Coaching
We undertake a wide range of coaching assignments with coachees working in large, complex organisations across a diverse spectrum.
One of our biggest assignments has been with a major UK university. We were appointed by the Director of Communications to provide executive coaching for the Faculty Deans carrying out one to one coaching with each of these individuals, each one a senior academic bearing huge responsibility and a world leader in their discipline. We investigated their approaches to management and leadership and their individual communication style. As well as supporting them through substantial changes in style, behaviour and approach we also worked with them to develop new structures and communication methods for delivery in their changing environments.
Having worked successfully at this very senior level we were then invited to continue this coaching work and have subsequently and are currently providing coaching for Section Heads, HR Managers, Communications Managers and Heads of Faculty Administration.
When a recent internal communications audit was carried out the score for people's opinion of the communication skills, management and leadership of senior management had moved from dissatisfied to very satisfied. The Director of Communications attributed this directly to our coaching work in a Senior Management Team meeting and subsequent report. Anecdotal evidence has also been gathered showing how delighted members of staff are by the change in style and approach by senior leaders.
We also coach individuals from major private sector companies. These coachees are frequently senior managers who feel their careers need a boost, having reached a senior level but have become 'stuck'. We work with them to develop and assist in their understanding of their strengths, set clear goals and objectives for their career paths and create personal marketing strategies which will allow them to find new challenges either within their current organisations or elsewhere. This coaching looks at unlocking the 'unconscious competence' of individuals in order to allow them greater success both personally and organisationally.
One individual who we began working with in January 2007 has just been promoted from Group HR Manager to European HR Director with a global multinational as a result. A second coachee, who we began working with in February 2007, had taken a redundancy package in the summer of 2006 from his role as Operations Manager with a US firm based in the UK and had been unable to find an appropriate position since. He has just been offered and accepted a role as General Manager of a global manufacturing company, a role which not only places him back in the workplace but also carries greater status and responsibility as well as a much larger salary package than his previous role.
In our coaching we balance 'real world' experience, gained as leaders and managers for many years with study and research which looks at some of the best academic thinking in the areas of leadership and management and draws on work by such distinguished minds as Jim Collins, Charles Handy, Daniel Goleman and Robert Kaplan.
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