Coaching

Business leaders and athletic coaches know the importance of mental health and well being when it comes to performance of their employees and team. These leaders and coaches also know the dynamics of groups, the personality differences, can affect group cohesion, including the personality type of the leader or coach in regards to the team make-up.

Many project managers and team leaders actively pursue coaching methods to employ within their teams to spur greater performance. Some people are not sure what coaching is, or how it is any different than telling people what to do and how to do it. Coaching is definitely not micromanagement. True coaching is an equal partnership between two or more people for the purpose of finding solutions and bettering performance. Coaching techniques include "acting as-if", which is a Rogerian method in which people think of how things would be, if things would be different. They also include brainstorming, open-ended questioning, paraphrasing, assessments, and goal achievement. Each of these concepts is important for coaching to be truly successful.

The foundation to effective coaching is communication. Without an ability to actively listen, to ask open-ended questions, and to attend to the messages they provide, the coaching process will not be successful. Project managers attending the Coaching in the Workplace workshop have shared their horror stories of "coaching" in the past. One person mentioned that a company she worked for hired "coaches". These people walked around the building in white polos with the word Coach embroidered on one side of their shirt. What did these people do? They were managers who walked around to the employees, told them what was going wrong, told them why it was wrong, and how to correct. They were not coaches, they were managers. According to the project managers, they were micromanagers! These project managers had a bad taste in their mouths when it came to "coaching." Fortunately, after the Coaching in the Workplace workshop, they talked about how their views have positively changed in regards to the coaching methods.

For those interested in using coaching in your leadership and project management, here are some guidelines:

1. Practice Active Listening: Even though you may not be fully interested in everything going on with Person X's life, being fully present in the conversation will help to understand why the issue came to where it is today. It is a great ice breaker to let Person X talk as much or as little as they wish to be comfortable.

2. Paraphrase the issue. When coaching, it is important that one of you brings up the reason for the meeting. It is best if the topic can be introduced by Person X. For instance, asking open ended questions may get him to think in that direction, "So, Joe, what is on your mind today?" or "Let's talk about the project, Joe. What concerns do you have at this point?"

3. Once the issue is presented, ask Person X to come up with their own solutions. Some people may be able to do this on the spot, and others may want time to think it over. The important thing is to get some ideas rolling in the meeting, even if you have to suggest one or two ideas to get Person X to generate three or four more ideas. Focus on the solution. Do not focus on the person. (Don't: You did a horrible job on this project... Do: This project needs some tweaking to meet the new specifications. Let's work together to come up with some solutions.)

4. Work together to come up with consequences if these solutions are not implemented within a given (specified) time frame.

5. Ask Person X to summarize the conversation: working with both the issues and the solutions presented. In this, you are also verifying whether or not the conversation was attended to and heard by both you and Person X. Depending on the person with whom you are working, you may also want to follow up with a written summary of the conversation and solutions. Some people will do well in writing the summary themselves and forwarding that to you. Others will struggle with completing the summary. With these people, it may be easier to quickly complete the summary yourself and forward that to them. Many people take notes throughout the meeting and immediately thereafter, transfer those notes into an email attachment and forward them ONLY to Person X.

6. Schedule a follow-up meeting to follow-up with all that was discussed and agreed.

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In order to best increase the performance of the team and the leaders, Peak Strategies will provide many great tools within executive coaching.

For information on the benefits of Coaching, visit: Coaching Benefits: ROI

Questions on Coaching? Visit our FAQ page: Coach/Training FAQ's

EXECUTIVE COACHING

Dr. Dawdy utilizes her experience and education with organizations and their primary resource, people, to promote performance, manage personal and professional change, maximize team cohesion, and enhance project effectiveness. One way to achieve this is to couple the organization’s objectives with the individual needs of the executive clients. These needs and objectives may branch out to include the promotion of emotional or motivational facets within the workforce, the improvement of interpersonal communication skills, and the ability for the executive to clearly define a personal and a professional vision.

This coaching resource is beneficial for organizations that desire to prevent an executive’s derailment, to improve the performance and effectiveness of a promising executive or to aid the newly promoted or re-assigned executive during the transitional process, all while striving towards the organization’s vision.

Not only is executive coaching optimal for anyone in leadership roles, but corporate coaching also benefits the entire organization. By using assessments like the 360 feedback, the MBTI, the Social Compass, and the FIRO-B, your corporation can increase productivity and revenue by increasing the performance levels and satisfaction of employees.

In addition to one-to-one sessions, Peak Strategies offers seminars geared towards helping the entire organization. These workshops may cover topics like communication, inter-personal relations, leadership, and group cohesion.

The following assessments are most widely used by Gwynne Dawdy and Peak Strategies in executive and corporate coaching:

360 Feedback Assessment
Social Compass
Firo-B

One of the unique things about Gwynne Dawdy's structure is that not only are these tools helpful in interpersonal relations, communication, and performance enhancement, but training on how to incorporate these findings within the personal and professional lives of employees is also beneficial. Many practices offer these tests, but rarely train and expand upon the results in order to really enhance the tools' effectiveness. Peak Strategies offers these trainings with various workshops and one-to-one corporate or executive coaching.

Positive Psychology & Personal Coaching

Positive psychology focuses on many elements within individuals that could impede personal development. These elements may include relationships, financial matters, stress, health and wellness issues, goal achievement, and work relations. Dr. Dawdy has over 10 years experience helping others deal with these issues.

The profession of positive psychology, mental wellness and personal coaching is growing, as is the number of people seeking professional coaches, counselors, and psychologists focusing in these fields. Some of the simple concepts include helping people to increase their performance, to experience balance between work and life, to accomplish desired personal or career transformation and to achieve desired goals.

In regards to professional coaching, as you may know, coaching has received quite a bit of media attention in the past several years. In fact, the emerging profession of coaching and the coach training organizations have been covered on the NBC Nightly News, Donahue and CBS This Morning. They have also been featured in Newsweek and USA Today as well as in over 100 other major media outlets. Coaching has received this positive attention because of the success of the clients who uses a coach. In fact, here is a brief sample of what the media has said about coaching:
"A personal coach can be the answer when people need a push in more than part of their lives or need +guidance in setting broad lifestyle goals." -- Dallas Morning News

"[Coaches] -- they're part therapist, part consultant -- and they sure know how to succeed in business." – Newsweek

"[Your coach] will guide you to a fuller life or a slimmer figure. Whatever you want. Your weakness is his [or her] challenge." -- USA Today

Clients use a coach for any of the following reasons and often for a combination of these reasons:

          * To make substantial personal changes including stress reduction and lifestyle simplification.
          * To improve communication, feedback, and conflict resolution to be more effective.
          * To turn a challenging situation into a successful experience.

* To achieve a healthy balance among the physical, personal, and professional facets in life.
So, as you can see, coaching is for those individuals and groups who see the value in having a confidential partner to collaborate with them. Being an organizational psychologist, National Certified Counselor and a professional coach, I work with other so they can make better decisions resulting in fewer problems, increased performance, and greater fulfillment. Positive psychology is a viable profession.

Peak Strategies is a partnership guided by the client’s and organization’s goals. The purpose is to bridge the gap between where the client is and where the client wishes to be. Peak Strategies uses many tools, techniques and methods in achieving this dynamic transformation.