Before I dig in to conversation gaps, a quick update on Katy. Thank you to everyone for your well wishes; your compassion was much appreciated. I am relieved to tell you that she has a calcium deposit under her tongue, which is harmless. No further action needed. Thank goodness. It takes these incidences to remind
Tag: leader as coach
What will you do to celebrate Two-Day
The 22nd day of the 2ndmonth 2012 is almost upon us. Two-Day. What will you do to celebrate? May I make a suggestion? It takes two to tango, so they say. It also takes two to have great conversations. People with conversation gaps are 280% more likely to say they intend to leave an organization.
How to feel valued as a manager when delegation and coaching means there are less tasks for you to do
A manager’s job is not to DO all the DOING, but to delegate more and more downwards. Lots of good reasons for this: your people learn how to do more they feel challenged; and as a result, more fulfilled decisions are pushed down the pyramid, freeing you up to make the tougher decisions that involve
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
Creating Insight
Creating insight for yourself and others is the main function of a supervisor. Discuss! I read an interesting article on this subject of insight a while back, called “The Eureka Hunt” by Jonah Lehrer. I’d like to propose that instead of trying to do so many tasks themselves, the supervisor should delegate more, freeing up
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
What’s stopping us from coaching?
There are many advantages to both coach and coachee of the manager being more coach-like (that is, asking open questions, not giving the answers through advice). For example, the individual becomes more self-sufficient over time, because they have been “taught” to think for themselves, by asking questions. Over time, that frees up the manager to
Unleash the independent critical thinking of your team members through coaching
John Whitmore, in his book Coaching for Performance, said that he had been told what to do as a small boy, then at school, then in the army. “So when I reached a position of authority, what did I do? I told people what to do, because that is what all my role models had
Safe environment for testing my thinking
Today’s guest post is from Barbara Harvey. It’s great to see how she’s developed her own coaching style, based on an experience of being coached herself. Barbara writes: My first experience of coaching came when I found myself, at very short notice and unexpectedly, rubbing the jet lag from my eyes in a hotel in
Coaching as a Force Multiplier?
Today’s post is a guest post from George Burton. George writes: I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that there will always be more work than there is time available. To cope with ever-increasing workload, I tried to get smarter and more efficient in my work, but every hour saved was filled with
Performance Coaching and Career Coaching
In companies, I’d suggest that there are two forms of (real) coaching. Why do I add real in parentheses? Because there are so many things that people call coaching, which really are not coaching. Such as mentoring, which is about giving advice based on experience. Coaching is not advice. So what is it? It’s
