Can you be good at business and good at personal relationships at the same time? If you want to be a great (or even a good) leader, this is another Yin and Yang that you need to factor into your way of working. What is business acumen? How would you describe it? Let’s look at
Tag: coaching skills
The Yin and Yang of (Virtual Leadership): Self-confidence and confidence in others
As a leader, we need self-confidence. I work with a lot of leaders who lack inner self-confidence, although they put a brave face on it. Some might call it imposter syndrome – thinking you will be found out sooner or later. But much of the time, we are simply facing situations that we have never
In coaching, it’s the little things that make a big difference
As I have been mentor coaching coaches recently (observing their coaching and giving them competency-based feedback), we’ve realised that small changes in language make a big difference to the way a question or an observation is received by the thinker. It might only reach their sub-conscious, but even then, it will get in the way
What they say they want is not always what they need!
I’ve been tussling with something for a while now. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I come from an employee experience background. As such, I believe that we should ask employees what they need in order to have a phenomenal career experience, rather than assuming we know what they need and providing that
Getting unstuck
It’s not uncommon for people in coaching to get stuck. They might get lost in their thinking, or they might just come to a point where they say outright, “I’m stuck”. So how do we get them unstuck? First, we need to notice it, and not get stuck with them! If we jump into the
How do you build a coaching culture over time?
In the last blog of my “When to Build a Coaching Culture Series”, I discuss how do you build a coaching culture over time? We’ve said that we are starting small in building a coaching culture. One starfish at a time. But over time, as you expand this to more triads of leaders, there will
How will you know that your coaching culture is making a difference?
In the sixth blog of my “When to Build a Coaching Culture Series” I talk about setting goals and establishing the measures of success. It’s hard to measure the value of time, particularly time to think. If you want to spend money in organisations, you (more often than not) need to prove that it’s money
Who can build a coaching culture?
In the fourth blog of my “When to Build a Coaching Culture Series”, I discuss who can build a coaching culture. Anyone can start coaching, from any seat. Anyone can create a ripple effect through the people with whom they use a coach approach. Have you heard the story about the starfish? Strolling along the
Coaching a peer
Now, let’s move on to talk about how to coach a peer, which one of you requested in the survey a while back. The easy answer is that you use exactly the same skills as you would use with anyone else. (active listening, powerful questioning, presence, contracting, direct communication, creating awareness, designing actions, planning and
Coaching virtually
Almost all of the coaching I do is virtual, and in many cases, I have never even met my coachee face-to-face. So it can be done! Here’s how… The skills – contracting, ethics, powerful questions, listening, trust, intimacy, and presence, direct communication, designing actions and planning and goal-setting, and managing progress and accountability – are
Coaching a career counselee vs coaching a direct report
Today’s post revisits the subject of how to coach a career counselee/mentee vs coaching a direct report. The difference is in the focus, rather than the skills. The skills – contracting, ethics, powerful questions, listening, trust, intimacy, and presence, direct communication, designing actions and planning and goal-setting, and managing progress and accountability – are exactly
A poem about listening
Please, just listen. When I ask you to listen to me, and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are
Great questions
One of the major elements of coaching is asking questions, such that the other person can come to their own conclusions. I found some interesting quotes about questions this week that I’d like to share with you: Neil Postman “Everything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual
What’s the difference between good coaching and GREAT coaching
I went to a presentation by the Center for Creative Leadership about creating coaching cultures recently. I came away with a great 2 x 2 grid that explains the difference between good and great coaching. Some people’s coaching focuses on the problem and the “coach” telling the individual what to do about it – and
How Does Coaching Fit into Awakened Enterprise™?
Today’s guest post is from Patrick Ryan, leadership trainer and master coach. This is a great summary about why we would even care about using a coach approach in today’s world. Patrick shares how coaching fits into the emergent, congruent and profitable ways of doing business. The world is currently facing a series of economic
Busting the myths about coaching
I am often asked to recommend a coach to help someone to “fix” a weakness, such as not working constructively with other people. This is one way to think about coaching…that is, that it is remedial. I much prefer to think of it as releasing someone’s potential – focusing on their strengths and how they
