Practising coaches building their practice
One of my most emotive recollections of mentoring is taking part in a Civil Service programme for disabled staff. One of the participants was a Thalidomide victim. Only partially sighted, with only rudimentary fingers at the end of stumps of arms, he turned the pages of the workshop manual with his tongue. And he fiercely...
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One of the paradoxes of formal mentoring programmes is that the essence of the relationship is its informality – the ability to discuss in private a wide range of issues that will help the mentee cope with and learn from issues s/he encounters, putting aside any power or status differences that might operate outside the...
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When mentoring relationships fail, one of the most common reasons is that the mentor’s behaviour is incongruent with the mentee’s needs or with promoting insight-provoking dialogue. Some common dysfunctional mentor behaviours include talking too much, being overly directive, being patronising, and making inappropriate comments. Sometimes, the mentee, in turn, feels unable or unwilling to confront...
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Inclusion: Genuinely valuing a wide range of diversity & inclusion in talent, perspective and person, for its ability to contribute to individual, organisational and societal well-being. Authentic inclusion is recognised by a sense amongst all groups that the only limitations on their potential to achieve are those they choose to impose upon themselves; and by (more…)
Being an effective coach requires a continuously expanding portfolio of BDQs – (Bloody Difficult Questions). These are what stimulate the client to reflect and gain personal insight. Equally important, however, are the BDQs we ask ourselves. For example: For whose benefit am I asking this question? Can I do more here by saying nothing? What am (more…)
This article has its origins in several complementary sources: the personal coaching experiences of both myself and my co-authors in 14 books on coaching and mentoring; the experiences of coaches, who I have supervised; and observation of coaches in real plays within coach assessment centres (robust, validated processes for evaluating the competence and “fit” of...
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When we talk about supervision in coaching and mentoring, the first association is with one-to-one intense professional oversight, as happens in counselling and psychotherapy. Yet supervision can come in many forms and for many purposes. It can be relatively expensive, or remarkable inexpensive. As organisations become more familiar with the supervision concept, we are gradually...
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Created more than a decade ago, the Twelve Habits of the Toxic Mentor and the Twelve Habits of the Toxic Mentee have been quoted in hundreds of publications and training programmes. I’ve thought for a while that it would be useful to have a similar checklist for executive coaches. So here, finally, it is…. The (more…)
Powerful questions we can define as ones that have a significant, positive impact on the quality and direction of a person’s thinking about issues important to them. Based on analysis of hundreds of powerful questions and observing how coaches and mentors use them, the characteristics of a powerful question include being: Personal – it is (more…)
Considering how much organizations pay for the services of executive coaches, it might be expected that the relationship between them would be a partnership, aimed at providing the best possible support for the client. While in some cases, this is undoubtedly true, a more general picture appears to be one of more transactional relationships, with...
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