| Coaching Q&A |
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Here are a number of typical questions and answers associated with our coaching services. Please contact us with any other questions and answers you would suggest.
What is your approach to coaching? We see that our clients are effective, capable, motivated leaders. Our experience shows that they typically have their own best answers, and our job is to help them find those answers and show them where to look on their own in the future. Through evaluating our client from the start, setting attainable goals, conducting confidential, one-on-one coaching conversations, and checking our progress against our goals, we help our clients fundamentally increase their own existing capabilities, and tap into more of their potential as leaders. Our coaching differs from that of many coaches in that each coach has a background that includes leadership experience. Client engagements typically include:
We set the bar high by encouraging the leader to select conditions that would delight them in a 6-month period.
Leadership Unleashed clients include:
So why emphasize "sustainable" here? Is your job to motivate your clients? While many projects focus solely on effectiveness, it is the balance of happiness and effectiveness that sustains a leader in accomplishing his or her best work over longer periods of time, and leading in the most ethical, compassionate, and inspiring way. Ask yourself—would you rather be working for a leader who is both happy and effective, or one who is just effective? The answer to that is the answer to why we conisder it important to focus on both. Indeed, our job is not to motivate clients. Coaching works most effectively with those who are both professionally capable and motivated to grow and change. No, our job is not to motivate our clients.
What is the Executive Coaching Service?
Leadership Unleashed offers the Executive Coaching Services (ECS) to HR Departments and organizations with a need for a one-stop coaching solution. ECS is made up of a team of world class, diverse, seasoned coaches who have consistent coaching styles and who share a strong personal desire to see leaders succeed and to make a difference in their lives. Leaders get immediate access to a team of highly credible, world-class coaching professionals. HR gets a single point of contact for administration, billing, coaching, and client evaluations. ECS coaches have senior leadership and significant coaching experience covering many industries, and their extensive training enables them to achieve rapport with clients very deeply in a short time period. ECS offers corporate clients an economical coaching program with a great return on investment, without the headaches of day-to-day administration requirements.
How do you differentiate coaching from consulting?
Both are important services. We believe coaching is a transfer of skills and an enhancement of the client's perspective such that he or she can see and act upon new possibilities from then on. Consulting is delivering a solution to a client (education or change is not required). In short, consulting is "giving a fish," whereas coaching is "teaching to fish." Coaching can take longer than consulting and requires more energy on the part of the client, as they need to move up a learning curve and/or to gain competency in areas not relied on in the past.
How does coaching differ from therapy? Answering for Leadership Unleashed, and not for the industry, other firms, or other coaches, we simply don't offer therapy. The distinctions we make between the two are reflected in the types of problems and outcomes we choose with our clients to address. We will not coach in the domains of fundamental issues of coping with life, personal relationships, family issues, mood, personality or anxiety disorders, violence, brutality, debilitating pain or anger about the past that impedes the present, and so on. While coaching covers a lot of ground, the work is focused on the present and the future, not the past. We focus on what rather than on why—on how to proceed rather than personal histories. The primary focus of our coaching is on how to achieve audacious professional results in a way that is energizing.
How does confidentiality work if my boss or company is paying your bill? The answer to that depends on what you are comfortable with and on the expectations of your boss and/or organization. Each engagement requires a discussion about confidentiality and an agreement once the discussion is sufficient to find the right balance. We define this with clients right up front and then live by it as the centerpiece of our relationship. If all of us can't agree on this up front then we will not take the engagement.
I've heard about "life coaching" and other types of coaching. Do you do those? No. While we offer coaching focused on achieving significant and measurable professional goals, there is a wide variety of choices for coaching (see the coaching organizations under the Links section under the Resources tab).
Do you work with people who aren’t leaders? Yes, in certain circumstances. Those engagements are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Do you work with people who aren't sure they want or need to change? Typically not. Our best work is with a person, team, or organization where the engine of change is already warm and where they have big eyes for what they want to accomplish. One exception would be if someone knows he or she needs to change at some level but isn't yet fully aware of it. In that situation, we need the client to realize this as we discuss the potential project. Without that realization or commitment, our work can't be successful.
Is your coaching for high performers, for
moderate performers, or for people with significant issues?
If someone is a solid, high-performing professional, why spend money on coaching? The question is "Are things good enough the way they are?" for the leader, the organization or the team. If the answer is yes, then there is indeed no reason to spend money on coaching. If the answer is "not as good as we would like," then great coaching can be the perfect choice. A trained and experienced professional—who is trustworthy, unbiased, outside of your organization, and with only the success of the leader, organization or team as the number one goal—can help bring the results to the next level. When you hire the right coach you are bringing in a professional to lead you and/or your team to operate more effectively and see yourself and your world of demands with new eyes. It offers the ability to reorganize the environment and its demands to aid, rather than hinder, achievement of these new and deliberate goals.
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