Ever considered spending time with a leadership coach?
Do you know what world-class athletes like golfer Tiger Woods, tennis star Serena Williams, and swimmer Michael Phelps have in common?
They have a personal coach.
So can you!
Have you ever…
- Gotten stuck trying to figure out the “vision thing” and it’s practical role in the day-to-day operation?
- Wondered how to inspire disillusioned, skeptical people to do their best?
- Found yourself avoiding a difficult conversation because you weren’t sure how to handle it?
- Been faced with a tough decision, and wondered whether or even how to include your team in choosing the best option?
- Just taken charge of a new group, and wanted to have a smooth, successful transition?
- Felt overwhelmed by resistance to change?
You can take yourself only so far without the help of others. Enter the leadership coach.
Nowhere else will you receive 100 percent dedicated attention to you. A coach is someone who helps you move from where you are to where you want to be, and does so by focusing on your goals, your skills, and your habits.
As a leadership coach, my clients include senior executives, middle managers, front-line supervisors and team leaders. I’ve don’t have a cookie-cutter approach – each engagement is unique. That said, these projects have several things in common:
- The work is confidential.
- If the coaching is sponsored by the coachee’s supervisor or a senior executive, we begin with a three-way meeting to establish ground rules and clarify objectives.
- The work is goal-oriented, and those goals are established at the beginning.
- Often the work is enhanced by some information gathering, either in the form of a 360-degree feedback instrument or with confidential interviews with key stakeholders.
- The work is short-term – often beginning and concluding with a two-hour meeting, with several one hour sessions in the middle.
- There may be homework between meetings – an action item, an article to read, etc.
- The meetings are conducted by phone, Zoom, FaceTime, etc.
My academic training is counseling psychology. While coaching is not therapy, having an understanding of the dynamics of the helping relationship has proven enormously useful.
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
