Executive Coaching

The overall goal of coaching is to bring out the best in managers and executives, improving their personal and business effectiveness. This covers a range of objectives, such as:

• Building on existing strengths,
• Making career progress,
• Making a successful transition to a new role,
• Tackling a challenging project,
• Addressing a specific problem.

To find out more please call 01628 674398 or email info@self-insight.com.

Specific problems may include:

• Managing stress
• Enhancing personal impact
• Dealing with derailers
• Improving management style
• Improving decision making style
• Gaining influence and impact
• Establishing the right work-life balance
• Cultural issues
• Dealing with organizational change
• Dealing with organizational politics

Why Would You Need A Coach?

Our coaches will:

• Listen to what you say, in confidence and safety.
• Help you take time out, reflect and make sense of your situation.
• Give you open, honest, non-judgmental feedback.
• Question and challenge.
• Help you through the process of making tough decisions.
• Motivate and support you through change.

Our Coaches

Our coaches have:

• Business knowledge and experience
• Psychological skills and insight
• Coaching expertise

The Process

1. Establish a contract. It is essential to establish the ground-rules before starting a coaching relationship. Factors to consider are:
   • Clarifying the process.
   • The provision of an assurance, by the coach, of complete confidentiality.
   • Are there any other stakeholders and if so, what should be their involvement if any? Are there any circumstances where they should be involved?
   • What would be considered to be a successful outcome? This relates to evaluation.
   • Agreement on the overall goals.
   • Agreement on the type of coaching: performance, career etc.
   • Agreement on the estimated duration of the intervention. Typically a coaching relationship requires between 2 and 6 sessions, each of between 2 and 4 hours.
   • Agreement on payment terms.
2. Analyse the situation. It is important to spend time at the beginning establishing the context and issues, in order to focus on what is most significant. It is also important to establish broad goals and ensure that they are aligned with those of the organization. We also spend time building a picture of the manager to be coached. This enhances their own level of self-insight. Typically this stage lasts for one or two sessions. It would entail one or more of the following:
   • In-depth interview.
   • Psychometric tests.
   • 360-degree feedback.
   • Stakeholder feedback (a form in which stakeholders are interviewed via telephone interviews).
   • Direct observation in the workplace.
   • Further discussions.
3. Initial Review. At this point the manager can decide whether to continue, or perhaps request a different coach.
4. Actual coaching. Generally this takes around 4-5 sessions. In Performance Coaching the process is to set specific, measurable, actionable goals and to track performance on their achievement. In Transition Coaching the activity focuses on understanding the political power structure, making an early impact, and in the case of moving up the leadership pipleline, identifting new skills to be developed. Most coaching entails extensive one-to-one dialogue and can extend to direct observation in the workplace, and skill development through action learning. We generally have a mid-way evaluation point to ensure the coaching process is on track.
5. Evaluation. In the case when an organization is paying for the coaching, it is particularly important to agree a framework for evaluation. This may be a structured form for the manager being coached, but we may solicit feedback from other key stakeholders. We also ensure confidentiality is maintained at this stage.

Ethical Standards

We abide by the ethical standards of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the European Mentoring & Coaching Council.

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© Self-insight 2011