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.

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?

It can be lonely at the top. Even in an organization employing thousands you may feel there is no-one you can confide in or trust. A coach can adopt a number of roles:
Someone who can listen to what you say, in confidence and safety.
Someone who can help you take time out, reflect and make sense of your situation.
Someone who can give you open, honest, non-judgmental feedback.
Someone who can question and challenge.
Someone who can help you through the process of making tough decisions.
Someone who can be motivational and supportive 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. Analysis
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.