WORK LEADER COACHING
We believe that the role of Work Leader almost always begins
with disorientation. Taking an outstanding individual performer
and appointing him or her as the work leader can be traumatic.
It is at that time that support for this wholly new job responsibility
becomes most important.
Deltennium believes that this transition is a crucial phase
in determining success, and that forward thinking organizations
can provide much needed assistance to newly appointed leaders.
Through our books, seminars, Webinars and the Work Leaders Newsletter,
we provide great insight and comfort to the new leader.
In addition to these support activities, the use of coaching
can be invaluable and we recommend that all organizations consider
this support during the first months of the new work leaders
experience.
COACHING DEFINED
Deltennium coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to
help our clients produce fulfilling results in their personal
and professional lives. We help people improve their performances
and enhance the quality of their lives through a higher level
of performance, learning and satisfaction. Coaching is not therapy
and neither the client nor coach is seeking emotional healing
or relief from psychological pain.
Deltennium coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their
approach to individual client needs. We seek to elicit solutions and strategies
from the client, as we recognize that the client is naturally creative and
resourceful. Our job is to provide support that enhances the skills, resources,
and creativity that the client already possesses.
The individual or team chooses the focus of conversation, while
the coach listens and contributes observations and questions
as well as concepts and principles which can assist in generating
possibilities and identifying actions. Coaching has the freedom
and flexibility to address a wide variety of personal and professional
topics. In any given coaching relationship, coach and client
alone determine the scope of their work. Coaching is not necessarily
restricted to a narrowly defined issue nor is its scope determined
in any other way.
Through the coaching process the clarity that is needed to support
the most effective actions is achieved. Coaching accelerates
the individual's or team's progress by providing greater focus
and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices.
Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they
are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future.
With the diverse backgrounds of our Managing Associates, we
have the ability to use the knowledge, skills and experiences
of our colleagues to help us support your efforts.
HOW SERVICE IS DELIVERED
Coaches and clients arrange the schedule and means of contact (e.g., in person,
by phone, or via e-mail) that serve them both and they are not constrained
to follow a standardized schedule or means of contact.
Coach and client together choose the focus, format, and desired outcomes for
their work. Coaching concentrates primarily on the present and future. Coaching
does not focus on the past or on the past's impact on the present. The client
does not relinquish the responsibility for creating and maintaining these nor
does the coach take full responsibility for them.
ADVICE
Advice, opinions, or suggestions are occasionally offered in coaching. Both
parties understand that the client is free to accept or decline what is offered
and takes the ultimate responsibility for action. The coach is not discouraged
from offering advice, opinions or suggestions on occasion.
A coach makes a request of the client to promote action toward the client's
desired outcome. A coach does not make such requests in order to fix the client's
problem or understand the client's past.
RELATIONSHIP
Relationship is the foundation of coaching. The coach and client intentionally
develop a relationship which is characterized by a growing and mutual appreciation
and respect for each other as individuals. This relationship is not an adjunct
to or byproduct of the coaching. Nor is it based on the client's position or
performance.
RESULTS AND FUTURE IMPACT
In coaching, any contribution the coach makes to producing the client's desired
outcome is through on-going interaction with the client. The coach's role does
not include producing a contracted product or result outside of the coaching
sessions. Coaching is designed to provide clients with a greater capacity to produce
results and a greater confidence in their ability to do so. It is intended
that clients do not leave coaching with a perception that they need to rely
on a coach in order to produce similar results in the future.
CONFIDENTIALITY
In coaching, information drawn from the client is used by the coach to promote
the client's awareness and choice of action. This information is not used to
evaluate performance or produce reports for anyone but the person being coached.
No matter what other consulting or business relationships that exist between
Deltennium and a supporting organization, the client confidentiality is absolute.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- What are the benefits of coaching?
Individuals who engage in a coaching relationship can expect to experience
fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking
and decision making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased
confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles. Consistent
with a commitment to enhancing their personal effectiveness, they can also
expect to see appreciable results in the areas of productivity, personal
satisfaction with life and work, and the achievement of personally relevant
goals.
- How can you determine if coaching is right for you?
To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what
you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When someone has a fairly clear
idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool
for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater
ease.
Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself if you find it
valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be
asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you
are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes
in your work or life. If the answer to these questions is yes,
then coaching may be a beneficial way for you to grow and develop.
- What are some typical reasons someone might work
with a coach?
There are many reasons that an individual or team might choose to work with
a coach, including but not limited to the following:
- There is something at stake (a challenge, stretch
goal or opportunity), and it is urgent, compelling or exciting
or all of the above
- There is a gap in knowledge, skills, confidence,
or resources
- A big stretch is being asked or required, and it
is time sensitive
- There is a desire to accelerate results
- There is a need for a course correction in work
or life due to a setback
- An individual has a style of relating that is ineffective
or is not supporting the achievement of one's personally relevant
goals
- There is a lack of clarity, and there are choices
to be made
- The individual is extremely successful, and success
has started to become problematic
- Work and life are out of balance, and this is creating
unwanted consequences
- One has not identified his or her core strengths
and how best to leverage them
- The individual desires work and life to be simpler,
less complicated
- There is a need and a desire to better organized
and more self-managing
- What does the coaching process look like?
Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either
face-to-face or by teleconference call) to assess the individual's
current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the
relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific
desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted
in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a
previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching
sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions
that support the achievement of one's personally prioritized
goals. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending
on the individual's personal needs and preferences.
- How long does a coach work with an individual?
The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual's
or team's needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching,
3 to 6 months of working with a coach may work. For other types of coaching,
people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period.
Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals,
the ways individuals or teams like to work, the frequency of coaching meetings,
and financial resources available to support coaching.
- What is the role of the coach?
The role of the coach is to provide objective assessment and
observations that foster the individual's or team members' enhanced
self-awareness and awareness of others, practice astute listening
in order to garner a full understanding of the individual's or
team's circumstances, be a sounding board in support of possibility
thinking and thoughtful planning and decision making, champion
opportunities and potential, encourage stretch and challenge
commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations, foster
the shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge
blind spots in order to illuminate new possibilities, and support
the creation of alternative scenarios. Finally, the coach maintains
professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including
confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession's code
of ethics.
- What is the role of the client?
The role of the individual or team is to create the coaching
agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals, utilize
assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness
of others, envision personal and/or organizational success, assume
full responsibility for personal decisions and actions, utilize
the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh
perspectives, take courageous action in alignment with personal
goals and aspirations, engage big picture thinking and problem
solving skills, and utilize the tools, concepts, models and principles
provided by the coach to engage effective forward actions.
- What does coaching ask of an individual?
To be successful, coaching asks certain things of the individual, all of
which begin with intention.
- Focus -on one's self, the tough
questions, the hard truths--and one's success
- Observation -the behaviors and
communications of others
- Listening -to one's intuition,
assumptions, judgments, and to the way one sounds when one speaks
- Self discipline -to challenge
existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and to develop new
ones which serve one's goals in a superior way
- Style -leveraging personal strengths
and overcoming limitations in order to develop a winning style
- Decisive actions -however uncomfortable,
and in spite of personal insecurities, in order to reach for
the extraordinary
- Compassion -for one's self as
he or she experiments with new behaviors, experiences setbacks-and
for others as they do the same
- Humor -committing to not take
one's self so seriously, using humor to lighten and brighten
any situation
- Personal control -maintaining
composure in the face of disappointment and unmet expectations,
avoiding emotional reactivity
- Courage -to reach for more than
before, to shift out of being fear based in to being in abundance
as a core strategy for success, to engage in continual self examination,
to overcome internal and external obstacles
- How is coaching distinct from other service professions?
Professional coaching is a distinct service which focuses on an individual's
life as it relates to goal setting, outcome creation and personal change
management. In an effort to understand what a coach is, it can be helpful
to distinguish coaching from other professions that provide personal or
organizational support.
- Therapy. Coaching
can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First,
coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional
growth and development based on individual-initiated change in
pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked
to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving
and future focused. Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing
pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship
between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving
difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual's
emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological
functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances
in more emotionally healthy ways. Therapy outcomes often include
improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions
may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on
creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in
one's work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship
is on action, accountability and follow through.
- Consulting. Consultants may be
retained by individuals or organizations for the purpose of accessing
specialized expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely,
there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnoses problems
and prescribes and sometimes implements solutions. In general,
the assumption with coaching is that individuals or teams are
capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying
supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
- Mentoring. Mentoring,
which can be thought of as guiding from one's own experience
or sharing of experience in a specific area of industry or career
development, is sometimes confused with coaching. Although some
coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, such as
in mentor coaching new coaches, coaches are not typically mentors
to those they coach.
- Training. Training
programs are based on the acquisition of certain learning objectives
as set out by the trainer or instructor. Though objectives are
clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual
or team being coached with guidance provided by the coach. Training
also assumes a linear learning path which coincides with an established
curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum
plan.
- Athletic Development. Though
sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different
from the traditional sports coach. The athletic coach is often
seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals
or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge.
Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience
and knowledge of the individual or team that determines the direction.
Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development,
does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or
incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity
for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.
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