencies required for coaching overlap with those of effective leadership, for example, self-management and emotional intelligence, or advanced communications skills such as listening, reflecting, questioning.

Of course, most professionals do both, a bit of leading and a bit of managing, but when they coach it’s a distinct aspect of the way they express their leadership. In a certain sense, you can see coaching as being a leadership style.

Previous concepts of leadership

Many people are still attached to an early concept of leadership. The studies at the beginning of the 20th century portrayed leaders as being greater-than-life figures, with specific innate traits that enabled them to have a strong influence on a loyal following. Although this model is generally considered outdated in the world of leadership studies, the myth of the super-human leader remains in the back of people’s minds. It has a certain fascination about it. There’s a widely-held assumption that you need special characteristics, or you must have a high-level position to be a leader.

This means that most employees are reluctant to identify with the word “leader”, they might feel it is pretentious or at least a bit inflated, or simply that they don’t have the “level” or “power” to be a leader. If this is your view of leadership, then the term “manager coach” probably feels less threatening, more comfortable!

I like to push back against this because I want to encourage everyone to recognize their leadership capabilities, irrespective of their professional position. I think everyone, individuals, and companies would benefit from this recognition of talent.

Leadership is not a hierarchical thing

In line with many contemporary leadership theories, I believe that leadership does not belong only to some people at the top of a hierarchy. Everyone expresses leadership at different moments at work or in life in general. So, while it’s true that some people have ongoing leadership responsibilities as part of their job, others may be called upon to express their leadership at given moments, for example, if they have to lead a project, or if they suddenly have to mobilize a number of colleagues to solve an urgent problem. All of us can cite an example of someone we know who suddenly rose up to the occasion, or who is highly influential without being a classical “boss”.

I remember in a company where I was working on culture change, I asked who the most influential person was, other than the CEO. It turned out to be the head of the client-care desk. This line-manager was so positive, client-oriented and dynamic, that she had built a reputation for being a problem-solver. Senior executives from client companies would contact her directly to ask for a tip or a connection, and she would always find a solution or get other colleagues to find one.

Leadership includes coaching

The notion of leader has expanded from someone in an appointed position, like a chief of a department, to someone who has the ability to positively influence others to take action, maybe just for a given time, irrespective of their hierarchical position.

Most importantly we now know that leadership, including the ability to coach – which is a key leadership skill – can be learned and constantly improved upon!

Many studies show that professionals who already have leadership responsibilities find that learning how to coach helps them enormously to improve the quality of their relations at work, to boost their own confidence as individuals who can live in accordance with their values and contribute meaningfully to their work environment.

Here’s what Paul A. Stodden, Group President of Siemens, cited in Making Coaching Work (Clutterbuck & Meggison, 2005) , says about the impact of professionals having learned to coach in their company.

“We have experienced that continuous pressure on hard factors produces limited long-term results, while coaching helps break down barriers to trust and to manage increased complexity as well as encouraging a mutually supportive culture. In this way, it directly supports our business success. ”

Wherever you are on your journey, I hope you feel confident that you are already connected with your innate leadership capabilities, and that you can develop them further by learning how to coach at work!

Are you ready to step up your leadership presence and transform stressful workplace situations ?

Start by getting familiar with the topic with our free resources at Learn How to Coach

6 steps to support your virtual team through change

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 15:57:24 GMT

If you’re new to leading a virtual team, with a dispersed team also new to telecommuting, you will need as many resources as possible to help you succeed in this new mode of being with your colleagues and coordinating work online. Leadership in times of crisis requires technical skills which must necessarily rest on a strong ability to create and maintain positive relations over a phone or computer. The tips in this post are also useful if you are gradually returning to the office, a moment which is also fraught with uncertainty.

You already know how to organize work, create effective business processes, assign roles and tasks. I will therefore focus on the soft skills, and in particular the coaching skills that are key to motivating and empowering colleagues through change, even more so when working under stress and at a distance.

In times of stress, as team leader you might be one of the few sources of encouragement for your colleagues, so don’t hesitate to be positive and supportive. At times you will also have to be decisive and provide direction amidst much uncertainty. To navigate these different leadership styles, you will find it useful to empower yourself with these easy and practical coaching skills in six steps.

1. Understand how people are affected by change

In the current pandemic crisis, working from home is not the only change that you and your team are experiencing. You might be dealing with multiple, concurrent and sometimes shocking changes, related to health, family, job security, working conditions, finances, social life, all compounded by an impossibility to predict how things will go in the near future and the fear of new disruptions arising.

As a team leader it’s important for you to acknowledge that the stress level in your team might be higher than usual and that each individual has different challen ges and unique ways of coping with the changes they’re experiencing.

There are many models about change, and I find that William Bridges encapsulates this complex concept elegantly in what he calls “Transitions”, the three psychological stages that individuals go through as they experience change.

The first stage, “Endings” is when the change occurs, it’s the moment when we leave something behind, and it may cause feelings of shock, loss, anger, confusion or anxiety. The “Neutral Zone” is the second stage, a time of incertitude and chaos, when we’re not sure about how things may turn out, accompanied by feelings of discomfort, isolation, skepticism and feeling stuck. However it is also a fertile zone from which new ideas will eventually emerge. The last stage, “New Beginnings” occurs when people come to terms with the change and embrace the new possibilities that it offers.

During this pandemic we are all still in very midst of a difficult and fluctuating period. Most people are either at the “Endings” stage or at best, in the “Neutral Zone” in many areas of their life. This means that your colleagues could be experiencing anxiety, confusion and worry about the future.

Understanding how individuals experience change will enable you to understand your own reactions to change and exhibit empathy towards your team members as they navigate through change. This will also help everyone to become proactive in spite of the feelings of uncertainty.

2. Understand your role and the impact you can have

Now team leaders are not psychologists – and that shouldn’t be your role – but they can be compassionate human beings, which goes a long way to boosting morale. So make sure that you take into account the emotional state that your team members are experiencing as this has a direct impact on their well-being, engagement, performance and productivity. If you have a colleague in extreme distress, always refer them to a health professional.

If your team is small enough, take the time to check-in with each person in a one-to-one conversation. You will help them adapt to the new conditions by acknowledging that the recent changes at work may be uncomfortable. The simple fact of listening to people’s concerns is a powerful way of reducing their stress and building trust. When working online, it’s even more important to show your humanity and willingness to navigate through difficult times together with the team. If you’re leading a very large team, reserve a part of your online meetings to discuss how the change is affecting everyone.

With individuals, or in a group setting, use open-ended, solution-focused questions to guide your conversation. This will signal that you understand your colleagues, you acknowledge what they’re going through and you’re willing to explore solutions. A coaching approach opens up trust and reinforces motivation.

Your role at this stage is to open a space for dialogue and to listen carefully with mind and heart so that your colleagues feel heard. You will also seize this opportunity to understand their needs and find appropriate solutions as far as possible.

3. Avoid wasting time

Whether you’re talking with an individual, or to a group of people, you need not spend hours and hours on this. If you keep your conversations structured, as in the examples below, you will go directly to the core of the issues that need to be addressed. People get worn out when spending a long time just venting, they want to be heard but they also appreciate a shift in focus towards solutions. As an leader who uses coaching skills you will be able to achieve both a time for listening and a time for defining actions.

In all cases, the time you invest in this process will pay off a hundred times in terms of the trust you generate with your colleagues, the impetus you can give to navigating change more serenely and the positive impact on team performance.

4. Acknowledge people’s experience of change

It’s important for your colleagues to express how they feel about the change they’re going through as this contributes to decreasing the stress level, or at least to providing a temporary moment of relief so that a glimpse of new perspectives can emerge. It can help people transition from an “Endings” phase of feeling the shock of change, to a “Neutral Zone” from which to observe the situation and perhaps perceive some positive aspects, however small. Or it may speed up the transition to “New beginnings” if you’re already near that stage.

An effective coaching approach at this stage is to " ask rather than tell". To invite people to reflect and express their views, rather than giving them tons of unsolicited (even if well-meaning) advice. Asking open-ended questions that invite reflection is a key coaching skill that opens up new perspectives.

Here are is a sequence of questions that demonstrate that you’re attentive to your team’s experience in times of change, while staying focused on the key issues around the changing work conditions.

How are you experiencing the new work arrangements?

What’s the most difficult aspect?

What are you worried about at this moment?

What are the positive aspects of this new way of working?

Another coaching skill that you can apply now is to listen carefully. That requires you to still your mind and focus entirely on the person who is speaking. You will be surprised to what extent people can actually feel when you are listening to them attentively (and also when you’re not!), and how much they appreciate it.

5. Discuss their needs and explore solutions together

The next step is to understand the needs in the team and explore solutions that can be brought. So now you’re moving from a moment for expressing feelings or venting, to a time for looking at the practical aspects that will make the situation easier to manage.

Be prepared to discover all sorts of needs that have to be met. A lot of it depends on how successfully your company has deployed virtual work and the return the physical office. There may be personal needs such as time off to take care of a family member. Or needs that might relate to technology, hardware, software and training. Your colleagues might need more information or transparency. They may need new work processes or simply your support to deal with other departments.

Open a collaborative discussion and focus on current needs, not what might have been or what may be necessary one day in the future. It will give team members the opportunity to express their immediate needs and you will gain invaluable information on adjustments you might have to make. Start simply by asking:

What do you need right now ?

Briefly discuss the needs and immediately categorize them into 3 groups depending on whether they can be met or not. Get input from your team on possible solutions, so that it is really a collaborative effort.

Yes, it’s possible (decide the next steps together)
No, it’s not possible (explain why, get other perspectives from the team)
Don’t know (decide who will look into it, invite team members to take the lead)

As a leader who coaches, empower your team members to be involved in taking the next steps. It’s a great opportunity to delegate and get the team to take ownership of the solutions.

To make sure that you’ve covered everything, at the end of this part of the conversation give your team the last word by asking an important question that might unveil additional concerns.

In what other ways can I support you?

6. Reality check – determine how to work together in spite of all the uncertainty

At this point you have:

visibly recognized that your team are going through difficult times of change
created a space for dialogue and listened to their concerns
understood your team’s needs, made a list of what items can be fulfilled and decided together on next steps.

The last step is to reinforce your colleagues’ and your coping capabilities to face change and uncertainty.

An important aspect of having a coaching approach is to leverage strengths rather than amplify weaknesses. A very useful strategy comes to us from David Cooperrider's Appreciative Inquiry, a positive process model for achieving individual or group change. The idea is to look to the past to discover, or re-discover situations in which a person or a team used strengths to overcome a difficult situation and then model those strengths for the present challenge.

I believe that human beings are actually very adaptable and proficient at handling change. Every person’s life is punctuated by change. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes wanted, most of the time unexpected, we’ve been handling change since the day we were born, and we’re probably much better at managing it than we think.

Use your talent as a leader who coaches to ask open-ended questions that will look for strengths in the face of change. Here are some examples:

What other situations of change have you/we experienced?
How did you/we handle the change?
What professional skills did you/we use?
What personal qualities did you/we use?
How could you use your skills and qualities today, in the current situation?

The people you are talking with will come up with all sorts of coping methods they have used, from technical competences, to meditation or sports, to focus groups and other work methodologies, to personal qualities such as resilience and courage.

Of course you would be perfectly capable of rolling out a long list of advice and tips on how to live in times of change and uncertainty, but by using a coaching “ ask rather than tell ” approach, you will inspire others to identify their own strengths, to reconnect with what has already worked for them individually or as a team.

You will also show that you believe in their ability to find their own solutions, and really there’s no better way to empower others at a time when they most need to muster up all the strength they can.

Author: Saba Imru-Mathieu, MA, PCC

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So many books on coaching! What to read?

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

There are so many books about coaching and it’s quite hard to navigate through all the titles to find what really matches your needs. I can’t claim to have read everything there is to read about coaching, but here are a few tips from my bookshelf.

If you are new to coaching, or just curious to know what all the buzz is about, I would suggest these two introductory books.

Coaching for Performance, Growing human potential and purpose , by Sir John Whitmore, one of the pioneers of coaching in the UK, was first published in 1990 at a time when there were not many books on coaching, and research in the field was still scarce. It is written from a practitioner’s perspective and has the merit of having introduced coaching as a management style that could be used to transform workplaces into values-driven and more humane enterprises. Sir John explained the nature and process of coaching, and popularized the now famous GROW model which was initially developed by Graham Alexander a decade before.

How coaching works , by Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages is a very good overview of coaching, where it comes from and how it developed into a vastly popular profession. The authors present the history of coaching, portraying the key players in the US and in Europe who were at the rise of this new profession starting from the 1970s, and they note the social and environmental factors that enabled the emergence of coaching in the 20th century. They describe the various multidisciplinary influences on coaching and describe some of the most well known approaches, such as integral coaching, ontological coaching and NLP, as well as presenting their own integrated model. A very good read that familiarizes you with the profession.

If you are a coaching professional, and are looking for specialist texts, I would recommend these research-based books that provide sound knowledge and practical models of coaching that you can use immediately.

Leadership Coaching, Working with leaders to develop elite performance, edited by Jonathan Passmore is a must-have on your bookshelf if you work with executives and senior officials. This collection of contributions by eminent scholars and practitioners covers all the key topics of leadership coaching, such as authenticity, emotional intelligence, derailing leadership and transformational leadership. The book presents research-based techniques and models that will help you to develop leaders in many different contexts, from strategy coaching to working with political leaders or global teams.

Group and Team Coaching: The Essential Guide , by Christine Thornton is really a treasure trove of information, knowledge and practical guidelines on how to coach groups and teams. The author unbundles the processes of group dynamics and how these play out in a coaching situation. She also explores the life of groups from a systems perspective giving plenty of tips on how to work within complex organizational environments. Lastly, she gives guidance on how to tackle problem behavior in group settings. I found it to be an excellent, highly practical read, based on solid research.

Cognitive Behavioural Coaching in Practice , edited by Michael Neenan and Stephen Palmer presents a theoretical model that aims at understanding and changing inner blockages, together with lots of tools to address various coaching topics, for example building resilience, managing stress, reinforcing self-esteem and enhancing performance. The authors present many vignettes and sample coaching dialogues to illustrate their models. Each chapter ends with a long list of references if you want to read further on the subject.

Tales for Coaching, Using Stories and Metaphors with Individuals and Small Groups , by Margaret Parkin. The first part of the book presents the history, purpose and benefits of story-telling and how these can have a transformative effect on how coaching clients develop a new narrative about their situation. The second part is a collection of poems and stories that you can readily use or adapt in your practice. It is an excellent resource for both corporate and life coaches.

Related videos: Meet my Books Video Series

Happy reading!

I would love to hear back from you if read these books, or if you have any other books on coaching that you’d like to recommend.

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Empathy, with Dana L. Walden

saba.imru@gmail.com (Saba Imru) — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Dana L. Walden tells us about empathy, what it is, how to develop it easily and the impact it has on the workplace.

This webinar is hosted by Saba Imru-Mathieu

Something really easy you can do to be a better leader at work

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

The simplest of things

Sometimes when running leadership development programs we teach the simplest of things. We find ourselves resuscitating fundamental knowledge that people already have within themselves at a deep, human level but which somehow got buried in the desert of organisational life.

Something really easy you can do to awaken the leader within you !

E ffort: 3 extra minutes of your time

Requirement: sincerity

Benefit 1: connect with others at a human level

Benefit 2: develop warm and trusting relations

Benefit 3: be a nice person (“nice” is neither a weakness nor a derogatory adjective)

Benefit 4: be likeable (essential for a leader who wants to positively influence others)

Method (what to do)

Ask a sincere”How are you?” when running into a colleague, and expand on it.

Method (how to say it)

Smile, care, give time for a response and listen to the response (all of it).

EXAMPLE

You: Hi Dave, how are you today?

Dave: Fine thanks.

You: And how are the kids doing? (or anyone / anything else the person cares about, e.g. the person’s gardening, a golf tournament, a project at work)

Dave: Well actually they’re fine, the youngest is…… and the eldest……. (Since you've shown interest, people are glad to give a bit of details. Fine, welcome the details, they'll help you get to know your colleague better.)

You: Give an appropriate response acknowledging what the person said (That’s wonderful, or I’m sorry to hear that). Engage in a brief exchange if it’s appropriate, then wish them well (Keep it up, or I hope it gets better). Say goodbye and wish them a nice day.

That’s it. It’s as simple as that.

Do this regularly.

This is what successful leaders do. They sincerely care about the people around them and they demonstrate it in the simplest of ways. In turn people like and trust them, and more importantly, they are willing to follow them and make efforts to achieve common goals. Remember that the most sophisticated strategies cannot be realized unless there is engagement by those whohave to implement them, and people won’t engage fully unless they feel recognized as a human being.

Beware of the mental models that might undermine your aptitude to leadership and influence (but that you can change!)

Thinking that you are too busy to demonstrate sincere concern for your colleagues
Thinking that you will look feeble
Thinking that at work you don’t need to care about people to get the job done
Thinking that showing that you care about your people is indiscreet or intrusive
Thinking that being nice is dumb

Oh, and by the way, if you just can’t bring yourself to sincerely care about others at work, forget about being an effective leader.

What is Personal Development?

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

What does the term “personal development” mean for you?

Some people associate it with study and learning, for others it’s about acquiring new practical skills and for others still it evokes a quest for fulfillment or a spiritual journey. It is perhaps all of these, and more. Whatever the perspective, each reveals a common fundamental assumption that people can grow, that through deliberate effort, we can cultivate our basic qualities, develop our talent and learn a huge amount of things at any age. This is what Dr Carol Dweck, a leading scholar in developmental psychology, calls a “Growth Mindset” as opposed to a “Fixed Mindset” which supports the belief that intelligence is static and that once you have grown into adulthood, you are stuck with whatever skills you have, with little hope of significant improvement.

Self-awareness

Personal development starts with a keen interest in knowing oneself and understanding our own behaviour. If more people were self-aware, instead of functioning on automatic pilot, we might have more peaceful workplaces and more serene homes.

The saying “know thyself” is frequently attributed to Socrates, although other Greek philosophers such as Thales and Pythagoras also held this precept. The importance of knowing oneself as a precondition for knowing the universe and greater truths has been vastly appreciated from antiquity up to modern philosophy. Many Eastern cultures encourage the path of self-realization, the knowledge of the self through direct experience. Today, we refer to this as self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a thorough knowledge of oneself; how we function internally, why we do what we do and how we relate to others. It also implies the ability to change and grow, to manage our thoughts and behavior so that they are beneficial to our professional and personal life, and to others.

Although the expression “self-awareness” may appear to be somewhat esoteric, it actually describes some very concrete skills that are accessible to everyone. The only pre-requisite towards gaining self-awareness is the desire to do so. Many unexpected aspects of ourselves are revealed through just a bit of introspection and self-observation.

Beliefs

For example, by taking the time to make a list of all the things you hold as truths, rules or realities, you will come up with a comprehensive (and sometimes surprising) catalogue of your beliefs. Your beliefs are important because they determine your thoughts and behavior. Complete your list, then answer these questions:

Which of these beliefs are useful and sustaining?
Which of these can you discard?
What new beliefs can you adopt that will empower you?

Inner dialogue

Inner dialogue is another important aspect of self-awareness. We are constantly having a conversation with ourselves. Spend a few days carefully listening to yourself. Pay attention to all the little words and expressions that you whisper in your mind. You’ll be surprised at what you hear! Then answer these questions:

What do you say to yourself all day long?
What phrases do you repeat over and over again
Are you nice to yourself? Strict? Scolding? Encouraging? Lamenting?

You can always improve on the words that you use in your mind. Any limiting words or phrase can be replaced by more resourceful ones. For example, “I’ll never make it” can be replaced by “I’ll make it this time”.

In what ways could you improve the language of your inner dialogue starting today?

Be aware of what you say and how you say it

You may also want to be more aware of what you say to others and especially, how you say it. Observe yourself communicating in specific circumstances.

What is the tone of your voice? What is your body language?
What is the quality of your language.... constructive..... indifferent.... sarcastic..... critical.... humorous...... helpful?
How do you think you make others feel?

This exercise will give you an insight into how you impact other people by your words. Perhaps you will realize that you want to improve your communication skills at work, the way you talk to your colleagues or clients. Or maybe you might discover that there’s room for improvement in the way you communicate with your family.

Personal Development in the Work Place

Personal development is extremely important in the workplace for the following reasons:

By increasing your self-awareness, you will have a better understanding about how you interact and react to others. This will result in improved interpersonal communication.
You will become more aware of what triggers your work-related stress and be able to implement tools to manage that stress.
You will realize what are the conditions under which you perform the best, and can try to replicate these.
You can learn what skill gaps you may have and create a learning action-plan to fill these gaps.
You will have better self-management and more strategic approach to developing your career.
Through enhanced self-awareness and self-management you will improve your leadership and your ability to influence others positively.

You can guide yourself

The path to self-awareness does not require permanent self-contemplation! It just means that once in a while, you take time for yourself to look at what is really important and determine what you can do to move yourself forward. Professionals can help you with strategies and techniques for gaining self-awareness however, there is only one person who detains all information about yourself and that is you. You speak and hear your inner dialogue. You are the owner of your memories and the master of your wishes. You know what you like and don’t like. You know when something feels right or wrong. You remember your past, interpret your present and create your future. It is all within YOU. You just need to tune in.

Change! Are you facing unknown territory?

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 22:00:00 GMT

I guess this is a rhetorical question nowadays. Aren’t we all constantly facing unknown territory? Students don’t know if what they are learning now will be useful the day they hit the market looking for employment. The markets is so volatile that those who do have a job, may well ask themselves for how long. Managers don’t really know what the long-term future holds for them, for their team, for their company. Parents cannot fathom what the world will look like for their children when they grow up, meteorologists can’t even tell us if our city will still be above water 20 years from now, and alas – the greatest of all uncertainties – our own ultimate finiteness makes all long-term planning more of an exercise in wishful thinking than anything else.

Perhaps the fear of change is just a modern day invention, an expression of the angst of advanced economies that would like to – understandably – remain unaffected by the vicissitudes of an unpredictable universe.

The ability to live without knowing the future and to embrace unexpected change are key capabilities that mankind already mastered, a very long time ago! It is this flexibility is that got us here.

From caveman to Wall Street analyst, no one has yet been able to unfailingly predict the availability of game in the bush, nor the course of stocks on the market. The natural state of things is to not know the future. Since the dawn of time we live with this existential ignorance. Humans have dealt as gracefully as possible with the ineluctable reality of constant change and facing the unknown until the modern times, when we it seems we have strangely lost this ability. Today we are afraid of change, entering unknown territory is a source of inexplicable and unbearable dread, rather than being the normal course of events.

Uncertainty and change are not a new phenomena. The complexity and unpredictability that we are experiencing today are actually nothing new, they’ve always been there. The universe is complex, human life is complex and nothing has ever been written in rock.

Despite the buzz about how scary change is, as a species we have always succeeded in navigating changing conditions. We have demonstrated resilience and creativity even in the most adverse situations.

That people resist change is a myth, humans are constantly adjusting to life’s surprises!

So let’s manage our fears, relax and go boldly into the unknown, like our ancestors, to discover the treasures that life has to offer !

3 Leadership behaviours for everyone

Sun, 31 May 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Leadership is something we all express in our lives, most often without realizing it

When was the last time you took the initiative to organize an event at work, or for your family? You probably had to harness the help of other people and find creative solutions to any hurdles you faced. Maybe you had to make a risky choice, or calm down an argument or convince someone that it was worthwhile to make an effort. You probably took the time to acknowledge and thank those who helped you. There’s a good chance that you made new friends in the process. These behaviors all derive from your innate leadership capability, and if you cultivate them consciously, you can grow them into a battery of powerful skills with which to advance in life and at work.

Here are three essential leadership skills that we can easily put into practice more deliberately from today.

1. If there’s a problem, look for a solution

Being solution-focused is not something that we automatically turn to. It is very tempting, when facing a problem, to spend an excessive amount of time hand-wringing, analyzing what's going wrong, finding who’s to blame and perhaps wallowing in self-pity. As part of our survival instinct we humans are hard-wired to notice the negative, spot possible dangers, dissect problems and dwell on their consequences.

We know from cognitive psychology that people process negative information more thoroughly and for a longer period than they would positive information. Simply said, a problem is a magnet for our attention. While the negative feelings that emerge from observing a problem may initially provide an impetus to resolve it, the downside is that if we focus too long on the problem, we risk causing a prolonged high stress level within ourselves, which in turn hampers optimal cognitive performance. Yes, we think less clearly when we’re stressed out so it’s not really the best place to be for effective problem-solving.

Expressing leadership when facing a problem requires being decisive. It means analyzing the problem thoroughly but quickly and then mobilizing all our energy to find a solution and move on. There is no shortage of next problems that might come our way in life, so it’s in our interest to develop a strong solution-focus and a grit for problem-solving.

2. If someone is angry, listen to them

An angry person makes us cringe! The first instinct is to get out of their way and if that’s not possible, the second strategy is to try and silence them. But anger doesn’t go away that easily if you try to repress it. Have you ever tried telling an angry person to calm down? It doesn’ t usually go down very well! There’s a reason for this, anger is often a sign that someone has something important (to them anyway) to express. It may be frustration, disappointment, outrage. You might think it is justified or not, but whatever it may be, it reflects that something has not been heard under normal circumstances so now the angry person needs to “shout” it out.

Expressing leadership in such situations implies having a certain degree of self-control to weather the storm. Give a clear signal to the angry person that you are willing to listen to their woes (not forever though!). Once they’ve done some venting, ask them what they would like, how they want the situation to evolve. You’ll be surprised how a bit of good, sincere listening can quell a fury. Sincere, open listening creates the conditions for the angry person to calm down and start thinking about how to move on.

3. If you don’t know what to do, ask

“I don’t know” can be a hard phrase to say. Whether it’s at school or at home and especially in corporate life, where there is a huge pressure on people to unfailingly come up with an answer to everything, finding yourself in situation where you don’t know what to do might feel very uncomfortable. And asking for help or advice might seem even more scary. Many people are reluctant to admit they don’t know something for fear of being seen as incompetent.

But actually, there is great strength (and honesty) in displaying some vulnerability. In the last two decades new leadership models have emerged arguing for more authenticity and higher levels of transparency as essential elements for building the trusting relations that are needed to succeed in any enterprise where more than one person is involved. You’re far better off admitting that you don’t know, rather than pretending that you do because people can tell if you’re uncertain, vacillating or simply waffling about something. It’s a bit like the story of the Emperor’s clothes! Instead, people will respect you deeply if you are candid and humble, and they will trust you all the more for it. Asking for help or advice when you don’t know also makes sense in terms of leveraging the collective intelligence of the people around you which often results in a better solution than you could have come up with on your own.

In conclusion....

mastering these three skills will help you express your leadership in any situation, at work or at home, whether you supervise other people or not. You will become solution-focused rather than getting stuck when difficulties arise. You will manage conflict with calm and assurance. You will show up as authentic and someone who can be trusted.

Leadership is not really about being somebody's boss, it's about the way you behave when facing the challenges of life everyday at home and at work. It's about living up to your values and letting your natural bravery guide you in difficult moments.

Coaching in the workplace helping UN staff

Sun, 31 May 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Saba was interviewed for the UN Special magazine by V. Riemer of WHO after conducting several workshops on coaching skills and coaching culture

Here are some extracts

“Often when we think of a coach, what comes to mind is an athletics, tennis, basketball or football coach developing young athletes to perform to their full potential in winning teams. But a new type of coaching is entering the workplace with many similarities, but some key differences too. This kind of coaching is all about developing individuals in their personal and professional lives, working with people to identify, target, and plan for performance improvement throughout their careers.”

“During the last quarter of 2017, Saba was invited by the WHO Human Resources Department (Global Talent Management team) to conduct a series of workshops to provide staff with a better understanding of coaching concepts, with a view to adopting such a posture in their professional environment. It was part of the overall objective of introducing a coaching culture in WHO, where more open communication and trusting relationships are formed among staff with the ultimate goal of generating a more empowered and motivated attitude in staff members.”

Saba often hears that “command and control’ is out, it no longer works. “Today, employees expect to be respected and to experience work satisfaction. But few know what to do instead of commanding! Is it just about being nice? Some people are afraid of becoming “too nice”. How can you be a democratic leader and still keep control? I believe that learning coaching skills is the answer because the methodology itself unravels the complexities around motivating employees, creating accountability, helping them develop”.

"She recognises that coaching in the workplace can be a difficult skill for managers to master as most managers are used to directing work rather than achieving it through employee development. She sees coaching as a conversation driven by strategic inquiry that stimulates novel thinking. “Conversing is something that anyone can do. By asking questions, we stimulate reflection and by asking good questions we cause entirely new avenues of thought to open up” she explained. The role of the coaching manager is to enable the supervisee to find solutions for themselves, so that they become more effective, more accountable and more satisfied."

“By asking questions, we stimulate reflection and by asking good questions we cause entirely new avenues of thought to open up” she explained. The role of the coaching manager is to enable the supervisee to find solutions for themselves so that they become more effective, more accountable and more satisfied. The goal is to help employees recognize opportunities for improvement by asking probing, and often tough, questions, challenging the person to think about their goals as well as how to achieve them. When managers discover that a consequence of coaching is empowering their staff, they free their time from micro-managing to focus on strategic thinking instead”

Read the whole article in the UN Special Magazine, March 2018, pages 31-32.

Evidence-based Coaching, Dianne Stober, Anthony Grant

Sun, 31 May 2020 21:38:55 GMT

The Evidence Based Coaching Handbook brings together a wide number of research-based approaches, grounded in the behavioural sciences, that can be used for executive and personal coaching. The practical application of each approach is illustrated through case studies.

The Coaching Manager, James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub

Thu, 28 May 2020 22:00:00 GMT

James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub wrote one of the first comprehensive books on the role of managers who coach, taking the reader step by step into adopting this new and empowering leadership style, that develops talent and enables top performance.

Coach your boss for better results!

Wed, 27 May 2020 22:00:00 GMT

Coaching is not about hierarchies, anyone can coach anyone, it's a way of communicating for best results

Most people who attend my workshops know that I believe coaching is not only reserved for managers who coach their direct reports. Coaching shouldn’t be a hierarchical privilege; not at all. Coaching is a communication style that everyone can adopt, it’s an attitude, it’s a way of conversing with others so that they can develop or clarify their ideas, motivations and actions.

So, given this premise, you can absolutely coach your boss in a variety of situations.

In this post I'll show you how to coach your boss to get clarity on a project they've assigned to you.

1. Coach with open-ended questions

A foundation coaching skill is the ability to ask open-ended questions. These can help you have a very fruitful conversations with your boss. They enable you to gain clarity, get additional information and in general dispel any hidden and maybe contradictory assumptions that you or your boss may have about how a job should be done.

For example, imagine you have been given an assignment and it’s not very clear. Often, we receive rush assignments in the workplace like… get this done, do this, solve that, and we don’t get enough details around the issue. We might make assumptions and refrain from asking clarifying questions. We may end up wasting a lot of time going in the wrong direction. So, you’re better off having a short conversation with your boss, coaching them to understand what they want, what is really at stake, and how it may affect other projects you have going.

2. Clarify the outcomes

You can start by asking your boss a very simple but powerful question: “I have this project now, but what is the outcome that you really want?” You might be surprised to receive many more details then you were previously given. This simple question will give your boss the opportunity to be much more specific about the ideal outcome for themselves and for the organization.

3. Key players and context

The next question you might ask is, “Who else is involved?” You want to get an idea of what other departments, clients, and stakeholders may be affected by this project. You also need to understand the wider context, for example who the external stakeholders are, or the strategic importance of the project. Sometimes you’re cooped up in your corner doing the task but you don’t have the complete picture, so, don’t forget to ask “What is the larger context of this task?”

4. Resources

Then you might ask for support. For instance, “What help can you get me from other departments?” Or, “How will we find the funding I need for this?” Make sure that you involve your boss in providing you the resources you need to complete the project successfully. They are likely to have access to key people in their network to your support project or solve specific problems that are beyond your direct influence. It's the role of your boss to find solutions to organizational or funding hurdles, so don't deprive them of the opportunity to support you, just ask!

5. Deadline

You will also need to clarify the deadlines. If the timeline is very short and you have many other projects lined up, it may not be possible for you to take on a new task without putting something else on hold. This is an area where bosses are often reluctant to engage in. They would just like you to deliver everything on time, however many new projects get piled up because they might be under pressure from clients or their board.

Don’t be shy to ask questions to make sure the priorities are clear and be ready to negotiate deadlines. You can start with a simple query such as “When is this project due?” and follow-up with “How flexible are you in this deadline?” or “How shall we prioritize with the other ‘urgent’ projects?” Since you are on the implementing side, you probably have a better idea than your boss on what is actually feasible, so make their life easy by proposing shifts in deadlines, or ideas on sharing of resources.

6. Ask questions, engage in dialogue, repeat!

These are valid and legitimate questions whatever your role is, whether you are a project manager, an IT developer, an executive assistant, or a sales-person. Don’t assume that things are clear. The only way to avoid misunderstandings is to have a clear and open dialogue. So make sure to you ask open-ended questions to clarify everything that your boss wants in terms of output and execution on any project.

Open-ended questions are non-threatening and they help create an atmosphere of curious inquiry. They are ideal for brain-storming, inviting people to express their views and engaging in dialogue, rather than arguing or convincing at all costs.

So go ahead and coach your boss for better results for everyone!

Coaching to help a colleague who has a conflict

Tue, 19 May 2020 12:58:22 GMT

Leader Coach Video Tutorials

When you want to help a colleague or a team member who is having a conflict with someone else, you can use your coaching skills to help them clarify what is upsetting them, and what kind of outcome they want to see. You'll need to listen empathically, be ready to give them some time to vent, and ask open-ended questions that will help them see beyond their first reactions to the conflict.

Coaching to Manage Conflict at Work

Sat, 16 May 2020 22:20:11 GMT

Coaching can help to understand the real nature of a conflict. By using self-coaching you can bring down your emotional turmoil enough to reflect at what you want to obtain and how you want to resolve the conflict situation you are in.

The Oxford Book of Work, Keith Thomas

Sat, 16 May 2020 12:34:59 GMT

Keith Thomas has compiled an extraordinary collection of insights by many different authors across the centuries on their view about work. Philosophers, politicians, writers, poets, artists and scientists offer a variety of concepts of work from "primal curse" to means of "self-realization". This book helps us become aware of our's underlying beliefs about work and how they influence our experience of it.

What's all the hype about Leadership?

saba.imru@gmail.com (Saba Imru) — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:15:48 GMT

Everyone has leadership skills and everyone can improve them!

So much is being said about leadership, it’s hard to figure out what you should and should not be doing, and in fact, you might shrug it off altogether, thinking that you don’t lead anybody anyway, so why should you care? Here are 3 reasons why leadership is everybody’s business.

1. Everybody expresses leadership in some moments in life. Leadership means achieving something with other people, inspiring them to take action together towards a common goal. It is the ability to mobilize others. You can certainly identify many areas in life, private and professional, in which you are called upon to lead. For example: inspiring your peers at work to accomplish a shared target, organizing a big family event, launching a community activity, leading your team to winning a performance award.

All of us are called upon to express our leadership at some moments in life. So yes, leadership and how we go about it, is everyone’s business. If your leadership skills are weak, you will at best have no impact and will inspire absolutely no-one to do a single thing. At worse, you might fail in your endeavor and perhaps hurt others in the process. If you have good leadership skills, you can create positive movement forwards through which all people will experience satisfaction, success and growth. In principle, the choice is a no-brainer!

2. Being promoted may take you out of your comfort zone as a leader. Simply being appointed to a position that requires you to constantly lead other people is no guarantee that you can just do it. In fact, one of the main reasons for workplace conflict are professionals who are promoted to leadership roles without any support for honing their leadership skills. If you are in such a position, make sure you have what it takes. Increase your self-awareness, educate yourself, develop the right skills, if not you might risk experiencing a great deal of discomfort and see your likeability index suddenly drop!

3. The good news – Leadership skills can be learned! Leadership skills are neither fluffy, fuzzy nor esoteric. Leadership skills are observable attitudes and behaviors, including the ability to build trust, communicate effectively, empower others, think strategically and be a role model. These skills can all be learned and embedded into a new way of being and behaving. There’s only one essential condition……… that you want to !

Coaching tools … or not?

Fri, 08 May 2020 08:59:00 GMT

Learning coaching tools

For most coaches, an introduction into practicing our profession started with learning a coaching tool. Coaching is a behavior and an experience so the only way to get a grasp of it is by actually practicing it. There’s nothing better than a coaching tool to start DOING coaching! And, once we’ve done it, marvelling at how apparently simple it can be to help clients gain new perspectives, open up new avenues of thought and generally feel more hopeful about life.

Do you remember using the wheel of life with a client for the first time, or a values exercise or a questioning line following GROW or any similar model? These are such unusual ways of engaging in a serious conversation that they invariably have a huge impact on our clients! Of course, it’s not just about whipping out coach tools, we also learn how to create rapport and we develop the ethical foundations that create a solid, trusting relationship with our client. Nonetheless, irrespective of the kind of training we have had, the first period of the development of a professional coach is largely dedicated to the acquisition of a number of coaching approaches and lots and lots of coaching tools!

The coaching relation

As we gain more experience we realize that there’s something more than the tools. They are only the tip of the iceberg and we come to see that what’s actually going on in a coaching relation is a connection at the deepest level between two human beings, one searching and the other supporting.

This connection doesn’t have much to do with coaching tools, it is the outcome of a relationship built on humanistic values, an unconditional positive regard for our client and the belief that they have all the potential they need within them. It is also the result of a positive limbic resonance – the unconscious ability to read and attune to each other’s emotions – that develops over time between two humans in a trusting relation.

Research in psychotherapy indicates that the relationship between therapist and client has more weight than any techniques, in enabling positive changes. This concept has been transposed to the coaching context, in particular by scholar and practitioner Erik de Haan, and his “Relational Coaching” approach, which gives a profound and enlightening reading of what coaching is all about.

Finding a careful balance in our practice of coaching

So, if tools aren’t the real cause for the success of coaching, should we at some point graduate beyond tools? Is that a sign of a “mature” coach? No tools, just deep conversation? I don’t think so! I find that coaching tools are wonderful short-cuts that can be very useful at times to jump right into the essential aspect of things. For example, asking a client to draw a situation that they can’t seem to be able to verbalize can be very effective to reveal what is really going on for them. Or using a structured questioning approach for goal-setting can be very effective to give shape to ideas that may be initially scattered all over the place. The idea is not to fixate only on tools to get the job done. They are just a means to the end.

Some of my coaching students tell me that they don’t really like using tools, they prefer to stick to the conversational approach to coaching. I unfailingly tell them that if it’s a conscious and deliberate choice to focus on the relational aspect only that’s fine, but if they’re avoiding stretching beyond the conversational mode because they feel awkward or for lack of boldness in using tools, then they might be missing opportunities – for themselves and their client – to experiment with different ways of communicating, looking at things and producing results in the coaching session. Other students sort of hide behind tools, deploying one or more at each session and thus avoiding the stark nakedness of being just themselves with only their presence, at the service of the client. In these cases, the audacity of the coach lies in letting go of anything that stands between her and her client, be it a table, a desk or a coaching tool!

When using a tool, let’s make sure we master it

A trusting relationship is obviously the first thing to attend to, but coaching tools are useful too on condition that the coach masters them. By this, I mean that you have to go beyond just using a tool. There are so many coaching tools available in coaching courses, in books, on the web – but not all come with an explanation of how they were developed. To master a tool, it’s very important to understand what knowledge and concepts it is based on. Why is it the way it is? What coaching approaching does it reflect? Who invented it? What were they thinking? What is its function? Why does it work? Does it always work? How often does it work for your clients? In what circumstances? This level of mastery will enable you to quickly adapt tools specifically for your client, use them sparsely, wisely and effectively and most importantly, ignore them when they are not needed.

How to stay focused while facing obstacles

Thu, 07 May 2020 22:00:00 GMT

It’s so easy to get distracted. And when you’re not looking at what you want to achieve, when your attention is drawn to things that do not contribute to your goal, then you slow down and you might even stop altogether.

In my years of coaching in organizations I have noticed that people spend a tremendous amount of energy thinking about what others have done that they don’t like or what others have not done that they thought they should have done.

This kind of thinking can really distract you and get you stuck in a rut where you lose touch with what you want to be doing with your work and with your life. There are often good reasons for losing focus. Some of the most common that I have encountered are:

A feeling of injustice. If people feel they have not been treated fairly, this is something they might fix on for a long time, even years, until it is resolved (which is seldom the case in the corporate world), losing track of the other important goals in their life.

Ending up in the wrong job. Sometimes the job you applied for is not the one that you get, circumstances change and you might end up doing tasks for which you are not cut, or simply don’t like, or where you’re not using your skills. This disappointment can lead to a lot of mulling and again, losing track of what your important goals are.

A bad relationship at work. This is a real spoiler that can upset every waking hour of your work life. Whether it’s a bad relation with a boss, a team-member or a peer, a relationship turned sour will certainly occupy your mind and deflect your attention from what is really important to you.

These are all complex situations, and of course it is not easy to just dismiss them. But you can put them to the side, or on hold if you will, while you take a breath and give yourself the opportunity to gain the helm of your ship again. Because after all, there is nothing more important than living according to your values, going in the direction that you want and fulfilling your dreams, whatever they may be.

The most valuable step to take is to reconnect with what really matters

When I work with coaching clients who are stuck in such a situation, we spend a good amount of time redefining and reconnecting to what is truly important for them, what do they really want at this stage of their life, personally and professionally, what are their priorities, what are they willing to invest all their energy into, what do they consider is “worth it”? Once they have captured a sense again of what really matters to them , they can look at the situation that is causing the “stuckness” and re-evaluate it. It might have changed shape, size, weight, clarity, importance…..

Then, taking action becomes a possible option

At this point they can think of what they might do about it, rather than let it parasite their existence. We’ve thus moved into a more proactive approach. There are as many different options for action as there are people, but typically they revolve around one of these:

Whatever action is chosen, a shift has taken place, a refocusing on important matters, a prioritization.

That’s what I like to call empowerment. It’s not only about understanding that we have a choice, but it’s the enactment of that choice, even with a small step, that sets everything into motion again, from stuck to alive, from weighed down to soaring. It’s when people get up, and actually take a step in the direction of where they want to go, when they make that phone call, have that conversation, take that decision, that’s when they know that they’ve focused again on their most important goal and they can move towards it with focus and single-mindedness.

Focus on your goal and keep moving!

Staying focused is essential to attaining your personal and professional goals, building your dreams. Focus creates energy. When things around you seem foggy, focus creates a direction. It helps you decide what counts and what doesn’t. It clears the road of unnecessary distractions. It keeps you moving towards what you want. Now that’s worth trying out!

Saba Imru-Mathieu is an Executive Leadership Coach and Senior Coach Trainer who works with global organizations.

©2016 Saba Imru-Mathieu, Founding Partner, Leaders Today
www.leaderstoday.co
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Micro-manager or Leader Coach. Who do want to work for? Who do you want to be?

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 19:05:00 GMT

Deep Change, Robert Quinn

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 13:06:41 GMT

Meet my books video series - In this inspiring book, Robert Quinn takes us on an inner journey to reconnect to our sense of purpose and ignite our leadership potential to drive positive change. A great read for leaders who want to re-energize in times of organizational cynicism.

How to Coach your Boss

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 16:21:57 GMT

Coach with open-ended questions

So, given this premise, you can absolutely coach your boss in a variety of situations. A foundation coaching skill is the ability to ask open-ended questions. These can help you have very fruitful coaching conversations with your boss.

For example, imagine you have been given an assignment and it’s not very clear. Often, we receive rush assignments in the workplace like... get this done, do this, solve that, and we don’t get many details around the issue. Sometimes we might waste a lot of time going in the wrong direction. So, you’re better off having a short conversation with your boss, coaching him,using open-ended questions, to understand what they want, what is really at stake, and how it may affect other projects you have going.

Clarify outcomes

You can start by asking your boss a very simple but powerful question: “I have this project, but what is the outcome that you really want? ” You might be surprised to receive many more details then you were previously given. This simple question will give your boss the opportunity to be more specific about the ideal outcome for themselves and for the organization.

Key players

The next question you might ask is, “ Who else is involved ?” You want to get an idea of what other departments, clients, and stakeholders may be affected by this project. You also need to understand the wider context. Sometimes you’re cooped up in your corner doing the task but you don’t have the complete picture, so, don’t forget to ask “ What is the larger context of this task ?”

Resources

Then you might ask for support. For instance, “ Are you able to help me with resources from other departments ?” Or, “ How will we find the support I need to get some funding for this ?” Make sure that you involve your boss in providing you the resources you need in order to complete the project in a timely and satisfactory manner.

Deadlines

You will also need to clarify the deadlines. If they are very short, and you have many projects lined up, it may not be possible. Don’t be shy to ask questions to make sure the priorities are clear, such as “ When is this project due ?” “ How flexible are you in this deadline ? ” “How shall I prioritize when there are other ‘urgent’ projects?”

Back to Learn How to Coach

Coaching Skills for Feedback

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 16:35:36 GMT

Feedback is a dialogue, it requires trust and openness between the giver and the receiver of the feedback. Using coaching skills can help you give feedback in a way that is respectful, authentic and oriented towards improvement and growth.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Comment donner un feedback efficace

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:09:41 GMT

En tant que leader, il n’est pas toujours facile de donner du feedback constructif à ses collaborateurs. En fait, certains leaders redoutent de s’attaquer aux comportements négatifs, ou d’autre part, elles sont avares d’offrir un renforcement positif quand les choses vont bien.

Voyons donc ce que font les dirigeants qui coachent lorsqu’il s’agit de fournir des commentaires utiles. Premièrement, ils dialoguent régulièrement avec leurs collègues. Cela signifie que, tout au long de l’année, ils échangent en permanence des idées avec les personnes qu’ils supervisent, leurs pairs et les clients de l’entreprise concernant la qualité des produits et des services.

De plus, donner et recevoir des commentaires est ancré dans leur style de leadership et, par extension, dans la culture de l’entreprise. Ils fournissent également et souvent des commentaires positifs – aux personnes qu’ils supervisent et à leurs pairs – car c’est une forme de reconnaissance qui motive et valide les gens. Cela facilite également la formulation de critiques constructives lorsque cela est nécessaire.

Lorsqu’ils donnent un retour constructif, les dirigeants qui coachent entament une conversation. Ils donnent une observation factuelle de quelque chose qui a peut-être mal tourné et posent des questions de coaching qui encouragent leur collègue à s’exprimer et qui sont un moyen de mieux comprendre son point de vue. Ils pourraient demander : Comment voyez-vous cela ? Que pensez-vous qu’il est arrivé ? Quelle est votre perspective à ce sujet ?

Ensuite, ils encourageront les gens à créer un plan d’action pour améliorer la situation. Ainsi, les prochaines questions peuvent être : Comment pourriez-vous faire différemment la prochaine fois ? Quelles améliorations pensez-vous possibles ? Quelle est la prochaine étape ?

Le retour (feedback) est un dialogue entre humains, ce n’est pas une sentence, ce n’est pas un jugement. La plupart des gens veulent faire leur travail bien. Les leaders qui utilisent des compétences de coaching sont capables de reconnaître et de récompenser les bonnes performances et, si nécessaire, ils savent comment créer les conditions permettant aux gens de s’engager dans l’amélioration de leurs performances.

Tales for Coaching, Margaret Parkin

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 11:09:28 GMT

Meet my books video series

Margaret Parkin has written a wonderful book for coaches, guiding them through the process of using story-telling in their practice. Stories can serve as powerful metaphors of the client’s situation, they may help the client gain new insights and view things from a different perspective.

When to Coach

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 17:41:29 GMT

Leader Coach Video Tutorials

Leaders who coach choose the situation where it is most appropriate to use their coaching skills, for example when they want to help a colleague think things through and come up with their own conclusions.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Group and Team Coaching, Christine Thornton

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 13:35:40 GMT

Meet my books video series

This fascinating book by Christine Thornton, is excellent for practitioners, leaders and students of coaching who want to understand group dynamics, systems thinking and other crucial concepts and techniques needed to successfully coach groups and teams.

Comment dit-on “leadership” en français?

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 17:01:00 GMT

Une traduction insaisissable

Le mot leadership est presque intraduisible. Les dictionnaires que j’ai consulté me donnent différents résultats : parfois ils se réfèrent à des groupes de personnes: “les dirigeants”, “la direction”, “l’état major”; ailleurs on pointe des capacités personnelles “les qualités de meneurs d’hommes”, “l’aptitude à diriger”. Peut-être la traduction la plus exacte est celle d’un dictionnaire sur Internet, qui nous dit qu’en français le mot “leadership” se dit ….. “leadership”!

Mais comment saisir le concept derrière ce mot? J’ai souvent entendu décrire quelqu’un qui a une forte personnalité, qui est capable d’imposer sa volonté, comme étant quelqu’un qui a “beaucoup de leadership”. On associe le leadership avec une force plutôt subjuguante, à la capacité de faire faire des choses aux autres. J’ai même eu un participant à mes ateliers se vanter d’être un vrai leader car personne ne pouvait s’opposer à lui ! Il n’est pas le seul à penser qu’un leader doit commander l’obéissance, voir même la peur. D’où vient cette fausse idée, ce grand malentendu ?

Il y a eu un grand nombre de théories sur le leadership, chacune avec sa définition. Les anciens modèles de leadership – heureusement désuets – reposaient sur les traits personnels du supposé leader, en décrivant une espèce de super-homme (et c’était vraiment au masculin !), avec des qualités de meneur innées y compris sa taille (il était de préférence grand).

Aujourd’hui nous avons une autre vision du leadership, basée sur des décennies de recherche scientifique dans le domaine. Voici quelques principes essentiels pour donner un éclairage sur ce thème parfois mal compris.

Principe no. 1

Le leadership est un processus par lequel un individu influence et inspire d’autres personnes à agir ensemble vers un but commun.

Trois concepts ressortent de cette définition. Premièrement, le fait qu’il s’agit d’un processus et non pas de traits de personnalité nous indique que le leadership peut être exprimé par tout le monde, et qu’il peut être appris.

Deuxièmement, quand on est leader, on influence et on inspire. Dans le leadership il n’y a aucune notion d’autoritarisme ni de contrainte. Au contraire, le leader est au service des autres pour les élever à être au maximum de leur aspirations et de leurs capacités. (Ceux qui aspirent à être “leader” pour commander, avoir du pouvoir sur les autres et nourrir leur propre égo sont plutôt des candidats pour les postes de dictateur.)

Enfin, le leader n’habite pas dans une tour d’ivoire lointaine. Il est impliqué à fond dans le mouvement vers l’objectif commun, il est étroitement engagé dans l’action, il donne des signes visibles d’être ensemble avec les autres. Le leadership signifie donner l’exemple, être congruent et présent.

Principe no. 2

Les leaders dans les organisations ne sont pas uniquement ceux qui sont dans des positions d’autorité.

Le leadership s’exprime à tous les niveaux organisationnels chaque fois que quelqu’un prend en charge un projet, une initiative, une situation d’urgence qu’il faut régler rapidement.

Ce n’est pas rare qu’une personne ayant le titre de chef ne soit pas du tout inspirante, alors qu’un employé du bas de la hiérarchie se soit montré capable de mobiliser toute une équipe à faire des efforts extraordinaires.

Les organisations qui favorisent un leadership partagé et distribué sont celles qui savent utiliser les talents de chacun des employés tout en leur permettant d’exprimer leurs capacités.

Principe no. 3

Le leadership est relationnel, et cela ça s’apprend.

Il ne suffit pas d’avoir des diplômes et d’excellentes connaissances techniques. Le savoir-faire dans les relations humaines est essentiel, ainsi que la connaissance de soi et la capacité à s’auto-gérer. La vision stratégique doit être accompagnée d’empathie, de compassion et de la capacité à établir des relations de confiance avec son équipe.

La bonne nouvelle est que tout cela peut s’apprendre. Il s’agit de développer ses “soft skills” (autre mot intraduisible !) et pour cela il faut juste le vouloir.

Alors, détendez-vous

Ces quelques principes sont issus de la recherche sur le leadership des 50 dernières années, et des études menées à travers le monde. Tous indiquent que le leadership qui produit de bons résultats et crée de la valeur dans la société, est fondamentalement bienveillant.

Alors si vous voulez être un leader, détendez-vous, pas besoin d’être autoritaire ni d’imposer vos vues à tout prix. Vous pouvez rester authentique, que vous soyez extraverti ou d’une nature plutôt réservée, cela n’a rien à voir avec le leadership. Le plus important c’est de créer des relations de confiance avec votre équipe en étant fiable, courtois, intègre et bienveillant.

Vous pouvez en toute sérénité renoncer à vouloir tout contrôler, soyez plutôt à l’écoute, donnez de la place à vos collaborateurs afin qu’ils expriment leurs idées, leurs talents et aussi leur leadership.

En vrai leader, osez vous mettre au service de votre équipe afin de réaliser ensemble les projets qui vont vous faire tous progresser. C’est ça le leadership du 21 siècle. Il s’agit de reconnaître l’humanité et l’autonomie de chacun et pour ça, il n'y a pas besoin de traduction!

Coaching for performance, John Whitmore

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Sir John Whitmore’s book Coaching for Performance is a classic in the coaching literature. In 1992 it presented a radical break away from the command and control approach in the workplace, inviting managers instead to coach for performance through the development of people's potential. It is a complete guide to coaching skills and mindsets for both managers and for professional coaches.

Formal or spontaneous coaching

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 13:38:02 GMT

Leaders who coach in the work place can do so in two ways. Formal coaching is used when you want to coach a colleague on ongoing basis for a certain period, for example if they just joined your team or if they're in charge of a new project. Spontaneous coaching instead is what occurs in everyday short conversations during which you can use coaching skills to quickly solve a problem or find a new perspective.

How Coaching Works, Joseph O'Connor, Andrea Lages

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 10:00:00 GMT

Meet my books video series - Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages have written wide-sweeping introductory book on coaching covering a history of coaching, the main coaching methodologies, presenting their own model of coaching and giving insights in how to measure the results of coaching.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Ask rather than Tell

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 16:16:21 GMT

One of the simplest yet most transformative habits a leader can develop is learning to ask rather than tell. It sounds easy, but it goes against how most of us were trained to lead. From early in our careers, we’re rewarded for knowing answers, offering solutions, and stepping in to fix problems. So, when we start leading others, we often carry that same reflex with us. But leadership that relies only on giving instructions limits the growth of others — and often adds unnecessary pressure on the leader.

Leaders who coach understand that asking good questions can be far more powerful than giving quick answers. When you pause before offering advice and instead ask, “What do you think could work here?” or “What’s the real issue underneath this?” you invite people to think for themselves. That single shift — from telling to asking — changes the quality of conversation. It turns monologues into dialogue, command into collaboration.

This approach also changes the energy in the relationship. People feel respected and heard, which builds confidence and accountability. Over time, they become less dependent on you for direction because they’ve learned to reflect, analyze, and decide on their own. That’s what developing others truly means — not creating followers who wait for answers, but partners who think independently.

Of course, asking rather than telling takes practice. It requires patience, curiosity, and a bit of self-restraint. But the payoff is immense: more engaged conversations, smarter decisions, and a culture where people feel empowered to speak and think freely. That’s the essence of coaching leadership — creating space for others to grow.

Who Coaches Who

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 16:13:44 GMT

Leader Coach Video Tutorials

Learn about the different ways in which coaching is used inside companies and who takes on the different coaching roles.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Confusion around the term “coach”

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:00:00 GMT

We don’t all mean the same thing when say “coach”. Learn about the different meanings of the word, and why the distinction is important.

Back to Learn How to Coach

Why improve your leadership skills? Because it’s good for you!

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 14:50:00 GMT

Leadership conjures different images to different people. Not all of them are attractive, so not everyone identifies easily with the notion of being a leader. It’s really not surprising, given the number of unsavoury “leaders” in the political or business spheres that we hear about on the news.

Contemporary concepts of leadership in organizations point us to a new more horizontal, less autocratic style of leadership where integrity, benevolence and authenticity are highly valued, in addition to the competencies needed to do the job which of course are essential.

Leadership implies doing good as well as producing results

As a refreshing alternative, I’m inviting you to look at the term “leadership” as it is used in studies on organizational leadership by both academics and practitioners, and most importantly by many successful industry leaders. While there is no single agreed-upon definition of leadership, there is a general shared sense of leadership being benevolent, inspiring and a skill-set that can be learned by everyone.

Let’s start with a few quotes by well-known authors:

“The fundamental task of leaders, we argue, is to prime good feelings in those they lead. That occurs when a leader creates resonance – a reservoir of positivity that frees the best in people. At it’s root, then, the primal job of leadership is emotional” …..

Daniel Goleman in The New Leaders.

“Leadership is a process of social influence which maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a greater good.”

Travis Bradberry in What Really Makes a Good Leader?

“Research indicates that the highest performing managers and leaders are the most open and caring. The best leaders demonstrate more affection toward others and want others to be more open with them. They are more positive and passionate, more loving and compassionate, and more grateful and encouraging than their lower performing counterparts.”

James M. Kouzes , in The Truth about Leadership: The No-Fads, Heart-Of-The-Matter Facts You Need to Know

When talking about leadership there seems to be more than a hint at benevolence and at doing good. Rather than being a matter of titles, power and command, leadership is about creating value, drawing the best out of others, being an inspiration, working for the good of a wider community. Does that sound more attractive? Might bringing the best out of others be something you want to identify with? Or perhaps it’s being connected to a higher purpose?

Everyone has leadership skills

Another aspect of modern leadership is that having leadership skills is not exclusively reserved to the higher ranks. In fact, people in high positions may be appointed as leaders in an institution and have scarce leadership skills. Here are a couple of unequivocal quotes on this aspect of leadership:

“Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or one’s position in the hierarchy of a company. Too many talk about a company’s leadership referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that, senior executives. Leadership doesn’t automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.”

Travis Bradberry in What Really Makes a Good Leader?

“What we have discovered and rediscovered, is that leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women. It is a process ordinary people use when the bring forth the best from themselves and others. When the leader in everyone is liberated, extraordinary things happen.”

James Kousez and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge

Leadership is something that everyone exhibits at some point or other in their lives, at work or in the private sphere. Do you recognize some episode in your life as a leadership moment? Perhaps that time when you had to organize a family event, getting everyone’s agreement, finding volunteers, smoothing out potential conflicts? Or when you led your neighborhood sports club to achieve something big for them? Or when you pushed yourself beyond your limits, exercising some strong self-leadership, to get something difficult done? Does any of this sound familiar? I bet you can remember at least one time in your life where you exhibited leadership skills. Would that inspire you to develop them more?

Grow the leadership skills you already have

To summarize, I am making 3 points I am making today that will make leadership seem more palatable to you. They will help you recognize leadership strengths with more confidently, and identify with your current or future leadership role with more ease.

Leadership implies being ethical and doing good.
Leadership is a set of behaviours that everyone has and can develop.

Most people can identify with these two concepts. They reflect the aspirations of a majority of humans, who mostly want to do good and want to use their compentencies with purpose.

If you decide to develop your leadership skills start with what you already know, and strengthen it through practice.

You probably already do many of the things listed down here. Choose one or two that you want to strengthen further and practice them deliberaty, with intention. Make sure to monitor yourself. How are you doing? What results are you observing? Make small improvements if needed. If not, move on to another skill, one step at a time.

Leading yourself , set meaningful goals and achieve them, adopt positive mindsets that make you a creative and dynamic problem-solver, manage your emotions to become empathic and resilient, develop self-confidence and presence, learn how to set boundaries.

Leading others , develop and empower the people around you whether they’re family, friends or colleagues; communicate clearly and honestly, learn how to coach to enable others to demonstrate their potential, be empathic, generous and compassionate, say no when necessary, be strong and stand up for your principles, be an inspiring role model, produce outstanding results together with others.

Good leadership is very important for organizational life but perhaps more importantly, enhancing your leadership skills is good for you!

101 Coaching Strategies and Techniques, Gladeana McMahon, Anne Archer

Sun, 02 Jun 2019 09:00:00 GMT

Meet my books video series

Edited by Gladeana McMahon and Anne Archer, this excellent book presents a wide variety of coaching tools that are easy to use for all coaching professionals. There are tools for different purposes, such as confidence building, problem-solving or group coaching, and clear guidance on how to use them.

Feedback is a dialogue, not a sentence

Thu, 23 May 2019 08:55:00 GMT

As a leader, it’s not always easy to have constructive conversations with employees. In fact, some leaders dread addressing negative behaviors, or on the other hand, they are stingy about offering positive reinforcement.

So, let’s see what Leaders who coach do when it comes to providing helpful feedback. Primarily, they engage with colleagues on a regular basis. That means, throughout the year they are continuously exchanging ideas with the people they supervise, their peers, and the company’s clients, regarding the quality of the products and services.

Moreover, giving and receiving feedback is ingrained in their leadership style and, by extension, the company culture. Also, they provide positive feedback often – to the people that they supervise, and to their peers – because it’s a form of recognition that motivates and validates people. This also makes it easier to deliver constructive criticism when necessary.

When giving constructive feedback, leaders who coach engage in a conversation. They give a factual observation of something that may have gone wrong, and they ask coaching questions that encourage their colleague to express themselves as a means to better understand their perspective. So, they might ask: How do you see this? What do you think happened? What is your perspective on this?

Then, they will encourage people to create an action plan to improve the situation. So, the next questions may be: How could you do it differently next time? Which improvements do you think are possible? What is the next step?

Feedback is a dialogue between humans, it’s not a judgement, it’s not a sentence. Most people want to do their work well and are willing to improve when their dignity is preserved. Leaders who use coaching skills are able to recognize and reward good performance, and when necessary, they know how to create the right conditions for people to engage in improving their performance.

Les compétences de coaching, la voie rapide aux compétences non techniques

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 14:28:00 GMT

Les compétences non techniques (soft skills) sont très demandées, que vous soyez un aspirant candidat juste à l’intérieur du seuil d’entrée, ou un manager chevronné. Il y a tellement de […]

Les compétences non techniques (soft skills) sont très demandées, que vous soyez un aspirant candidat juste à l’intérieur du seuil d’entrée, ou un manager chevronné.

Il y a tellement de définitions des compétences non techniques que le concept peut être quelque peu évasif. Vous pourriez dire qu’ils incluent la communication interpersonnelle efficace, l’empathie, les grâces sociales, la capacité à résoudre les conflits, la résolution de problèmes, la concentration, l’attitude positive, la sympathie, la résolution de conflits, l’auto-motivation, l’influence et le leadership. Ceux qui ne sont pas enclins à ces compétences se réfèrent à cette « chose délicate » avec une certaine appréhension.

Si vous n’êtes pas vraiment sûr de la façon d’acquérir les compétences non techniques (compétences douces), apprenez à coacher. Vous serez en mesure de forger le bon état d’esprit et de maîtriser facilement les comportements qui sont des indicateurs d’une grande maîtrise des compétences non techniques.

Pour commencer, en tant que coach, vous apprendrez à écouter. Vraiment écouter. Cela signifie faire taire votre esprit occupé et bavard, suspendre votre jugement et maintenir un calme intérieur qui vous permettra d’entendre tout ce que l’autre dit, y compris ce qu’il ne dit pas. L’écoute est la plus fabuleuse et la plus puissante de toutes les compétences non techniques.

En tant que manager qui coache, vous observerez que tout le monde peut se développer et grandir. Vous construirez un état d’esprit positif et une ferme croyance dans le potentiel des autres (et le vôtre), ce qui est le meilleur moyen de les motiver à atteindre plus que ce qu’ils n’auraient jamais cru possible.

Plus vous écoutez attentivement les gens, plus ils se sentiront accueillis et reconnus. Plus vous montrez de la confiance dans le potentiel des autres et les aidez à le développer, plus vous serez apprécié pour votre leadership. Votre facteur de sympathie va à coup sûr augmenter – même si ce n’est pas ce que vous cherchez !

Les managers qui coachent posent beaucoup de questions afin que leur coaché puisse réfléchir à des solutions. Au fur et à mesure que vous apprendrez à poser des questions puissantes, vous deviendrez de plus en plus apte à aider votre interlocuteur à trouver de nouvelles perspectives. Quand vous réaliserez que le processus de coaching fonctionne vraiment, vous développerez une soif insatiable à trouver des solutions à vos propres défis avec la même stratégie de questionnement.

Lorsque vous apprendrez à devenir coach, vous allez acquérir de nombreux outils qui vous aideront à soutenir votre coaché dans des situations de travail difficiles, comme un conflit avec des collègues ou un manque de confiance en soi pour accomplir une tâche. Si en tant que manager, vous êtes timide à l’idée d’aborder les « trucs relationnels », alors apprendre à coacher vous permettra de le faire avec grâce, compétence et assurance.

Ce ne sont que quelques-unes des façons dont les compétences de coaching peuvent vous aider à acquérir des compétences non techniques sans effort, sans même vous en apercevoir !

Saba Imru-Mathieu est Coach Exécutif et Formatrice de Coach pour les organisations et compagnies au niveau international. Elle détient un Master en Leadership et poursuit un doctorat sur comment les compétences en coaching contribuent au développement global du Leadership.

Coaching skills, the fast lane to soft skills

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 23:00:00 GMT

High demand for soft skills

Soft skills are in high demand, whether you are an aspiring candidate, just inside the entry point threshold or a seasoned manager. There are so many definitions of soft skills that the concept can be somewhat elusive. You might say they include effective interpersonal communication, empathy, social graces, ability to resolve conflicts, solution-focus, positive attitude, likeability, self-motivation, and ability to influence.

Those who are not inclined towards them refer to this “touchy-feely stuff” with some apprehension. If you’re not really sure about how to acquire soft skills, learn how to coach. You will forge the right mindset and easily master the behaviors that are indicators of a high mastery of soft skills.

It begins with listening

To start with, as a coach you will learn how to listen deeply. That means silencing your busy, talkative mind, suspending judgment and holding an inner quiet that will enable you to hear everything that the other person is saying, including what they are not saying. Your attitude will show that you are interested in what they say, that you care about their ideas. Listening is the most powerful of all soft skills. By listening attentively, you develop empathy and your likeability factor will certainly get a boost – even if that’s not what you were looking for!

Notice how people can grow

As a manager who coaches you will see that everyone can develop and grow. The more you use open-ended questions and other coaching techniques to help others come up with their own solutions, the more you will be confident in their abilities. You will build up a positive mindset and a firm belief in other people’s (and your own) potential which is the best way to motivate them to reach for even more than they had ever thought was possible.

So, the more you listen attentively to people, the more they will feel welcomed and acknowledged. The more you show confidence in others’ potential and help them grow it, the more you will be appreciated for your leadership.

Questions can be powerful

Coaches ask lots of thought-provoking questions so that their coachee can think through their issues. As you learn how to ask powerful questions, you will become more and more adept at helping others to identify solutions and find new perspectives. As you realize that the question-asking process really works, you will develop a positive solution-focus and you will resolve your own challenges with the same questioning strategy.

Lastly, when you learn how to coach, you will become familiar with many coaching tools that help you support the person you are talking to through difficult work situations, such as conflict with colleagues, a difficult choice to make, or lack of self-confidence to accomplish a task.

If as a manager you’re timid about approaching the “touchy-feely stuff”, then learning how to coach will enable you to do so naturally, with competence, and assurance. These are only a few ways in which learning coaching skills can help you acquire soft skills effortlessly, without even noticing that you have!

The Aptitudes of a Leader Coach

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 23:00:00 GMT

A lot is said about the required competences for a coaching manager or leader. But what about at a deeper level? What are the aptitudes or mindsets needed to be an effective leader coach?

The first aptitude of a Leader Coach is having less need for control

While the word “coaching” is sometimes still used to mean some form of teaching or training, coaching has grown, throughout the second half of the 20th century, into a distinct applied practice which tends to be generally non-directive, and driven by the coachee’s development needs rather than by the coach’s agenda.

What does this mean for a leader coach today? It means that if you want to adopt any of the modern leadership theories – most of which include the ability to be a proficient coaching leader – you’re going to have to stop telling people what to do (at least some of time) and instead ask them questions that will make them think of solutions for themselves. According to Green and Grant, authors of Solution-Focused Coaching, the path from telling to asking is fraught with uncertainty because managers fear that by not giving instructions they might be losing control. Yet it is the very letting go of control by managers that empowers employees to develop their potential.

The second aptitude of a Leader Coach is having a helpful approach

A leader coach is generally well-predisposed towards her fellow humans. She believes that coaching is part of her leadership role and feels able to develop others. This entails a willingness to listen, to take the time and to give feedback that will help the employee grow. This kind of leader is connected to the people around her.

The third aptitude of a Leader Coach is being open to personal learning

A certain degree of humility accompanies all the coaching leaders that I have encountered, however high up the corporate ladder they may be. They tend to be authentic, not afraid of showing they don’t know something and above all, they are avid learners. The belief that everyone can learn and grow is an essential mindset for coaching leaders who believe that about themselves, and about others.

The good news

The good news is that if you want to develop these aptitudes, they can be learned. If these mindsets were not part of your mental landscape before, you can still adopt them very easily by trying them out, experimenting with the related behaviours, observing yourself, growing into the leader you want to be. Who’s to stop you?

Êtes-vous confronté à un territoire inconnu? Détendez-vous!

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:14:00 GMT

Mais quelle question! Ne sommes-nous pas constamment confrontés à un territoire inconnu de nos jours?

Les étudiants ne savent pas si ce qu’ils apprennent maintenant sera utile le jour où ils arriveront sur le marché à la recherche d’un emploi. Les marchés sont tellement changeants que ceux qui ont un travail se posent parfois des questions sur la stabilité de leur emploi. Les gestionnaires ne savent pas vraiment ce que l’avenir à long terme leur réserve, pour eux-mêmes, pour leur équipe, pour leur entreprise. Les parents ne peuvent pas imaginer à quoi ressemblera le monde quand leurs enfants seront adultes, les météorologues ne peuvent même pas nous dire si notre ville sera encore au-dessus de l’eau dans 20 ans et hélas – la plus grande des incertitudes – personne ne sait combien de temps il vivra, ce qui fait de la planification à long terme plus un exercice de vœu pieux que toute autre chose.

Peut-être que la peur du changement est juste une invention moderne, une expression de l’angoisse des économies avancées qui voudraient, bien entendu, ne pas être affectées par les vicissitudes d’un univers imprévisible.

La capacité de vivre sans connaître le futur et d’accepter un changement inattendu sont des capacités clés que l’humanité a déjà maîtrisées, il y a très longtemps! C’est cette flexibilité qui nous a permis d’être ici aujourd’hui.

De l’homme des cavernes à l’analyste de Wall Street, personne n’a encore été capable de prédire infailliblement la disponibilité du gibier dans la brousse, ni le cours des stocks sur le marché. L’état naturel des choses est de ne pas connaître le futur. Depuis la nuit des temps nous vivons avec cette ignorance existentielle. Face à l’inconnu, les humains ont composé aussi gracieusement que possible avec la réalité inéluctable du changement constant. Ceci jusqu’aux temps modernes, quand il nous semble avoir étrangement perdu cette capacité. Aujourd’hui, nous avons peur du changement, entrer dans un territoire inconnu nous semble effrayant et insupportable, plutôt que le cours normal des événements.

L’incertitude et le changement ne sont pas un phénomène nouveau. La complexité et l’imprévisibilité que nous connaissons aujourd’hui ne sont en fait rien de nouveau, ils ont toujours été là. L’univers est complexe, la vie humaine est complexe et rien n’a jamais été écrit dans la pierre.

Malgré l’hystérie autour du changement, il n’est pas si effrayant et en tant qu’espèce, nous avons toujours réussi à naviguer dans des conditions imprévisibles. Nous avons fait preuve de résilience et de créativité même dans les situations les plus difficiles.

Que les gens résistent au changement est un mythe, les humains s’adaptent constamment aux surprises de la vie!

Calmez donc vos peurs, détendez-vous et partez hardiment dans l’inconnu, comme nos ancêtres, pour découvrir les trésors que la vie nous offre!

Self-leadership, a buzz word or science?

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 22:00:00 GMT

Self-Leadership……. it sounds like just another management buzz word, doesn’t it? Actually, self-leadership is a very well-researched concept that proposes specific and practical cognitive strategies to improve personal effectiveness. It is a tested process by which individuals can learn to influence themselves to achieve their aspirations and objectives. Self-leadership theory is particularly interesting because it is prescriptive and provides concrete, specific strategies on exactly what to do to develop constructive mental habits, improve performance and create a fulfilling work life.

Many workplace problems are resolved by developing self-leadership skills. From increasing job satisfaction, tackling procrastination, developing a solution-focused approach, or consistently achieve goals.

At this stage most readers would want to know, is this useful for me? Is it worth reading this article? I would say Yes!

Often people plod on in a dissatisfying job and do not know how to change the situation. They might just work harder and harder, risking a burn out, or they might rely on external forces (the boss, the company, a stroke of good luck) to provide a solution. They are likely to underestimate the power they have to influence their own life and career, so…. if you’re looking to empower yourself, read on!

In this article, I describe the three main self-leadership cognitive strategies as developed by Charles Neck and his colleagues in their Theory of Self-Leadership. I then make parallels with coaching approaches and visit the concept from a coaching perspective. Finally, I briefly present the Leaders Today self-leadership model.

Origins of Self-Leadership Theory

The concept of self-leadership, expanding on previous theories of self-management, first emerged in the 1980’s in the work of Charles C. Manz (1983, 1986). Its conceptual foundations lie in social cognitive theory, self-determination theory and positive psychology. It has been further developed over the years by Manz himself and other renowned leadership scholars and practitioners including Christopher P. Neck, Jeffrey D. Houghton, Henry P. Sims and Ken Blanchard, who applies it through his Situational Leadership model.

The initial studies were conducted in the United States, under a Western lens. However, in a globalised world where many people are working in multicultural contexts, it was necessary to clarify and make sense of how self-leadership is understood across cultures. Research by José C. Galvez, who investigated self-leadership along Hofstede’s culture dimensions has been invaluable to determine how self-leadership strategies are applicable by people from different cultural horizons to provide excellent results across the board.

Discussions about self-leadership were first developed around the workplace, to investigate how people could influence themselves as a sort of pre-requisite to then influencing or leading others. It quickly became obvious that self-leadership strategies are powerful personal development tools irrespective of whether you lead others or not. Furthermore, they are beneficial in all aspects of life, not only in the professional sphere.

Self-leadership strategies

The Self-leadership model developed by Neck, Manz and Houghton (2017) consists of three categories of cognitive strategies as follows.

Constructive thought patterns

Developing constructive thought patterns is essential to implementing self-leadership. We know from different approaches in psychology, that our inner mental models determine what we perceive from the external world, how we think about it, what feelings are evoked, what behaviours we adopt and consequently, the results that we produce.

Much like in cognitive behavioural coaching, self-leadership strategies help to identify and replace limiting beliefs and assumptions, they tackle and transform dysfunctional thought patterns such as overgeneralising, always expecting the worst, all or nothing thinking, or systematically discounting the positive.

They also help you to work on your expectations, or imagined experiences, by focusing more on possible positive outcomes rather than speculating on hypothetical negative ones. Mental imagery is also widely used in coaching to visualise a future positive performance because it prepares the whole human system to the achievement of the desired successful result.

Finally, having constructive thought patterns leads you to improve on the quality of your inner dialogue, and transform it into positive self-talk. In coaching we acknowledge the inner critic, knowing that it is often the manifestation of fear or anxiety. The goal then is to reassure and pacify this function of our inner world and transform it into an inner helper instead.

Natural reward strategies

Self-leadership strategies harness the power of natural rewards, they help you do what you want to do, and especially find ways to like the tasks you wouldn’t usually enjoy. Charles Manz found that activities which are naturally rewarding are those over which we have control, that make us feel competent, that are somehow pleasant, and make us experience a sense of purpose. The idea is to modify our tasks by including more naturally rewarding aspects in them, for example you might identify what is the higher purpose of the task, what bigger picture it contributes to, or you can appreciate using the specific skills that you have to accomplish it, or you could improve the work space where you are undertaking the task.

Most activities have pleasant and less pleasant aspects. A powerful self-leadership strategy, which may sound simplistic at first, is to systematically choose to focus on even the smallest enjoyable aspect of a task, rather than focus on what you don’t like.

In coaching, several techniques are used to help the client see things from a different perspective, find the positive in the negative and generally develop a more optimistic outlook that will remove blockages and release the energy needed for taking action.

Behaviour-Focused strategies

A first group of behaviour-focused strategies are oriented towards the external world and include making adjustments to your environment to support any behavioural changes that you are working on. For example, if you are tackling a tendency towards procrastination, it’s important to remove distractions, and instead increase positive cues by creating a pleasant work space, placing physical objects as reminders and having the right resources near at hand.

The second group of behaviour-focused strategies operate at a deeper level on your inner world, to increase self-awareness, motivation, direction and proactiveness. They involve finding a sense of purpose by exploring your true aspirations, setting meaningful and achievable goals, observing yourself to monitor your progress. Lastly, there are specific behaviour-focused strategies to reward yourself when you accomplish even a small step ahead, and maybe more importantly to remove the rewards that encourage undesirable behaviour (of which we are generally not aware).

These strategies are reflected in most coaching processes which would start by helping an individual to define their vision or life purpose, identify a career course that matches it and devise an action plan to achieve it. This inside-out approach is typical in coaching, where we leverage the inner motivation of clients to energize them towards taking action.

Self-leadership from a coaching perspective and the Leaders Today model

Coaching is generally understood to be a non-directive approach in which learning occurs by stimulating the client to reflect on herself and find new perspectives to view the world. The aim of coaching is to cause a change of some sort by creating the conditions for the client to achieve their goals. Coaching thus starts with a client who wants something (a concrete objective, or an inner transformation or both), and continues through a process during which the client is increasingly empowered, so that they can autonomously achieve their goal.

Many of the strategies of self-leadership are also used in coaching, where we call them approaches, or tools. Although coaching has built its own body of knowledge in the last 20 years, it has its origins in diverse disciplines such as psychology, management, sports and philosophy which explains why we share some of the foundations of self-leadership theory.

From a coaching perspective, we would more explicitly highlight the importance of developing self-confidence, and provide tools to this effect, including acknowledging one’s strengths and leveraging past successes and developing self-coaching strategies.

Coaching is both a holistic and a systemic practice, so clients are viewed as a whole (body, mind and emotions), and also within the wider system of their personal and professional environment. In this sense, the development of self-leadership skills consists of not only the cognitive but also the emotional and somatic dimensions of the individual. This means enhancing emotional self-management, working on body language and techniques for dealing with stress. A coaching approach also includes tools that help the client interact successfully with the system they work in. This entails reinforcing assertiveness, honing communication skills, developing the ability to influence others in a positive way and enhancing leadership presence, or the way we show up authentically and authoritatively.

The Leaders Today model for developing self-leadership skills thus consists of four stages which can be worked on cyclically:

Vision – be strategic and proactive in choosing and pursuing your direction
Confidence – strengthen your self-confidence and positive outlook
Presence – enhance your leadership presence and show-up
Influence – communicate with others for win-win outcomes

Self-leadership is crucial for leaders at all levels. We integrate self-leadershp as a key development area in all our coaching programs, and we conduct workshops on Self-leadership for a wider group of professionals.

To know more about how to develop self-leadership contact us here: contact@leaderstoday.co

References

Outils de coaching … ou pas?

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 17:23:00 GMT

Apprendre les outils de coaching Pour la plupart des coachs, une introduction à l’exercice de notre profession a commencé par l’apprentissage d’un outil de coaching. Le coaching est un comportement […]

Apprendre les outils de coaching

Pour la plupart des coachs, une introduction à l’exercice de notre profession a commencé par l’apprentissage d’un outil de coaching. Le coaching est un comportement et une expérience. La seule manière de le comprendre est de le pratiquer. Il n’y a rien de mieux qu’un outil de coaching pour commencer à faire du coaching ! Et, une fois que nous l’avons fait, nous sommes étonnés de voir à quel point il peut sembler simple d’aider les clients à acquérir de nouvelles perspectives, à ouvrir de nouvelles pistes de réflexion et à avoir plus d’espoir dans la vie.

Vous souvenez-vous de la première fois où vous avez utilisé la Roue de la Vie avec un client, ou un exercice de valeurs, ou une ligne de questions d’après GROW ou un modèle similaire ? Ce sont des moyens si inhabituels pour engager une conversation sérieuse qu’ils ont invariablement un impact énorme sur nos clients ! Bien sûr, il ne s’agit pas seulement de manipuler des outils de coaching, nous apprenons également à créer un rapport et nous développons les fondements éthiques qui créent une relation de confiance solide avec notre client. Néanmoins, quel que soit le type de formation que nous avons eue, la première période de développement d’un coach professionnel est largement dédiée à l’acquisition d’un certain nombre d’approches de coaching et de nombreux outils de coaching !

La relation de coaching

Au fur et à mesure que nous acquérons plus d’expérience, nous réalisons qu’il y a quelque chose de plus que les outils. Ils ne sont que la partie visible de l’iceberg et nous constatons que, ce qui se passe réellement dans une relation de coaching, est une connexion au plus profond de la relation entre deux êtres humains, l’un cherchant et l’autre soutenant.

Ce lien n’a pas grand-chose à voir avec les outils de coaching, c’est le résultat d’une relation fondée sur des valeurs humanistes, un regard positif inconditionnel sur nos clients et la conviction qu’ils ont tout le potentiel dont ils ont besoin. C’est aussi le résultat d’une résonance limbique positive – la capacité inconsciente à lire et à s’adapter aux émotions des uns et des autres – qui se développe avec le temps entre deux humains dans une relation de confiance.

La recherche en psychothérapie indique que la relation entre le thérapeute et le client a plus de poids que toutes les techniques dans l’établissement de changements positifs. Ce concept a été transposé dans le contexte du coaching, en particulier par le spécialiste et praticien Erik de Haan, et son approche du « coaching relationnel », qui donne une lecture profonde et enrichissante de ce qu’est le coaching.

Trouver un équilibre judicieux dans notre pratique du coaching

Donc, si les outils ne sont pas la véritable cause du succès du coaching, devrions-nous à un certain moment dépasser les outils ? Est-ce un signe d’un coach “mature” ? Pas d’outils, juste une conversation profonde ? Je ne le pense pas ! Je trouve que les outils de coaching sont des raccourcis merveilleux qui peuvent parfois être très utiles pour aborder directement l’aspect essentiel des choses. Par exemple, demander à un client de dessiner une situation qu’il ne semble pas capable de verbaliser peut être très efficace pour révéler ce qui se passe réellement pour lui. Ou utiliser une approche de questionnement structurée pour la fixation d’objectifs peut être très efficace pour donner forme à des idées qui peuvent être éparpillées au départ. L’idée n’est pas de se limiter aux outils pour faire le travail. Ils ne sont qu’un moyen d’atteindre le résultat.

Certains de mes étudiants en coaching me disent qu’ils n’aiment pas vraiment utiliser des outils, ils préfèrent s’en tenir à l’approche conversationnelle du coaching. Je leur répète infailliblement que s’il s’agit d’un choix conscient et délibéré de se concentrer uniquement sur l’aspect relationnel, c’est bien, mais s’ils évitent d’aller au-delà du mode conversationnel parce qu’ils se sentent mal à l’aise ou manquent d’audace à utiliser les outils, alors ils pourraient passer à côté des possibilités – pour eux-mêmes et leur client – d’expérimenter différentes manières de communiquer, de voir les choses et de produire des résultats lors de la session de coaching. D’autres étudiants se cachent derrière des outils, en déploient un ou plusieurs à chaque session et évitent ainsi l’apparente nudité d’être juste eux-mêmes avec leur seule présence, au service du client. Dans ces cas, l’audace du coach signifierait de laisser tomber tout ce qui se trouve entre elle et son client, que ce soit une table, un bureau ou un outil de coaching !

Lors de l’utilisation d’un outil, assurons-nous que nous le maîtrisons

Une relation de confiance est évidemment la première chose à faire, mais les outils de coaching sont également utiles à condition que le coach les maîtrise. Je veux dire par là que vous devez aller au-delà de l’utilisation d’un outil. Il y a tellement d’outils de coaching disponibles dans les cours de coaching, dans les livres, sur le web, mais tous ne sont pas accompagnés d’une explication de comment ils ont été développés. Pour maîtriser un outil, il est très important de comprendre les connaissances et les concepts sur lesquels il repose. Pourquoi est-ce comme ça ? Quel approche coaching reflète-t-il ? Qui l’a inventé ? A quoi pensaient-ils ? Quelle est sa fonction ? Pourquoi fonctionne-t-il ? Est-ce que ça marche toujours ? À quelle fréquence cela fonctionne-t-il pour vos clients ? Dans quelles circonstances ? Ce niveau de maîtrise vous permettra d’adapter rapidement les outils spécifiques à votre client, de les utiliser de manière limitée, sage et efficace, et surtout de les ignorer quand ils ne sont pas nécessaires.

________________________________________

Back from the ILA Listening Convention

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 08:54:00 GMT

Everyone says that listening is very important, I mean, really important…

Some people deeply understand the need to be more effective listeners and know that it can be learned. Some of them are strongly committed to researching, writing, teaching and spreading their experiences and knowledge everywhere they can for us to become better humans.

Where are these people? Coming from almost every part of the world, many of them can be found at the International Listening Association Convention once a year.

This year it was in Trinity College Dublin . You may want to know more about the Convention and subscribe for the next one in Vancouver .

Watch out! You won’t be the same person after three days of a Listening Convention. Your awareness about your listening capabilities will be boosted to another level.

This will help you understand others better, make you more respectful, tolerant… you may even want to give the gift of listening to everyone you meet! It may also make you decide to improve your skills in a domain you thought you had acquired the day you were born.

For those starting to wonder about my enthusiasm, no, the ILA is not a sect.

This is my second Convention. I met wonderful, friendly, passionate, and highly knowledgeable people that I now call “my listening friends”.

I discovered other highly committed people, organizations and movements (Listen1st Project, Urban Confessional Free Listening, Someone To Tell It To, Nederland Luistert to name a few) with whom I had fruitful conversations about how to enhance global awareness on listening.

I attended fascinating and very moving presentations and listened to beautiful concerts! People shared genuinely on how listening, or the lack of it, was the core of their health, relationship, family or business experiences.

I personally learned about how to listen beyond emotional boundaries in difficult conversations or when too much enthusiasm is overwhelming! I’ve made some great discoveries about the Irish harp , its music, its history and how harp makers listen to build. I’ve seen school students ready to learn how to be better listeners providing we know how to tickle their interest. One presenter developed a model for such a class that could be spread all over the world.

Listening in health care is a subject in itself, in particular how we as patients are listened to by health care people and what we could do to have conversations enhanced by better listening, for the benefit of everyone.

Another interesting topic explored how our brain works hard to process the information effectively while at the same time struggling against the amount of internal noise we permanently have in our mind.

We also learned how organizations can establish a Listening Culture , and how to give the gift of listening wherever we are by holding a simple cardboard sign that says, “Free Listening”.

To get an idea of the huge variety of presentations on listening , see the program here
Convention Full Digital Program
Convention Program Descriptions with Presenter and Co-Author Bios

I had the privilege to present on my favorite subject, the parallels between listening to music and listening to people. The title of my presentation was “When you speak, you sing!”. It was an interactive talk, where participants could experience the effect of listening to the music in each other’s voice.

I was honored to have an audience of researchers, authors, teachers with a life-time of experience on the subject of listening. I enjoyed sharing my work with them and getting their insights. In every corner, room, corridor, park, pub, at lunches and banquets I found opportunities to have meaningful conversations that raised my understanding and skills in the field of listening.

After attending an ILA Convention, you won’t say that listening is “important”. You will say it’s “essential” to our survival and our life on this planet as an undivided human species. And you’ll feel an inner urge to take action on spreading the message.

Jean Francois Mathieu
Music Composer
Listening Culture Designer at Leaders Today
Chair of the ILA International Day of Listening 2018

The next important ILA event is the International Day of Listening, September 20 . Any of your ideas to make it a memorable day is welcome, just contact me.
info@jfmathieu.com
www.internationaldayoflistening.com

Discover the International Listening Association at www.listen.org
A gold mine of information and even more if you become a member.

Leaders Today is honored to be an affiliate partner of the ILA
www.leaderstoday.co/listen-lead
Contact us for a Talk or a Workshop in your organization
contact@leaderstoday.co

#LeadersToday #InternationalListeningAssociation #DayOfListening #listening @DayOfListening

4 Questions that will change your relations at work

Fri, 11 May 2018 11:03:00 GMT

Here’s a segment from my TEDx Lausanne Talk on 7 May 2018

Listen carefully, don’t interrupt, let them think it through.

It’s their idea, your questions will help them work out their solution.

It seems so easy, it’s almost ridiculous, right? But that’s it. Even a small step into a coaching posture can lead to big changes.

Next time a colleague, your spouse, or your teenage kid comes with a problem or maybe a timid dream, ask these simple questions, and surprise them with what they will discover!

Try the 4 questions, and let me know what happened with a comment below!

Photo Credit R. Baldwin

Saba is in charge of organizational development initiatives, coaching culture implementation, and the coaching and educational programs at Leaders Today. As the founding partner, her work focuses on developing international leaders, fostering collaboration in multicultural workplaces, and advancing the skills of coaches within global organizations.

Why companies train their managers to have coaching skills

Thu, 03 May 2018 22:00:00 GMT

Why have coaching skills

Coaching used to be largely reserved for executives and senior managers for whom an external professional coach would be hired to help them advance in various aspects of their leadership function. Coaching is an exclusive, highly customized learning and development experience, driven by the client’s goals, which explains why companies were willing to make the investment only for a selected number of employees. However nowadays, companies are increasing the availability of coaching to all levels of employees.

Several industry research papers, including those published by the International Coach Federation , have measured the benefits of receiving coaching and the return on investment is excellent, sometimes exceptional depending on how it is calculated. Findings show that employees at varying organisational levels who receive coaching improve performance and business management skills, increase productivity and motivation, sharpen their problem-solving skills, they become more autonomous and proactive, and develop an overall more positive attitude which in turn has a positive effect on the organizational climate.

Given all these remarkable benefits, companies are increasing the availability of coaching for a wider segment of their workforce by creating roles for internal coaches, usually HR professionals who provide full coaching services, and by training managers to integrate coaching skills into their leadership style.

The characteristics of Managers who coach

Coaching by managers is quite different from what professional coaches do. First of all they don’t have coaching clients as such, they coach their team members or other colleagues. Secondly, while a professional coach has no agenda other than the client’s goals, a manager has to balance the team member’s goals, organisational goals and their own goals as the person responsible for the team results. Managers also have to engage with employees in different ways besides coaching, depending on the situation. There are times when it is more appropriate to teach, for example when wanting to transmit technical skills, or give clear directions, when there is an emergency and quick decisiveness is needed.

Once they have learned coaching skills, managers tend to use a “coaching leadership style” most of the time. There are good reasons for this. Here are three of the greatest advantages.

1. SAVE TIME

Managers who coach, develop their team members’ capabilities, rendering them more independent. By using coaching techniques, they support their staff to learn quickly, find their own solutions and solve problems more effectively. A manager who is a bit more controlling and prefers to have the monopoly of all the answers, ends up unwittingly grooming people to repeatedly ask for solutions and directives. This becomes highly time-consuming and an energy drain for the manager.

Instead the coaching manager facilitates learning and the empowerment of staff within their role. When people feel more capable, they become more autonomous and able to take responsibility. They get on with it, without having to constantly ask for guidance. This of course saves a great deal of time for the coaching manager.

2. BOOST PERFORMANCE

A coaching manager focuses on what employees can already do and helps them leverage their existing strengths to achieve new goals. A strengths-based approached, rather than a deficit-oriented one, has a positive impact on performance because the focus is placed on reaching outcomes using existing capabilities rather than spotting weaknesses. There are usually different ways to accomplish a task and if an employee can go about it using their existing strengths, they will produce quicker and better results. Gallup have specialized in creating strength-based cultures worldwide, boosting employee performance to a level where companies have been able to achieve as much as 29% increase in profits, and a reduction of employee disengagement to as low as 1%.

3. BRING A POSITIVE DIMENSION TO WORK RELATIONS

Coaching rests on a number of assumptions that foster a positive working environment, starting with a favourable outlook on people and their potential to grow. Coaching managers treat employees as individuals and support their development becausethey believe it is beneficial for everyone: the person, the team and the organization.

Coaching managers reinforce good performance by generously giving factual positive feedback. Even when they have to give negative feedback, managers who are trained in coaching skills are able to deliver it in the most constructive way, making it acceptable and allowing employees to find their own remedial solutions towards improving their performance.

Learning coaching techniques also develops interpersonal skills, such as effective listening, empathy and the ability to build trusting relations. So by using a coaching approach, managers inevitably bring a warmer human touch to working relations.

Coaching, the leadership style for the 21st century

In conclusion, organisations that adopt a coaching culture and train their managers to exhibit coaching skills have found a highly effective leadership style that produces excellent performance results while also improving organisational climate.

The demise of the traditional command and control mode left a vacuum. Manager are unsure of what ideal management behaviours they should display on a daily basis. From management by objectives, to vague notions of democratic or participatory leadership, to supposedly horizontal organisations, managers have been at a loss on what they should actually do in practice to empower employees while still controlling outcomes for which they are held accountable.

Developing coaching skills is an elegant way to resolve this dilemma. Managers who coach have a leadership style that is adapted to the 21st century with its workforce that expects to be valued, empowered and actively involved in the greater purpose of the organisations they work for.

Use a coaching approach to run great meetings

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 23:00:00 GMT

You would be surprised how many team leaders and managers really dislike meetings. This is a challenge that my leadership coaching clients often face. Different people may have an aversion towards various aspects of the group gathering experience, from facilitating to time-management or staying on track. In the end it can become excruciatingly uncomfortable if they have the responsibility to convene and lead the meeting.

If this is your case, rest assured, it doesn’t have to be like this. A meeting is not meant to be a one-man show! It doesn’t all have to rest upon your shoulders! A meeting at work is a meeting of many minds, a collaborative effort where everyone’s contribution will move the group forwards. So, put your leader coach hat on, take a little bit of a back seat for once, empower others to do their bit and relax!

Do some self-coaching to prepare for the meeting

Ask yourself these questions to prepare your meeting:

Why am I hosting this meeting?
What do I hope to achieve?
How much time is needed for each agenda item?
Can it be done in the time we have?
What is the desired outcome for each agenda item?
Who must I invite?
Who doesn’t really have to be there?
Who else will benefit from this meeting, and how?
Who else needs to be involved in the preparation phase?
What kind of meeting will it be (e.g. information dissemination, problem-solving, debriefing, seeking consensus, project management, team-building)? Try and stick to one or two at the most, it will help you have a clear objective for the meeting.
How will I know that the meeting was worthwhile?

TIP: Make sure to ask your more reserved or introvert team-members who are reluctant to speak up (that could include yourself!), to prepare for any specific agenda item beforehand, so that they can more easily intervene during the meeting.

Use a coaching approach to manage the meeting

As the convener of the meeting you will probably open the session, set a framework and announce the agenda. You might decide to assign roles at this point if you haven’t done so beforehand (e.g. minute writer, time-keeper, etc.).

Then you can hand over the choice of what meeting process to use and the content building to your team by asking some of these questions.

Meeting process/methodology

Given the agenda, what process do you think would be best to think about and discuss these items (e.g. brain-storm, SWOT analysis, small groups, process workflow)?
Who needs to intervene on each agenda item?
How will we make sure everyone gets their say?
What shall we agree on regarding time-keeping?

Building content during the meeting

Follow-up

These are just some examples of questions that structure conversations and invite new ideas to make your meeting more effective. You will certainly have many more that are adapted specifically to you and your team’s situation.

The idea is for you to let go of having to run the show, and instead let the collective intelligence of the group emerge through a targeted and methodical question asking process. This opens up space for dialogue, co-creation, and empowerment of your team members who will be very pleased to contribute and have their contribution welcomed as a valuable input to the teamwork.

Why does having a coaching posture help?

Coaching is a method of conversation driven by strategic inquiry that stimulates novel thinking. This conversation can be between two people, or in a group, or can even be in the form of internal dialogue in the case of self-coaching.

In other words, by asking questions, you create some time to reflect on the issue at hand, and more specifically, asking questions — rather than causing you to jump to conclusions — unveils new perspectives.

If you are not asking questions, you will continue to have the same thoughts. Questions trigger new avenues of exploration and they also provide a way to structure thought.

So put your coaching hat on, relax and start asking rather than telling!

Let others come up with their ideas so that you don’t have to put yourself under pressure to be the eternal provider of the perfect solution all the time!

Tell us how you’re getting on with meeting management, post a comment or a question in the box below!

Saba is responsible for organizational development initiatives, coaching culture implementation, and the coaching and educational programs at Leaders Today. As the founding partner, her work focuses on developing international leaders, fostering collaboration in multicultural workplaces, and advancing the skills of coaches within global organizations.

How to build a coaching culture in your company when you're starting alone

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:20:00 GMT

Is coaching at work used everywhere in the world?
Coaching in the work environment has developed unequally across continents. While coaching is widespread in the US, UK and Australia, it is still on the periphery of management practices in most other countries.

Even where coaching is widely used (80% of companies in the UK, 90% in the US) it often occurs in small pockets of the organization, and it is used in different ways. For example a company might hire executive coaches to support a number of senior managers, or they might designate an internal coach that provides coaching on demand to employees, other companies train their managers to have some coaching skills. Rare are the companies that can claim a fully-fledged coaching culture where coaching is a normalized learning and development approach practiced by all employees. In fact, only 13% of surveyed companies report that they have achieved an organization-wide coaching culture, according to a recent study by the International Coach Federation.

So, how does coaching make its way into an organization?

Most of time, it’s an initiative driven by one or more HR professionals who are aware of the positive organizational impact of coaching, or have been trained as coaches themselves and have actually experienced its benefits in first person. Usually they are very enthusiastic and would like to see a coaching culture develop in their company, because they know it yields fantastic results in improved performance, more positive organizational climate and employee engagement. But of course a culture change is quite a tough challenge to tackle! Especially when it comes to coaching, which most people have heard of, but few really know what it implies until they actually try it.

Let’s assume that you’re a coaching enthusiast who wants to introduce coaching into your company where very few people know what coaching is really about (maybe you’re even the only one!).

[ Readers who are new to coaching at work can get an idea of what it in implies in these blog posts:

What’s different about a coaching conversation

Why companies are training their managers to have coaching skills ]

You’ve probably started talking about how great coaching is and your colleagues might think that it’s just a dynamic way of teaching or giving advice. If you suggest that they get some coaching sessions by an external professional, they might say they don't need someone to teach them how to do their job. Or if you invite them to learn coaching skills to improve their leadership style, they might think that they’re already coaching, so they don’t really need what you’re raving about!

If you’re starting from scratch, it may seem a daunting task, so here are four tips that will help you in the noble venture of introducing coaching to your organization!

1. Choose your entry strategy

These are the three main ways in which coaching takes place in an organization, so you’ll have to choose which strategy to adopt first. If you want a coaching culture you’ll eventually have to develop all of these, but you have to begin somewhere so choose whatever seems to be the most easily achievable strategy to start with in your context.

Hire external coaches for senior or mid-managers to support them in their leadership roles
Create an internal coaching desk staffed by you or a colleague who is a trained coach, that offers coaching to all employees for work-related issues
Train managers, supervisors and team-leaders to gain coaching skills so that they can enhance their leadership style, their communication and people management capabilities.

Achieving a coaching culture is a long process and it implies that an organization has adopted these three ways for coaching to take place. In particular, coaching has been adopted as a style of leadership and communication at all levels of the organization.

In practice it means that most managers have received coaching from an external coach, and that in turn they have learned coaching skills that enable them to engage with colleagues in a constructive and empowering way.

2. Do your homework and get senior management buy-in

Whichever strategy is the best for you to start with, it is absolutely essential that you have sound documentation and references, with statistics at hand and if possible with cases specific to the industry you work in that support the cause of introducing coaching to your organization.

You will have to convince the decision-makers that it is a worthwhile investment of time and money and that it will be profitable for your organization in the short and long run. So prepare your coaching project with solid arguments and examples of positive business results.

Here are three tips to write up your coaching initiative proposal so that it is more likely to get management approval.

Focus on problems and solutions, rather than simply exhorting the virtues of coaching as a management style that will transform your company. With the help of you colleagues on the business side, identify real, specific problems that your organisation is facing (for example in areas such as employee engagement, productivity, innovation, client relations) and explain how training managers to have coaching skills, or hiring external professionals to coach individual managers (or both) will contribute to solving these problems. If possible, give one or two industry examples of successful coaching initiatives in companies similar to yours.
Customize your paper so that it responds directly and uniquely to the issues you want to resolve in your company by introducing a coaching culture. I have seen generic “coaching is great” concept papers, put together hastily or copied from other organizations, or even worse copied from books, that lack credibility because they are too vague and don’t reflect the reality of the company in question.
Explain how you will measure the results (more on this in point 4 below), demonstrate that you already have the mechanisms to do so, and state in what format you will present your reporting on coaching outcomes.

Companies that have achieved a coaching culture usually conducted large-scale change programmes, driven by the senior management. Major organizations like the UK Foreign Office, Siemens or IBM integrated coaching in their leadership strategy and deployed it as a culture change process.

If you can’t get the initiative to be fully driven by the senior management, don’t get discouraged. At least get their endorsement to start in one corner of the organization, a department, a work unit or across a functional level such as all the sales team leaders.

Coaching associations, HR and L&D professional bodies provide good resources (industry surveys, research, white papers, cases) that you might find useful to build up your case, for example:

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
The International Coach Federation
Association for Talent Development

If you’re looking for academic research to support your coaching initiative, the International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring (Oxford Brookes University) is one of the rare peer reviewed journals that gives free access to their articles.

3. Find a champion

Get support from someone in the organization who has experienced coaching or is, for any other reason, convinced of its value as an organizational tool. It’s very important to have a third party who believes in your project and acts as advocate for you.

If you can’t find one, create one! I’m not suggesting that you force people to convert to coaching, but if you know of someone who is really interested in the topic, take them up on it. Explain what coaching is, give them an opportunity for exposure to coaching such as inviting them to a coaching event (for example your local ICF chapter workshops), or give them an easy to read book about coaching such as John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance, which is an excellent introduction, or offer them a free coaching session.

4. Measure everything and report on the impact of coaching

Like any other learning and development initiative, each of the three organizational coaching strategies mentioned above needs to be measured in terms of impact on individuals and on the company, so make sure you collect feedback on all your coaching initiatives and that you measure the business results.

There is no single way to measure the impact of coaching, that is why studies on return on investment give very different results. A PriceWaterhouseCoopers conducted for ICF listed ROI figures ranging from 10 to 49 times the investment. It really depends on what is measured and how it is measured.

Ultimately it will be your task to determine relevant metrics and measure the results of coaching based on the key performance indicators and competence framework that are unique to your company. This is a tedious task, but it must be done unwaveringly and systematically if you want to develop evidence about the effectiveness and credibility of coaching in your organization.

You should be measuring intangible and tangible outcomes, as well as return on investment whenever possible. Here are some ideas of things that you should be measuring:

intangible factors: self-confidence, interpersonal skills, leadership presence
tangible outcomes: changed behaviors, relations with colleagues, handling conflict, managing meetings, speaking in public, motivating teams
business results: impact on sales, account management, strategy implementation, project completion, innovation, savings.

You must also decide on a methodology and measurement tools. In your first steps when measuring organizational coaching, I would suggest you start with a simple, easy to use methodology that you can adapt to your needs. The New World Kirpatrick Model is a tested and useful method, in particular with the addition of the Level 4 evaluation which measures business results. Make sure you survey different perspectives: self-assessment by the coach, assessment by the coachee, feedback by others (team, supervisor, clients, peers) as appropriate.

Once you get the hang of it, you can elaborate a more thorough ROI measurement for coaching results. An excellent book is “Measuring the Success of Coaching: A Step-by-Step Guide for Measuring Impact and Calculating ROI“, by Patricia Pulliam Phillips (Chair of the ROI Institute),‎ Jack J. Phillips and Lisa Ann Edwards.

Most importantly, create impactful communication channels to report on the success of your coaching initiatives! Collecting feedback and measuring ROI is not enough unless you find opportunities to present your findings. Create an attractive communication plan and stick to it, until everyone in your company knows about coaching and how it is improving your workplace.

Be prepared for the long haul, but reap rewards right away!

Creating a coaching culture does not happen overnight, but you can still get excellent and very rewarding results at a small level when you let even a small group of employees experience the positive power of coaching.

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