Dual coaching
Communication and influencing upwards - Two senior job-sharing managers wanted to discuss a difficult relationship with their line manager. I drew attention to the fact that the communication between the two job-sharers themselves seemed erratic, undermining their credibility in the eyes of colleagues. They acknowledged that a lack of regular contact was making their working lives harder than they needed to be.
With my support they established new ways of communicating and devised a joint approach to the difficulties they faced with their manager. Coaching reinvigorated their belief in their ability to job-share effectively and gave them practical strategies for the future, including the ability to coach each other.
Managing a difficult colleague – Two partners in a successful fashion business were concerned about the return of the senior, third partner after maternity leave. In her absence they had created a better atmosphere in the office, generated more work and built new relationships with clients. In their words, they had changed the company from her kingdom to a democracy, and they were uncertain how to present this to her.
Coaching enabled them to devise ways of altering the office environment to support communication, and devise new ground rules for chairing meetings. They were able to agree a new way to present their plans and involve the previously absent partner. In just one coaching session, they moved from feeling they were at a “two out of ten” in the likelihood of achieving their goals after the return of the third partner, to an “eight out of ten ”.
Team training
Resilience - A major national children’s charity wanted to support a vital team of staff to feel more confident in difficult meetings and to be more at ease when speaking in public. We offered a four-hour workshop with two main elements. First we encouraged team members to draw up a ‘Dependable Strengths Inventory’, uncovering abilities they’d used in the past but weren’t currently using. Then we helped them to think about ways to use their strengths to face current challenges at work. The second half of the workshop introduced them to a communications model to support more powerful personal impact and some practical techniques for managing anxiety.
Post workshop comments were universally excellent – with people finding both parts of the workshop equally useful. All said they would ‘very strongly’ recommend the workshop, using adjectives like ‘empowering’ and ‘inspirational’.