I hope you enjoyed listening to the 1-1 coaching in action session with Kelly, and that it gave you a flavour for what coaching is and is not. Today you get to see a very different flavour of session, with James. I admire James for his deep thinking and desire to do his best by everyone
For HR/L&D
Coach mentoring, coach supervision – the difference
Are you a coach, wondering whether to look for coach mentoring or coach supervision? What’s the difference between the two? Your time and money are precious, so how do you decide which to invest in? Here’s how I would differentiate between the two: Coach mentoring: Gets you ready for accreditation (the International Coach Federation) mandates 10
1-1 Coaching in Action
Ever wondered what coaching really sounds like? Perhaps you have been thinking about coaching for yourself, but you don’t quite know whether it will meet your needs? Well you can see coaching in action right here. Click on the picture below to listen to a 30 minute session between me and Kelly, helping her to figure
Coaching: time and space to percolate
You might have noticed I’ve been a bit slack lately. Writer’s block! Nine years (or maybe more, I’ve lost count) of blogging every week and I suddenly get writer’s block. I sat on it for a bit, thinking that inspiration would strike. But I didn’t really give it any proper reflection time. I kept going with other
Unfinished Business
Unfinished Business: Book-club joy I love my book-club! It’s a work book-club, where we read work books. It really helps me to see a book from different perspectives, relative to my fellow book clubbers’ lives and work. We each read the book in relation to our own lives, so we each take something different out
Creating a Coaching Culture
Creating a Coaching Culture requires the same kind of rigour as any other culture change. That includes articulating your end-point and how you will recognise success when you see it, then pulling a multitude of levers to enable you to get from where you are today to that end goal. Those levers include technology, process and
Coaching to Support the Employee Experience
We’ve concluded our series about how coaching can (and should?) support the employee experience. For those of you who wish to catch up on posts that you have missed, or if you like to have everything all in one place like I do, here is the full catalogue. The key messages about coaching to support the
The surprising truth about virtual coaching
Many people assume that face-to-face coaching must be better than virtual coaching (by telephone coaching or skype). But a 2011 research study* featured in Consulting Psychology Journal shows that coaching at a distance is just as effective as face-to-face. Coaching by telephone is more effective than face-to-face In my experience, coaching by telephone is actually
The power of Walking Coaching
Last week’s post on virtual coaching got me thinking about the similarities to walking coaching. I live in the New Forest, in Hampshire, which is the perfect place for walking in nature – and therefore for walking coaching. What’s different about walking coaching? Walking coaching creates forward motion, physically and mentally Henry David Thoreau who
Coaching, training or mentoring?
I often have to explain that coaching is not the same as mentoring, training or counselling. I thought it might be useful to take a step back and reflect on the differences between various forms of capability development options, and their different uses.
Drama Triangle to Winner’s Triangle
The Drama Triangle Like the parent, adult, child model that we looked at on Friday, this is from the Transactional Analysis world. I use it on myself all the time, to work out where I am operating and whether there is a more useful place to be in the Winner’s Triangle. The triangle has three roles,
Developing Individuals through Action learning
Peer to peer coaching for Individualised Leader Development, using action learning Everyone is unique – and so are their leadership development needs. So ‘one size fits all’ leadership development programmes often fail to hit the mark. Coaching and action learning both provide more individualised support and challenge. Participants in an Individualised Leadership Programme (ILP) bring their
Transitions – transformational vs transactional
I’ve noticed something about transition coaching (especially outplacement coaching). Some outplacement companies support their clients through the transactional side of finding a new job. Things like writing their CV, applying for roles, composing a cover letter, interview skills. That’s good – as far as it goes. But there is something missing from that equation. Change provides
The employee experience: Coaching to join an organisation
Let’s turn our attention to coaching to join an organisation. In our series on coaching to support the employee experience, we’ve looked at: Joining or re-joining the workforce A change in role Changing role Leaving an organisation through choice, or through redundancy And only now do we come to joining an organisation. Does it seem
Endings and Beginnings
Endings and Beginnings I am fascinated by making good endings in order to make great new beginnings whenever we go through some kind of change. Well in the past couple of months, I’ve been pondering the ultimate ending – the end of life. It’s not a topic we talk about much, but it feels really important to
Coaching to leave an organisation – redundancy
Last week, we teed up the idea of coaching to help employees who are leaving an organisation, through their own choice. Let’s now look at coaching to support people at a time of redundancy of role (I think that is a peculiarly UK phrase, which in other countries may be called being let go. This
