WHY COACHING?
Because it works!
There has been a lot of research and the numbers add up. People and organizations who use coaches and function with a coaching culture have greater success in generating their desired outcomes than those who don't. It's rarely easy and it doesn't protect them from all kinds of bad surprises, challenges, and bad luck. But it builds thinking systems designed to navigate the unknown and flow with it rather than desperately pushing against what isn't working.
Some quick statistics:
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70% of companies who use coaches report increased performance.
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80% of coaching clients report increased self-confidence.
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73% report improved relationships
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72% report improved communication skills
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86% of companies report a positive return on investment in coaching.
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Companies with a strong coaching culture reported 69% employee engagement compared to 39% for companies that do not.
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54% of top talent retained in companies that coach compared to 32% for those that don't.
Statistics come from the ICF 2020 Global Coaching Study carried out by PWC
... because each individual has a unique set of stakes, vision of the world, and needs. Each of us also has a pool of resources that we can harness and tailor to meet these needs.
The International Coach Federation (ICF) has been gathering data for over a decade from coaches, individuals, and companies that use coaching, and also from individuals and companies that don’t.
The statistics are powerful. The measurable indicators of companies that use coaches and apply coaching values are noticeably higher than for companies that don’t. These run from increased employee satisfaction to reduced absenteeism, and lower attrition, to performance indicators such as increased profits and quality.
The areas in which participants claim to have gained the most benefit through working with a coach are: improved communication skills, increased self-esteem, and confidence, increased productivity, improved work/life balance, increased well-being, optimized individual/team performance, improved management strategies, expanding career opportunities, accelerated integration into a new professional role.
There are some amazing coaches out there and I know many, and I give great thanks to the few I have worked with. Each one has their style and qualities.
I combine some non-negotiable necessities for a coach with some less-common competencies, experience, and style and they add up to make me a less-common coach who has accompanied people the world over in building life-transforming changes and never have I received so much positive recognition, thanks and feedback for my work as that from my coaching clients.
The non-negotiables:
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I have trained as a coach (with Erickson International and from whom I have the Erickson Professional Coach Certificate), I also studied team coaching with Erickson.
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I am a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF) and was accredited by them in 2019. I adhere to the ICF code of conduct and base my coaching practice on the ICF core competencies.
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I am experienced: I started out coaching friends for free and anybody I could persuade to work with me but quickly gained paying clients. I sought out people facing difficult situations, people with high stakes and sometimes strong personalities, I was warned that some of these people would not be coachable – they were.
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I worked hard and quickly to get the coaching hours I needed to get accredited, but hungry to grow in skill and credibility I trained in other areas of HR services to become a leadership assessor and to debrief 360 feedback questionnaires. I am qualified to analyse and debrief the SOSIE personality test and also the FICS cognitive process test and have studied the Hofstede Intercultural Dimensions.
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I have also worked for many years as an adult trainer in companies. Most recently creating programs for management interpersonal skills, gaining added value from emotions, and creating development assessments for young managers as well as for mid-career directors and leaders.
Schools of thought that inform my coaching:
As well as the ICF and Erickson International coaching school and their values that have greatly influenced me, I have drawn great value from training I followed in Non-Violent Communication, and from the work on Richard Schwartz who developed a psychological model known as Internal Family Systems (IFS) that inform a lot of my coaching work to overcome internal obstacles. Ideas put forward in Danial Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence lie at the heart of my coaching practice as does the awareness gained from Erin Meyer's work on intercultural communication and the work of Amy Edmondson on Team Psychological Safety.
I believe in the intelligence of people, I believe in the equal value of people (race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, schooling…) I like people (even though they are annoying sometimes!), I believe that coaching skills are powerful, but not magic: that they can be learned and applied by anybody that would like access to them.
My added value:
I find it quite easy to think outside the box. For a lot of my life, I have been looking at the wrong things and in the wrong direction, as a coach, I started to realise that this was, in fact, a type of skill that helps clients find different ways of framing ideas and problems.
As an experienced coach and trainer in interpersonal skills for business, I can change roles quickly and with agility. If during a coaching accompaniment, a person asks for understanding that they don’t have and of which I have knowledge I can change roles (stating and underlining the temporary change of roles) and switch back to coaching again. As a trainer, my style relies heavily on coaching and getting people to try out, evaluate, and find solutions that fit their own needs and when people bring individual challenges (which is always the case) I can move into listening, support, and accompaniment mode with ease and confidence.
I bring a certain amount of personal energy to both training and coaching and I use this to build connections of trust with people modeling behaviours and openness that are useful for the participants to allow themselves during coaching work. I come to neither coaching nor training in a position of superiority or inferiority but as an equal. Working with me, however, is not a flat experience where I am simply listening or supporting. I encourage people to notice their ideas that appear incoherent or incompatible with the outcomes they desire. I am audacious and frequently ask permission from my participants to challenge them and their ideas. And I like laughter. Jokes and playing are part of my everyday work style. They are always done with respect for equality and never come before the values of listening and keeping a safe space for the client.
Ultimately, my personality is what makes me different from other coaches (and all coaches are different). I believe it has an added value to be present as an equal with the people I coach or train. I speak with confidence and care. I will talk about my own emotions, and use anecdotes or illustrations from my own life where they are suitable and can be used as a model of process for somebody creating their own strategies or action plans - I also take care not to take up too much space. I bring who I am into the room in the service of the people I work with to create ease, trust, and a sense that both coaching and training can be a nice way to spend time productively.